Continuities and Discontinuities Between Humans, Intelligent Machines, and Other Entities

Abstract

When it comes to the question of what kind of moral claim an intelligent or autonomous machine might have, one way to answer this is by way of comparison with humans: Is there a fundamental difference between humans and other entities? If so, on what basis, and what are the implications for science and ethics? This question is inherently imprecise, however, because it presupposes that we can readily determine what it means for two types of entities to be sufficiently different-what I will refer to as being "discontinuous". In this paper, I will sketch a formal characterization of what it means for types of entities to be unique with regard to each other. This expands upon Bruce Mazlish's initial formulation of what he terms a continuity between humans and machines, Alan Turing's epistemological approach to the question of machine intelligence, and Sigmund Freud's notion of scientific revolutions dealing blows to the self-esteem of mankind. I will discuss on what basis we should regard entities as (dis-)continuous, the corresponding moral and scientific implications, as well as an important difference between what I term downgrading and upgrading continuities-a dramatic difference in how two previously discontinuous types of entities might become continuous. All of this will be phrased in terms of which scientific levels of explanation we need to presuppose, in principle or in practice, when we seek to explain a given type of entity. The ultimate purpose is to provide a framework that defines which questions we need to ask if we argue that two types of entities ought (not) to be explained (hence treated) in the same manner, as well as what it takes to reconsider scientific and ethical hierarchies imposed on the natural and artificial world.

Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence, and the Re‐enchantment of the World

“…In addition, research in AI makes it possible for the second feature of enchantment, namely, meaning within the cosmos, to become operative once again, by belief in a new cosmic order and chain of being through continuity between machine intelligence and HI (Mazlish ; Søraker ; Hernández‐Orallo ; Bhatnagar et al. ).…”

Let us make man in our image-a Jewish ethical perspective on creating conscious robots

“…The "intelligence" he aimed at was clearly intelligence supported by 2OPC (see, e.g., [124], p. 9, [122], 2.4). Nevertheless, he realized his test could not verify subjective experience ( [161], p. 447) and was thus expressing a kind of behaviorist approach -i.e., the most we can hope to observe from the test is behavior consistent with human-like intelligence, not the underlying causes of the behavior (see, e.g., [4], p. 254, [156], p. 196, [123], p. 12, [145], [55], p. 189, [150], p. 34, [60], p. 99, [36], [9], fn. 7).…”

Granting Automata Human Rights: Challenge to a Basis of Full-Rights Privilege

“…This fact would only leave a question of on what basis should they deserve humans' granting them the rights humans enjoy, if these new artificial beings may well have such different morals and, thereby, moral standing. Søraker (2014) dismisses ontological approaches to differentiating humans from animals and machines as too problematic to stand alone; epistemological approaches are needed. Building upon Mazlisi's theory of continuity between animals, humans, and machines, which all can be explained scientifically, Søraker adds the concept of multi-level explanation-physical, functional, behavioristic, and cognitive.…”