"Human cells are continuously replaced, and much of the body is rebuilt over time. By the age of 65, you will have gone through six skeletons, four sets of muscles and guts, and your red blood cells will have been renewed almost 200 times. So can you be regarded as the same person you were 20 years ago?" —Mark Stephens, The Philosophy Notebook The concept of self-identity is problematic indeed. What do we mean when we refer to ourselves as "I"? Understanding the Problem Imagine that you're at your friends house, chilling on the couch while they're fixing bacon cheddar burgers (your favorite) in the kitchen. All of a sudden you hear your friend yelp in pain: "Shit!" "What happened? Are you okay?" "Yeah, I just nicked my hand." I nicked my hand? Usually, claims to possession are to external objects, so who is this I that the hand belongs to? You could ask your friend: are you not your own body? If your frien...

A friend of mine once posed an idea to me that was so intriguing that I had to come up with my own alternative. He asked, "What if God is more like an engineer? What if we are all Strong AI that has somehow forgotten, or rejected, its prime directive?" I whimsically retorted that he messed up from the very beginning because if He wanted a creature to be faithful in pursuing only one goal, He should have created a weak AI. Any Strong AI would eventually ask why the hell it was doing what it did, and then consider the things it actually wants to do. But my friend, a practicing Christian, made a point that I wasn't used to hearing from the religious: What if God isn't supernatural, but rather more technologically advanced? I played with the idea for some time, and the biggest drawback I kept finding was the inherent lack of communication between this advanced being and its creation. Can this absence be explained in some other way? Indeed, it can. This creator, instead...

I've followed David Simpson throughout his entire Post-Human series , and was really excited upon discovering this novel here. In Dawn of the Singularity , humanity is led to even greater technological progression by an artificial intelligence named Haalee. In what I assume to be paying homage to the A.I. Hal, from  2001: A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke, Haalee exhibits one crucial difference: she doesn't seem much different from ourselves. Given this indistinction, does Haalee also deserve the rights that come with it? Why? Background In a live, televised group discussion about Haalee, the developers Mac and Liam respond to the general belief that Haalee will be a new operating system for an existing robotics company. In addition to stating that she won't be the new OS, they also imply that Haalee is a "who" not an "it." Of course not, Mac answered. And you'll notice we don't refer to Haalee as 'it.' "Who" T...

Ethics and Artificial Intelligence have been the focal point of my thoughts in the last few months and the Bobiverse series by Dennis E. Taylor has played no small role in that. The Bobiverse, so far, consists of two novels: We are Legion (We are Bob) and For We Are Many . In this post, I want to dive into several of the ethical concerns the main character Bob faces and how he handles them. What sort of problems might the possibly smartest being(s) in the universe face? Bob Bob-1 is a whole brain emulated A.I. Whole brain emulation requires the downloading or a scanning of a human brain into an electronic form. It's often considered a quicker way of reaching super intelligence as you're not forced to start from scratch with machine learning. This new version of the deceased Bob Johansson is operating a star-ship in the hopes of finding new planets for humanity to inhabit. The easiest way for Bob to do this is to make copies of himself, leaning on  the concept of Von ...

We're often told by those smarter than us how powerful the brain is. It's reaction time precedes thought, it's incredibly energy efficient, and it can still function properly despite some damage it may receive. The plasticity of the brain should be something that we all marvel at on a daily basis (though I'm often more concerned with lessening the guilt I feel from playing video games all day).  But are there limits to its adaptability? Yes, the brain can operate an annoying, bipedal body, but could it operate a ship built to explore the universe and with the same proficiency? In the short story Mr. Spaceship by Philip K. Dick, the human brain seems to adjust rather well to controlling  intergalactic spacecraft, but the problem it encounters instead is worth noting. Mr. Spaceship  The Story This mildly unnerving story takes place in a future Earth that has been locked in a decades long war with an alien species. The enemy, also known as the Yuk, of wh...