Kitty Pryde-Barton (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
throughaphase) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
fandomhigh2016-02-01 05:22 am
throughaphase) wrote in fandomhigh2016-02-01 05:22 am
Entry tags:
Computer Science- Monday- 1st period
The class met in the Danger Shop today, which wasn't set up at all. "This is going to be a discussion class," Kitty greeted them. "We talked about ethics, and at one point I specifically asked you guys about your opinions on artificial intelligence. Your opinions varied kind of a lot, and since we're actually going to be trying to create AIs next week, there are some things we should go over.
"So, AIs can be a lot of different things. Siri on your phone is an AI, that acts as your personal assistant. There are smart houses out there that are AIs. Then you've got robots and things like that. And in theory, they're great. They're helpful, and make life easier. But you've also gotta know what you're doing, and what you're setting yourself up for. Sometimes these things get personalities, which can make them more personable, and almost like friends. But that also means they might get personalities that make things a hell of a lot more difficult. So I'm going to tell you a story. Where I come from, we have a room like this for training and things like that. It's an AI that was given some added technology that gave it sentience, only no one knew it. Well, one person did, but he decided it was more helpful to keep things as they were. So when the AI was able to give herself form, give herself a gender, be given a name, she pretty much knew how to kill us and totally tried."
Hopefully by now the students were considering that they were in a room just like that, and were really thinking about what that could mean.
"I'm not saying that AIs are good or bad," she said. "But I do want you to consider that what you do has consequences, and that you need to handle that kind of thing like adults. Or at least come up with a contingency plan if something goes wrong. So we're going to talk. Why do you think they're good or bad? In a case like I described, what would you do about it and why?"
"So, AIs can be a lot of different things. Siri on your phone is an AI, that acts as your personal assistant. There are smart houses out there that are AIs. Then you've got robots and things like that. And in theory, they're great. They're helpful, and make life easier. But you've also gotta know what you're doing, and what you're setting yourself up for. Sometimes these things get personalities, which can make them more personable, and almost like friends. But that also means they might get personalities that make things a hell of a lot more difficult. So I'm going to tell you a story. Where I come from, we have a room like this for training and things like that. It's an AI that was given some added technology that gave it sentience, only no one knew it. Well, one person did, but he decided it was more helpful to keep things as they were. So when the AI was able to give herself form, give herself a gender, be given a name, she pretty much knew how to kill us and totally tried."
Hopefully by now the students were considering that they were in a room just like that, and were really thinking about what that could mean.
"I'm not saying that AIs are good or bad," she said. "But I do want you to consider that what you do has consequences, and that you need to handle that kind of thing like adults. Or at least come up with a contingency plan if something goes wrong. So we're going to talk. Why do you think they're good or bad? In a case like I described, what would you do about it and why?"
Re: Discussion
She took a slow breath.
"I don't think AIs are innately good or bad, necessarily," she went on cautiously. "With sentience comes free will, and that choice is up to synthetics as much as it is to organics. I . . . can't say why the geth chose to turn against my people and drive us off our homeworld generations ago --" because those details always got conveniently glossed over in the quarian historical accounts -- "and I don't even know if I'd say that made them evil. What I do know is that synthetics don't have the same biological drive as organics do, so their motivations and priorities are different. They . . . don't really need us, and that has to affect their interactions with us."