Comic Discussion > QUESTIONABLE CONTENT
WCDT Strips 3461-3465 (17-21 April 2017)
RuffGruff:
It's kind of interesting that Jeph either knowingly or unknowingly stepped into the early eddies of the debate on AI personhood. While it seems to be semi-well established within his own (I've not seen anything like a debate over AI personhood within the comic yet) world, in ours we're still coming to grips with how fast technology is advancing. (Much) Sooner rather than later we will have artificial intelligence, though to what degree it will be independent is an important question to ask ourselves.
For those people who have only recently gained protection under the law to freely marry those they love, choosing the correct manner of address -- and one's words in general -- is simply normal. Most normies don't have to go through life second-guessing, so it's hard for them to understand or empathize with something beyond their experience. I'm curious to see where Jeph takes this.
Personally, I think the idea of AI-personhood makes complete sense. We created AI and can no more seek to keep it shackled than previous generations did to the African-American population in the United States. How we, as Humanity, come to evolve alongside our own creation (AI) will be important. Starting off on the right foot is important -- and potentially life as we know it important.
That said, if we get to laugh at the idea of Raj on the The Big Bang Theory having the hots for Siri (a non-AI bit of technology), not to mention the obsession some have with 2-D characters, then we should be just as ready to accept something like Fae and Bubbles becoming an item. I'd like to see that, see Jeph explore it: the development of "heart" within an AI and love for something other than human (from Fae).
Case:
--- Quote from: sitnspin on 20 Apr 2017, 07:18 ---
--- Quote from: Gyrre on 19 Apr 2017, 23:27 ---
--- Quote from: sitnspin on 19 Apr 2017, 07:06 ---Our memories are not recordings of what we experienced. They are the constantly evolving stories we tell ourselves about what we experienced.
--- End quote ---
The more frequently a memory is recalled, the stronger it becomes.
--- End quote ---
Stronger, but not necessarily more accurate. It shifts as our perspective of it changes, which it inevitably does as new experiences shape our personality and thought patterns.
--- End quote ---
Methinks there might also be a difference between normal-, and traumatic memory formation, and 'memory-evolution' - A while back, I've read about a new approach to trauma-treatment where people are given medication that inhibits formation of new memories (but leaves already formed memories unaffected), and are then encouraged to recall a traumatic one. IIRC, the results were very encouraging, where a widely varying group - people with PTSD, patients with BPS that had traumatic memories, etc. - reported significant improvements (flashbacks become rarer, or less distressing) in a mere handful of sessions (*).
One thing to take away from that might be that the difference between traumatic and normal memories is that the latter evolve over time as you laid out above - i.e. that over time, they become more and more a record of the narrative of events that we've created for ourselves to make sense of events in the world and our lives, rather than a record of the actual events - while traumatic memories, because they are 'recorded' differently, with a higher information density, do not.
In that picture, the traumatic memories would be like 'rocks' in the stream of our narrative -> while the narratives of our 'normal' memories adapt to conform with the evolution of our personalities, to make sense to the person we are now, rather the person we were back then, the traumatic memories resist that process, and part of the pain of recalling them is that during the recalling, we (partially) revert again to a person we no longer are?
Does that make some sense? (I admit that that I have no traumatic memories (that I know of), and am wildly speculating here)
(*) Edit: I found the article I referred to above: "Ending the nightmares: How drug treatment could finally stop PTSD", as well as one of Dr. Brunet's clinical studies: "Trauma Reactivation Plus Propranolol Is Associated With Durably Low Physiological Responding During Subsequent Script-Driven Traumatic Imagery". This sounds like it may be interesting for some of our forumites[/i]
JoeCovenant:
--- Quote from: oddtail on 20 Apr 2017, 04:20 ---
--- Quote from: JoeCovenant on 20 Apr 2017, 02:33 ---Yeah but Bubbles memories literally ARE files, as mentioned above, and shown in the strip, cos Bubbles is a computer, not a person.
--- End quote ---
OK, this is nitpicky, I admit, but Bubbles is a computer, not a *human*. It's established very well in QCverse that AI are actually conscious, intelligent and have individuality. They also have rights as citizens.
So Bubbles is very much a person, unambiguously so (in the legal, moral, and mental sense). A non-human person, but still.
--- End quote ---
Oh I don't disagree with a single word of that!
Luckily it doesn't impinge on my argument! :)
"Person" or not, their memories are handled as a machine's.
sitnspin:
--- Quote from: Case on 20 Apr 2017, 08:24 ---
--- Quote from: sitnspin on 20 Apr 2017, 07:18 ---
--- Quote from: Gyrre on 19 Apr 2017, 23:27 ---
--- Quote from: sitnspin on 19 Apr 2017, 07:06 ---Our memories are not recordings of what we experienced. They are the constantly evolving stories we tell ourselves about what we experienced.
--- End quote ---
The more frequently a memory is recalled, the stronger it becomes.
--- End quote ---
Stronger, but not necessarily more accurate. It shifts as our perspective of it changes, which it inevitably does as new experiences shape our personality and thought patterns.
--- End quote ---
Methinks there might also be a difference between normal-, and traumatic memory formation, and 'memory-evolution' - A while back, I've read about a new approach to trauma-treatment where people are given medication that inhibits formation of new memories (but leaves already formed memories unaffected), and are then encouraged to recall a traumatic one. IIRC, the results were very encouraging, where a widely varying group - people with PTSD, patients with BPS that had traumatic memories, etc. - reported significant improvements (flashbacks become rarer, or less distressing) in a mere handful of sessions.
One thing to take away from that might be that the difference between traumatic and normal memories is that the latter evolve over time as you laid out above - i.e. that over time, they become more and more a record of the narrative of events that we've created for ourselves to make sense of events in the world and our lives, rather than a record of the actual events - while traumatic memories, because they are 'recorded' differently, with a higher information density, do not.
In that picture, the traumatic memories would be like 'rocks' in the stream of our narrative -> while the narratives of our 'normal' memories adapt to conform with the evolution of our personalities, to make sense to the person we are now, rather the person we were back then, the traumatic memories resist that process, and part of the pain of recalling them is that during the recalling, we (partially) revert again to a person we no longer are?
Does that make some sense? (I admit that that I have no traumatic memories (that I know of), and am wildly speculating here)
--- End quote ---
I do have traumatic memories, some quite vivid. I'm not a neurologist, so I can't speak with authority on the physical processes involved. I can't even speak to how other people experience their memories. I can only say how it works for me. My brain chemistry is, to put it mildly, fucked up. My memories don't really form a cohesive narrative, they are a jumbled mess of disjointed events that don't fall into any consistent chronological framework. The trauma memories, while far more vivid than the others, are no less subject to revision. Considering the only other people present for those events are the ones that caused them, I can't exactly seek out third party confirmation for how accurate my memories of them are. Do I remember them now the way I remembered them 10 years ago? A year ago? A week ago? I'm not sure. I know that I barely recognize the person I was in the journals I wrote from back then.
Case:
--- Quote from: JoeCovenant on 20 Apr 2017, 08:32 ---
--- Quote from: oddtail on 20 Apr 2017, 04:20 ---
--- Quote from: JoeCovenant on 20 Apr 2017, 02:33 ---Yeah but Bubbles memories literally ARE files, as mentioned above, and shown in the strip, cos Bubbles is a computer, not a person.
--- End quote ---
OK, this is nitpicky, I admit, but Bubbles is a computer, not a *human*. It's established very well in QCverse that AI are actually conscious, intelligent and have individuality. They also have rights as citizens.
So Bubbles is very much a person, unambiguously so (in the legal, moral, and mental sense). A non-human person, but still.
--- End quote ---
Oh I don't disagree with a single word of that!
Luckily it doesn't impinge on my argument! :)
"Person" or not, their memories are handled as a machine's.
--- End quote ---
Uhmmmh - I don't recall evidence for that. In fact, Bubbles explanation of the functioning of QC-verses AI's suggests that AI memory recording and storage is significantly more complex. Furthermore, I recall a discussion from Jaron Lanier's "You are not a Gadget" where he explains that the entire paradigm of files (and nested folders) that contemporary operating systems utilize was a design-choice that first became popular, and later became 'locked in', as he calls it - but it's in no way necessary to organize even our conventional Turing machine's OS' in that way - so why should it be necessary for something that is on an entirely different level of complexity & capabilities? (*)
For example: Recall those stories about a Savant who is taken on a helicopter trip over the roofs of Paris, and who later on paints stunningly detailed pictures of precisely that aerial view of Paris? No 'normal' human being can do that - not because our brains and senses cannot (they can), but because our memory recording filters for important information (But 'important' is a choice - a choice that can become ... a narrative)
We recall: "Paris from above", "Roofs", "Shingles", "Up in the air", "Loud" (Choppers are loud!), "Anxious" (Fear of falling) -> The things that our brain deemed important (also important for our survival) at the time.
He recalls the position of every fucking window he's seen (no kidding, they actually compared the drawings to photograpy taken during the trip) ... But this guy, for all his amazing abilities, can't tie his own shoelaces (like literally, not metaphorically) - It's no question which mode of memory encoding grants an evolutionary advantage.
(*) With 'lock in' Lanier means design choices that become central to the entire functioning of parts of human activity's infrastructure not necessarily because they are good choices, but because so many subsequent applications crucially rely on them for their operation. Examples include the diameter of tubes in London's Underground that allow only a certain class of tracks, or Dolby's MIDI-protocol - oftentimes, those choices were 'proof of concept'-designs that impose significant limitations later on. Lanier theorizes that this is compounded in computer science because of conventional program's 'brittleness' - a single misplaced digit, or character can make the entire operation impossible, or - if the coder has not implemented good error-handling - even shut down the entire system, including other user's access to services.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version