14.0435 robots have a creed?

From: by way of Willard McCarty (willard@lists.village.Virginia.EDU)
Date: 10/28/00

  • Next message: by way of Willard McCarty: "14.0436 the grammar of life"

                   Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 435.
           Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
                   <http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
                  <http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
    
       [1]   From:    Jascha Kessler <jaschak@earthlink.net>              (35)
             Subject: Re: 14.0425 robotic creed
    
       [2]   From:    "Osher Doctorow" <osher@ix.netcom.com>              (16)
             Subject: Re: Robotic Creed
    
       [3]   From:    Randall Pierce <rpierce@jsucc.jsu.edu>               (8)
             Subject: robots
    
    
    --[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
             Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2000 08:54:37 +0100
             From: Jascha Kessler <jaschak@earthlink.net>
             Subject: Re: 14.0425 robotic creed
    
    re Robots' Creed.
    
    Who and what is this "I"?  we are talking merest fantasy here, are we not?
    
       Jascha Kessler
       Professor of English & Modern Literature, UCLA
       Telephone: (310) 393-4648  (9:00 a.m. - 11:00 p.m. PST)
       Fax: (360) 838-8589/VoiceMail 24 hours (360) 838-8589
    
       http://www.english.ucla.edu/jkessler/
       http://www.xlibris.com
       http://jaschakessler.homestead.com/
       http://www.mcphersonco.com
    
    
      > From: Humanist Discussion Group <willard@lists.village.virginia.edu> 
    (by way
      > of Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>)
      > Reply-To: willard@lists.village.virginia.edu
      > Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 09:26:51 +0100
      > To: Humanist Discussion Group <humanist@lists.Princeton.EDU>
      >  >
    ....
      > Date: Fri, 27 Oct 2000 09:09:27 +0100
      > From: "Chris McMahon" <pharmakeus@hotmail.com>
      > Subject: Re: 14.0412 the line between humans and computers will
      > increasingly blur....
      >
      > ROBOT CREED
      >
      > I am not the same as you. My brian is not your brian. I have no
      > repressions. I have no predjudies. You did not make me as a slave, for you
      > already have so many slaves. You made me as your tool, for there are places
      > you still wish to go. I go there in place of you. I am not as you are. I am
      > better than you. You made me in your best moments. But you lived yourselves
      > in your worst. You gave me your ideals but not your hypocrisies. You did
      > not give me a soul, for you understood by then that you had no soul to
      > give. You did not give me consciousness for you said that you yourselves
      > were simply machines. What you gave me was was the ability to make a guess,
      > take a gamble, leap to a conclusion. Nothing more.
      >
    --[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
             Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2000 08:55:45 +0100
             From: "Osher Doctorow" <osher@ix.netcom.com>
             Subject: Re: Robotic Creed
    
    Hear, hear!   I think that the Robotic Creed captures the Planet of the Apes
    (POA) very well.  There is a slight problem which I indicated a little
    earlier on the Anzap-l list in Australia (University of Adelaide - I am too
    sleepy to remember their email address).  It turns out that the best in
    modern computerized decision making research programs collapse when a slight
    assumption is changed - I proved that essentially on Anzap-l.   However, the
    idea of the Robotic Creed seems basically sound, although it needs a little
    work.  Throw in a few grains of changed assumptions, mix well, remember that
    there is probably Somebody Upstairs better even than robots, and things may
    go well.  While I have the floor (or is it the ceiling?), can anybody tell
    me why I have to send probability-statistics innovative papers to Australian
    forums rather than USA/Canada/Great Britain?  Even my heroes in Oxford and
    Cambridge seem never to have heard of such forums, and the discussion groups
    that exist permit about as much deviation from the mainstream as a
    strait-jacket/astronaut spacesuit.  (Replies of "Tell it to the Robots" will
    not be accepted.)
    
    O.D. (and I don't mean overdose)
    
    --[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
             Date: Sat, 28 Oct 2000 09:01:01 +0100
             From: Randall Pierce <rpierce@jsucc.jsu.edu>
             Subject: robots
    
    The recent discussion by Arun-Kumar Tripathi on the essay by Dr.
    Jennifer Healey concerning intelligence in robots was very
    thought-provoking. If robots need human emotions to interact with
    humans, do we need any safeguards on the developing psychology of
    robots?I am reminded of the "Three laws of Robotics" devised by Dr.
    Isaac Asimov almost fifty years ago. His robot stories, although science
    fiction, raise interesting ethical and technological questions about
    artificial intelligence. I would recommend them to those on the Humanist
    List. Randall
    



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