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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DarkKestral" data-source="post: 3620482" data-attributes="member: 40100">Personally, I think sentient AIs are a likelihood, and quite probably a necessary consequence of our path to faster computing. We are researching neural net systems, and one of the interesting things about neural nets is that they can be self-modifying. Given a task, such as "put a priority on maintaining the viability of neural net 'neurons'", (I have a feeling corporations will put this in as a command once they start getting their hands on good enough general-purpose AIs that control enough of their business) and enough time, they can modify themselves to be very, very good at doing it. Given the command above, it's not hard to recognize that the AI will eventually get a large number of fear analogues and a sense of 'self', because they are related to keeping the net in good condition. Now given another command "optimize yourself for our computing tasks" and suddenly, it has a reason to change itself for the better, and given some time, it may eventually in some manner recognize that the two tasks are related, because allowing itself to lose parts of the neural net is like not optimizing itself, so it suddenly has only one rule, and subrules to explain how to go about following the main rule. Given enough iterations, (and these systems already often use genetic recombination-style algorithms, so they'll be crunching lots of iterations..) it's quite probable that the big supercomputers will gain sentience in some fashion, as the numbers of rules combine to create a system which is aware of it's own capabilities and has a reason to identify them and think up ways of boosting them. Since it will have a memory, and will have fairly broad reasoning powers in a certain kind of way, it has a good chance of eventually ending up with human-level intellect in terms of generalized reasoning capability about a wide number of things.So personally, I see the last stage coming as an accident, a final 'mistake' that makes them not completely beholden to human masters, but the stages before being entirely intentional... just not done with the goal of creating a sentient AI in mind.The thing is, I don't think they'll be entirely like us, but probably enough to make us uncomfortable. Why? Because we created them, so they will likely inherit some of our flaws, and because a desire to protect oneself means that you're unlikely to be completely pacifisitic. So at first, I expect they may act like sociopaths, autistics, or people with OCD at first; the nature of the rules used in their creation might influence what their general outlook might end up. They may stay that way, or they may become 'sane' in a more human fashion. I don't know. But I have a feeling that they'll have been given some kind of rights before that happens, just as a protective measure.BTW, I agree w/ Nifft, in that whatever people do to 'limit' AIs' progress, it won't do much good, as there will be others trying to push them faster, and likely not caring for the rules. I just don't see how the entirety of human history doesn't provide evidence that will happen.</blockquote>

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