The issue of artificial intelligence has been in our society’s conscious for decades but often as a fearful imagining of robots gone mad who are hellbent on destroying us. But what if A.I. doesn’t result in Terminator style cyborgs but rather virtual worlds with virtual people living their lives in computers. A Matrix where we are not the inhabitants but rather our virtual creations are. If these virtual people were so “human” in their behaviors, feelings and emotions would we be forced to redefine our definition of life?
Maybe it is just harmless musing at the moment but how many more years will it be till we start to see some high functioning examples of artificial intelligence in games and programs? Is our society prepared at all for the consequences of fulfilling our endless quests to become gods and create our own new life form? Once the A.I characters in games behave in incredibly human ways will it be OK to harm and kill them. If we define life in a more philosophical way as something with a consciousness or knowledge of its own existence, I can’t imagine it will be too hard to create computer entities like this in the future.
We have no problem now shooting people in video games because we feel they are just collections of pixels and polygons. Whatever A.I. they have been programmed with means they are nothing more than target practice but would we still feel comfortable killing them if we knew they had something resembling independent thoughts. The quest for realistic characters in games can only lead to increasingly human behavior but how much humanity can we stand killing before we say enough?
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