Poll: Killing A.I. ... Problem?

[BentNeatly]

Soon, and I'm talking a matter of years perhaps with the rate at which technology is advancing, Our Grand Theft Autos and Elder Scrolls games will be completely populated by actual Artificial Intelligence. At least that's what scientists are saying.

What this means is that a human or some sort of being, with years of existence under his belt, while out one day for a bunch of apples to bring home to his wife will be struck by a speeding vehicle and "killed". You, in the form of your video game avatar, will then exit the vehicle and begin gunning down.... not NPC's in a sense... But actual conciseness, who will plead, and scream, and run, and pray to their god, Us, for some sort of mercy or explanation.

Is there anything wrong with that? Will the idea of the things your killing having memories and lives stop you from pulling your primary fire button?

When games reach this level, will you change? Will you not get bored and begin wanton slaughter? Do you think you could hurt something that believes itself to be real?

 

[The Austin]

I don't think that actual AI will work that way, seeing as that we have AI already....

EDIT: Yeah, I'm pretty sure that AI doesn't work that way, so..... Yeah.

 

[Dango]

I rarely kill NPCs anyway since I already feel too bad for them, so it won't change the way I play.

 

[grimsprice]

In order to be morally reprehensible, the thing has to feel pain or suffer. We would have to program it to suffer. If we don't do that, then its not a problem.

 

[Abanic]

As the topic of conversation will not happen in my lifetime, I consider this thread to be futile.

 

[sephiroth1991]

If they shoot first, they will fall

I have no moral constraint not to take them down.

 

[quiet_samurai]

No, I don't think we will ever create a truely sentient being... ever. However I think we could possibly create...something, that will very accurately immitate sentience. To be actually sentient it would also require said entity to have the ability to evolve and grow as an individual, I don't think we will ever have the technology to be able to program something like that.

So no, I would still kill the apple picker.

 

[DazZ.]

Huh?
NPCs already have AI which is the whole reason they do things.

Doesn't matter how advanced the AI is or how you program them to act, they're still just NPCs, you could code them now to plead and pray to you, I'd still kill them if they pleaded in an annoying fashion.

 

[Omega V]

I'm sorry, there is no way that putting anything even approximating an actual A.I in a video game will ever be legal. The creation of a our first true A.I will be rightly regarded as a Huge milestone in our technological advancement, with enormous ethical and legal implications (possibly even greater than the creation of artificial life and human cloning put together) and laws will almost certainly be immediately enacted to tightly control their creation and use. Besides, mistreatment of potentially powerful sentient beings can only result in a 'machine uprising' and 'the enslavement of the human race' scenarios any way

 

[The Procrastinated End]

It will just liven up the experience and I doubt they'd go straight to video games with A.I.

 

[Jack_Uzi]

I rarely kill NPCs anyway since I already feel too bad for them, so it won't change the way I play.

Haha! Likewise! But in the past there were some experiments with AI programs that should learn and have a living/cognitive ability and some just terminated themselves. So there is no need for that.

 

[InnerRebellion]

Then I'd enjoy killing them even more..because they're like real people...and maybe I can mod them to look like my enemies...and take my rage at them out on their AI self. Heh.

 

[PoliceBox63]

Nope. They're just more sophisticated NPCs and they certainly don't have a consciousness in the sense humans and indeed other animals have. It's an illusion of consciousness and I think we are a long way away from real "consciousness" AI of the movies.

 

[Triforce_Guardian]

hmm... something thats not real thinking that its real...i'm surprised no one has asked this question already: who cares if it thinks its real?

 

[TimeLord]

If an NPC character appeals to be then I would feel bad about killing them.

For about 1 minute.

Then I'd nuke everyone else I didn't care about.

 

[FaceFaceFace]

I don't think that actual AI will work that way, seeing as that we have AI already....

EDIT: Yeah, I'm pretty sure that AI doesn't work that way, so..... Yeah.

This. AI in games isn't designed to think it's real, it's designed to react to things as if it were real. Being concerned about killing them would be like being concerned about deleting chatbot.

 

[Walkchalk]

Well I usually dont randomly murder NPCs anyways. Not random apple picking NPCs anyways. The ones that are shooting at me will certainly fall before my might, but I usually play a rather good character. But if I DID play evil and killed everyone in sight Im rather sure I woukd have no qualms about killing AI as they arent actually dead, and you can be sure that if you play the game again you will find that same person living the same life anyways.

 

[jaeger138]

A.I. is just what it says, artificial. Everyone has this crazy idea that robots will get too smart and be able to mimic humans, ask for rights and possibly rise up to defeat us humans. What we must remember is that it's all programming. If the program says 'Don't be asking for rights and killing people' then the A.I. won't do that. I would not feel bad about killing an A.I. as it won't have human consciousness, just the ability to react in a more human way.

 

[XMark]

If Ray Kurzweil is to be believed, then by 2029 a $1000 computer will have 1000 times the computation capacity of a human brain, and by that time the entire structure and operation of the human brain could be mapped out and reverse-engineered.

If a machine has the exact same method of signal processing as a human brain, and the exact same structure, then its actions would replicate a human's actions exactly. The question then would be if they are actually conscious.

That question CAN'T be answered, because consciousness is only observable by the conscious one. To say with any certitude that "It's just a machine, it doesn't feel anything" is presumptuous. The only arguments which support that assertion are religious arguments pertaining to the existence of a soul as a separate entity to the neural network.

In fact, when computers match our intelligence and begin to display what we can interpret as genuine emotions, we definitely need to make laws protecting their rights as individuals.

Because if they behave exactly like humans, whether they are truly conscious or not will have no bearing on whether they choose to seek revenge on us for their abuse.




But anyway, back to the question at hand - I don't think that'll be an issue. AI programmers for video games would not want to waste time programming backstories and complex emotions into every NPC. It's not like they'll spend years on every NPC going "okay, this guy graduated college in 2015, met his wife in 2016, has 2 kids and currently works at a WalMart". As with today's AI, they'll basically just be complex state machines exhibiting different behaviours based entirely on variables relevant to the gameplay. They wouldn't have any memories or emotions, they'd just be programmed to fake emotion, like moving your fingers in a sock puppet to make it smile or scream.

There would likely be laws against torturing anything of a certain level of programmed complexity that can be described as actually feeling pain or fear.

Or, like in Mass Effect, the development of true Artificial Intelligence may even be banned outright.