> Michael Nielsen wrote:
>
> > Is it ethical to contain an AI in a limited
> > world? This is an especially interesting
> > question if one takes the point of view that
> > the most likely path to Artificial
> > Intelligence is an approach based on
> > evolutionary programming.
>
> I always thought ethics was about containing
> intelligence inside a limited world.
I would put it very differently. Containment is a side-effect of ethics,
not its essential point. Alexander 'Sasha' Chislenko posted a nice
one-line description of ethics earlier in this discussion; the gist was
that ethics is about regulating relations between people and possessions.
That the containment effect you refer to is a side-effect and not the
intended purpose of ethics can also be seen in the fact that often it
is possible to reach a particular end by a variety of means, some ethical,
and some not.
Michael Nielsen
http://wwwcas.phys.unm.edu/~mnielsen/index.html