Is it Ethical to Program an Intelligent Robot So that it Will Want to Be Your Slave?
 

It would be unethical, though I don't know why you'd want to put a supercomputer in a Roomba

Probably so that it can handle household chores that are more complicated than cleaning floors.

Though I would say "little compensation beyond energy and maintenance" misses the point. The compensation is we could make it fun for them... orgasmic even. (Assuming by "as smart as humans" you are saying they are sentient. If no sentience, there's no point worrying about what they think, they won't care either.)

There's no test for sentience, but they are robots who seem to be self-aware so they very well might be. Let's just say they are.

It seems kind of cruel to design a robot to do housework, give it sentience, and then not let it do housework.

http://www.discussworldissues.com/im...ons/icon14.gif

This reminds me of the restaurant at the end of the universe with the domestic animal which wants to be eaten. It's intelligent, speaks English, introduces himself and even makes suggestions about which parts of his body would be the most tender, then when everyone has ordered he goes into the back and humanely ends his life so cooks can chop him up.

It was actually a bio engineered intelligent pig which wants to be your slave and be eaten. BTW I'd say no it is not ethical.

If you're talking about the restaurant at the end of the universe it was a cow.

That was one of my favorite parts of that book.

This may be the most interesting question to ever have been asked on poly. Congrats, gribby.

I think there's a problem with comparing possibly sentient machines to animals we believe are sentient. When animals feel happy, there is a chemical process that triggers the subjective experience of pleasure and they like it and want more. A robot is simply programmed to act in a certain way. It might be self-aware and have subjective experiences of sight, hearing, etc., but can you possibly determine if a robot is actually happy with its existence and doing what it likes or is it just trapped following a program and basically watching itself behave as a slave? How could you write a program that will allow the robot to signal that it is having a subjective experience?

Some Christian theodicy suggests that this is the reason we were given free will and that there is sin (or rebellion or distance from God) in the world. It is because God decided it wasn't ethical to make His creations slaves.

JM

Do we have intelligent robots?

JM

In my younger, crazy, days I favored having the state raise all children.

JM

Shape shifting sex robots

I am even less concerned by this than I am about breeding and training guide dogs for the blind.

You could just avoid this whole dilemna by not creating sentient robots. Christ, has no-one seen a sci-fi movie in the last 30 years..

What are the signs of self-awareness?

Wrong thread.