Robin writes:
> What if the first upload is a cryonics patient, who is legally "dead"?
> What about the apparent majority today who can't accept a machine
> being "conscious"? What if the first upload company keeps their uploads
> from talking with and interacting with ordinary people in "human" ways?
> (Software just does useful things; you can't see how.) And what if
> you can make *trillions* of dollars selling such software service?
> Won't that motivate them to do what ever paperwork/lobbying it takes?
Paperwork and lobbying won't necessarily do the job if people are morally
opposed to the project. Look at the genetically modified food issue
we have been discussing. There is a lot of money to be made but the
companies may not be able to overcome public opposition.
Or look at illegal drugs - billions of dollars there, but no significant
lobbying effort for legalization, because they know it would be useless.
Using cryonic suspendees as the guinea pigs for uploading experiments
would be the height of immorality. They can in no sense be considered to
have given informed consent. I couldn't see it happening in a political
climate like today's. Even for the illegal labs, suspendees would not
make good subjects for the uploaders, as their brains are likely to be
in worse conditions than fresh brains, and the personalities involved
are not only unknown but probably quirky at best.
Keeping the existence of the upload secret seems highly problematic.
If you're using the upload to do intelligent work, that probably is going
to require a certain amount of natural language I/O. You'd have to screen
his outputs to make sure he's not saying, "Help! I'm stuck in this box!"
Especially in order to make trillions of dollars, this software is
going to have to be widely replicated, and used for a wide variety
of functions. I don't see how you can perform the necessary filtering
to prevent him from communicating.
Plus, what are the odds that the destructive upload is going to work,
first time? Most things don't. A number of people are going to be
killed before you get an upload that works. The moral opposition to
such an effort would be overwhelming, especially when it comes from
people who will be put out of work if it succeeds.
For these reasons, I don't think a public upload project would happen
due to political opposition (at least not until the world has changed a
great deal), and I don't think a secret, illegal, private project would
be able to recoup its costs, either.
Hal
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Oct 02 2000 - 17:34:35 MDT