First Robot able to Show Emotion & develop bonds (Humans)

by dhw, Saturday, August 14, 2010, 12:42 (5023 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT: First part duly noted. I apologize for...not reading carefully, I guess.-Thank you. This happens to all of us, and may also be the reason for George's occasional misreading of my posts. I always print out the text I'm responding to, as I find it far easier to check.-You say that "once a machine becomes sentient, the original designer loses any culpability. [...] I would think that the legal precedent of designer-machine would be parent-child."-That sounds like a fair analogy, and my thoughts are probably based on ignorance of how it all works, but you will set me right if that is so. Doesn't a robot have to be programmed? To what extent would its sentience be controlled by a will of its own, and to what extent by the preparatory work done by the designer? Even if it appears to have free will, how would we know if the designer had not deliberately built in, say, a propensity for charity or conversely a killer instinct? In relation to responsibility (and ignoring the "designer" element for obvious reasons), one can ask similar questions about human genes and, as you say, the influence of upbringing, but so long as robots are deliberately designed and manufactured (in contrast to human reproduction), perhaps we can say that these questions take on an even sharper profile.-Thank you for the three different website references (maybe we could keep future links on this thread, as they're all interconnected). I found the Kurzweil one particularly fascinating, as it gives a pretty clear answer to my earlier question of just how far robot technology might be developed. An amazing man! I'd be very interested to know what David, George and, of course, any other contributors think of his "technosophy" and its implications. In the context of science and religion, as I pointed out in my earlier post, the impact on the concept of "soul" would be massive ... even if at the moment the fully sentient robot remains a product of science fiction.