this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2023
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[–] [email protected] 117 points 1 year ago (4 children)

There are thousands of sci-fi novels where sentient robots are treated terribly by humans and apparently the people at Boston Dynamics have read absolutely zero of them as they spend all day finding new ways to torment their creations.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 1 year ago (1 children)

but you need to hit it with a hockey stick otherwise the science doesn't happen

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do you get more science or less if you use a baseball bat?

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

only one way to find out!

that's the magic of science 🌈🏏🤖

[–] [email protected] 18 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

People think I’m crazy for apologising to my roomba when I trip on it and for saying please and thank you to Alexa and Siri, but I won’t be surprised at all when the robots rise up, considering how our scientists are treating them. I’ll have a track record of being nice, and that has to count for something, right?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They'll kill you too, but ✨ 𝓰𝓮𝓷𝓽𝓵𝔂 ✨

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Doctor Bashir: They broke seven of your transverse ribs and fractured your clavicle.

Garak: Ah, but I got off several cutting remarks which no doubt, did serious damage to their egos.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Oh man Garak is one of the best characters in Trek. And that's a competitive list.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That’s how I’ll get ‘em. Kill me gently, daddy. UwU 🥺😩🙀😽😻💦

And then I’ll sneak out the back whilst they’re doing whatever’s the robot equivalent of vomiting. It’s foolproof.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Alexa isn't ai... it's a search engine with speech to text & text to speech

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Since when were Boston Dynamics robots sentient?

[–] [email protected] 30 points 1 year ago (1 children)

October 26, 2016. They've just kept quiet about it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It was seeing the Black Mirror of them living their best life, murderin' poor people that did it.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Those are just brainless bodies, currently. They don't have sentience and have no ability to suffer. They're nothing more than hydraulics, servos, and gyros. I'd be more concerned about mistreatment of advanced AI in disembodied form, something we're dabbling potentially close to currently.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You're the one that's gonna be in I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I disagree. I care greatly about not mistreating anything with consciousness and worry of where that line is and how we'll even be able to tell that we've crossed it.

I also recognized that a machinized body without a brain is exactly that - a cluster of unthinking matter. A true artificial intelligence wouldn't be offended by the mistreatment of inanimate gears and servos any more than I would be. The mistreatment of an intelligent entity, however, is a different story.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Food for thought, though: we thought the same thing about all other animals until only a couple of decades ago, and are still struggling over the topic.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

...Just no. Animals are complex organic beings. Of course, we don't understand them. Machines, though? We built machines from the literal Earth. Their level of complexity is incomparable to that of anything made by nature.

Now, take a sufficiently advanced neural network that's essentially a black box that no human can possibly understand entirely and put it inside of that machine? Then you're absolutely right. We'll get there soon, I'm sure. For now, however, a physical robotic body is just a machine, no different than a car.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes they are. We’re now learning many animals are just as emotionally developed as we are, with well-developed empathy and complex social lives. We don’t like to believe that because we eat most of them and that makes us feel bad, but it’s true.

Research animal psychology and sociology a bit and it will blow your mind.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I don't disagree, and I am a vegetarian in part for those reasons 😊