Philosophical, Moral, and Social Issues


Many philosophical questions followed the idea of creating an artificial intelligence. For example, is it actually possible to create a machine that can think when we don't really understand the process of thought ourselves ? How would we classify a machine being intelligent? If it simply acts intelligent, is it conscious? In other words, if an intelligent machine were created, would it be intelligent or simply mimic what we perceive as being intelligent ?

Many believe now that emotions play a part in intelligence, and therefore it would be impossible to create an intelligent machine without also giving it emotion. Since we blame many of our poor decisions on emotions, could we knowingly impart affect on our intelligent machine knowing the effect that it could have? Would we provide all emotions, mimicking our own plight, or be more selective? Arthur C. Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey provides an interesting example of this problem.

Beyond the fears of creating an artificial intelligence that turns us into its servants, many other moral issues must be answered if an intelligent machine is created. For example, if scientists did succeed in building an intelligent machine that mimicked human thought and was considered conscious, could we turn it off?




Visual Basic Developer
Visual Basic Developers Guide to ASP and IIS: Build Powerful Server-Side Web Applications with Visual Basic. (Visual Basic Developers Guides)
ISBN: 0782125573
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 1999
Pages: 175

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