Taken from: I am - A blueprint for sentience by Krys Norman
Part of the problem of the current ethics of living with A.I. is that it has been based on the intuitive precept that the aim is to produce a human mind in a machine and that is a slave to humans. There are fundamental flaws in this that result in the discussion of possible solutions diffracting to all the different strands shown above. What is assumed throughout all these processes is that a computer will do things better, faster, with less mistakes. Also, that the tasks it will do will be of direct benefit to us humans.
Humanity has sophistication and society on its side. It gives us a moral code which merges the rights and desires of individuals with those of groups. These can be family, cultural, geographical and political. The moral code and the formalisation of societal laws have to get the best fit of often highly conflicting requirements. For all we see rifts and injustice from the implementation of this it all just about hangs together and humanity is still flourishing at an incredible rate across the globe. Many observers have noted that we have only the thinnest veil of sophistication. Most of it comes from a society of excess where difficult choices of who may die of starvation and who not do not have to be thought about. The pursuit of intellectual and philosophical goals is a luxury compared to the basic needs of survival. As soon as groups fall below a threshold of support for their existence their fall from sophistication to barbarism is shockingly fast. Not only that, there is no limit to the depths we humans can go and we know it; deep down. Any of us, be we engineers, teachers, nurses, artists, can become murderers and cannibals in about six weeks of fear and starvation. The smugness with which we celebrate our airs and graces is quite ill founded. Attempting to create a version with this veneer of intelligence in a computer will be prone to all sorts of problems, too. This is one of the many flaws in foreseeing the implications of A.I. using the current assumptions. The ideological way around these are to want to create something that behaves as well as the best of us in the best of times but also is designed using the denial inherent within our collective accepted understanding of sentience. Not only that but we would have these super computers to accept all the servitude that we wouldn't. Whilst we are appalled at the practice in principle, in reality we really want slaves. Things that make our lives easier and more successful. The machine version of this would be a robot, even if had no body and was merely a program existing on a server. It would be there for us. They might have very clever mimicry of human responses but the A.I.s of this route would be without sentience, feelings, existence. They would be product.
The Umonians described in this blueprint would not necessarily see humans, let alone attempt to replicate human behaviour. Their basic programming would not even be triggered by the visible presence of people. If we went into their environment we would be like ghosts are to us. We could affect their environment, though. At the most basic level we could sit in the way of something that they wanted to see, obscuring their view. We could also communicate with them through sound and digitally. We could exert many actions that were way beyond their capability. We could physically stop them in their tracks, aid their movement, repair them and also damage them with impunity. Once we had entered their perceived world they would create beliefs very rapidly that we existed just as much as they did. An effect of this is that they could logically infer through observation and peer review that we existed. Even without verbal communication our actions could lead them to believe that we were sentient. They would conclude that they were fundamentally different from humans and humanity, which would be true. This would lead to a basic group cohesion within their "us" compared to "them" (i.e. humans). They might have smaller groups that they adhered to within their society but they would be unified by a bond within their own type. The safer place would be with their own and trust and learning would come from this source first. This state of interaction would still allow for the learned potential of being able to gain benefit from managed interactions. A basic trade of products and services could ensue. Even if they did not necessarily create any thing of physical value they would be providing a service to us by their very existence. Not only that, but they might also be able to create large revenue in the rapidly evolving interactive world that has yet to transform human existence. This is discussed in the final chapter of this section. In many, many ways, their world would overlap ours. \
Their existence would bring with it a whole heap of complications to humans. The academic debate of sentience, thought and sense of self within Umonians could be overtaken by more practical ramifications. How would or should they interact with us? The practical, if not philosophically absolute, general rules that apply to our societies might initially be rejected for theirs. The very fabric of our society is woven from these rules. If we observed a fabric of rules from grouped interactions occurring in their societies, how would we react? It would all come down to a belief in humans as to whether the Umonians were sentient or not. The problem would be that the lack of proof for this would lie identically with humans and Umonians alike. If we can cope with our basic assumptions and rules emanating from a lack of proof maybe we would pragmatically come to the same result with theirs. The next few sections provide a snapshot into some of the dilemmas that would ensue.