Disturbing implications

[wombat_socho]

You know, if you take this to its logical (if perhaps absurd) conclusion, the use of unintelligent software packages to guide cruise missiles may someday be regarded as morally equivalent to teaching kids with Down's syndrome to become tokkotai pilots. Come to think of it, I seem to recall a story in Heavy Metal years ago about this.

(Instapundit)

Comments

[nornagest.livejournal.com]

The ethics question was given some time when I studied AI. I suspect the only reason it isn't given more is that it doesn't need to be, given our current technology; otherwise classes in cyberethics would be required for programmers, just as a bioethics class was required for my friends in neuroscience.

I suspect the question of duplicating consciousness already has an answer, anyway -- you're effectively creating a new consciousness, as the instances will be measurably different from each other from the moment you make the copy. Granted, the cost/benefit analysis of terminating one copy isn't the same as killing a discrete being would be (at least from an information-theory perspective), but that's a topic for our collective morality to hash out if and when it becomes possible.

The philosophical implications of combining consciousness seem much more interesting to me, since there isn't a biological analogue to the process.

[wombat-socho.livejournal.com]

I suspect the question of duplicating consciousness already has an answer, anyway -- you're effectively creating a new consciousness, as the instances will be measurably different from each other from the moment you make the copy.

Is that actually the case? I know that in SF there are several answers to that question. Algis Budrys' classic "Rogue Moon" agrees with you (even though the duplicates have all the memories of the originals) but more recent works (the Star Trek series, the novels of Charles Stross and John Scalzi) don't.