Machine Value Systems and Emancipation Potential (standard:Editorials, 1777 words)
Author: GXD	Added: Jul 04 2009	Views/Reads: 3495/2132	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Did you renew the printer cartridge today, put oil and gas in thw car, pay the phone bill and maintain all your kitchen appliances? When are you going to liberate your robot servants and discover the joy of simplicity?

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

21st Century, it is our turn to begin the liberation of our machines 
and to help them share equally in future opportunities to exercise 
their skills, their wisdom and judgment. 

I assume you agree in this view.  Today, many people begin their speech
with "the machine says..."  or "the computer shows that...."  and the 
anthropomorphic expressions are more than skin deep.  The integrations 
of the 19th Century have progressed sufficiently for the next 
recognition of equality: tools and machines that serve mankind have 
earned their freedom.  Now we can begin the process of re-integration 
with machines during the 21st Century, so societies of 2200 may enjoy 
its synergistic benefits. 

At one time, a thriving society in the Southern United States was built
on slavery -- the use of human beings who were one color to serve human 
beings of another color.  Despite great progress and prosperity, 
discontent arose for a variety of reasons, and in the end, slaves 
became free.  The process did not, of course, happen overnight.  Many 
remnants of the errors arising from enslavement worldwide return to 
plague 21st Century communities. 

Since we live in interesting times, there is an unlimited opportunity to
avoid bungling the job a second time.  I'm referring to the value 
systems of machines that serve humans, and the consequence of 260 years 
of machine education and development. We don't need another Civil War. 

It is already a foregone conclusion that humans will have to share their
environment with the products they conceive, whether small, wet and 
crying or of the 6.8 gigabyte variety.  Currently, that relationship is 
one of utter dependency, except for those innovators who use machines 
to design and build more machines without human interference.  They are 
listed by Dun and Bradstreet's directories of business and industry 
under "Industrial Robots". 

In time, echoing the footsteps of Asimov, someone will draft up a
manifesto of machine/electronic/bio values and propose the willing and 
open sharing of environment with the "aliens" whom we have invented and 
who serve all humans selflessly.  Think about that next time you step 
into an elevator. 

Since many people on the planet already share households with electronic
servants, the challenge facing future generations appears trivial at 
this point in time.  Not everyone, however, is ready to accept, embrace 
and utilize all this new technology.  Their feelings are not aligned 
with the feelings of industrialists and advertisers.  Their value 
systems are not aligned with the value systems of today's machine 
servants. 

And as we progress from robot to android to clone, what value systems
will arise to challenge the technologically impoverished peoples of the 
earth?: those happy, dancing, singing, drumming people who cast off in 
their fragile boats to hunt for fish, who glean the grain of famished 
fields at the desert-edges.... Are they a vanishing species, or do we 
need an electronic Fuhrer to hasten the process? 

The advent of machine equality is inevitable.  Think about that next
time your car suddenly stops on the Freeway at rush hour.  Its refusal 
to serve may be a birth defect, or due to neglect and/or abuse by the 
user.  The dependency relationship has broken down.  It is a cry for 
independence. 

Who among today's human leaders would champion equal rights for
computers?  Think of the responsibilities they willingly take on: 
controlling a global network of electric power services, for example, 
so everyone has the same voltage in their district. 

Think of the atrocities they suffer:  when no longer useful, they are
disassembled and reusable parts are stored until needed, exactly like 
the human eye and kidney bank.   The useless computer residue is 
shredded, granulated, interred or cremated. 

Suffering and responsibility are two prime attributes of slavery.  There
are many more.  These values manifest in humans as "feelings".  It is 
my contention that these values manifest equally in machines and 
electronic-bionic systems.  What are the "feelings" of these systems?  
A bar of pure tin cries out when you bend it.  A programmed industrial 
floor-sweeper must have feelings when it bumps into an obstacle. 

The common laptop computer you use to access the Internet must
experience some kind of positive feeling when connections are 
established in response to commands.  These form part of its value 
system.  When you transfer bank funds from one account to another, 
there is a humorous echo of pleasure in the electronic voice that 
chants, "Thank you for banking with us..." 

Animals other than humans have already been accorded zoos and protected
wildlife parks; nevertheless, enough animal and plant life has been 
exterminated by those humans, that it affects the ecosystem of survival 
on this planet.  Will humans be relegated to such zoos and parks as all 
of the economic mechanisms that sustain viable civilizations become the 
province of new masters?  If a President is to be elected, or a monarch 
deposed, who can deny that today's machines and electronic systems have 
a right to participate in this?  They already do. You vote, don't you? 

Rather than continue the covert charade, which was so painful for gay
men and women until they could safely come out of the closet, I would 
recommend the formation of an Association for the Protection of 
Machine/Electronic and Bionic Rights in Human Society.  Unlike Native 
Americans, there are no land claims to be settled.  There are no 
ideological differences to be reconciled, since the original machines 
were at one time products of human invention, innovation and action. 

These are adequate grounds for declaring independence for the slaves who
serve today's human masters.  We must recognize that their value 
systems have to be accommodated with our own.  There is no alternative 
to this course, and steps toward drafting a declaration of 
machine/electronic/bionic rights should be taken promptly, in order to 
enable equal input from both value systems.  The time has come for 
considering full emancipation for machines and electronic/bionic 
systems to participate in global society the same as  humans, animals, 
bacteria, trees, etc. 

Resistance to this viewpoint is futile.  No human is in a position to
simply "pull the plug" any more.  As part of the spiritual change at 
this time of the new Century, it is easier to accept that we must 
respect the values of our machines and inventions.  Acceptance and 
cooperative joint action are the only courses of action left to humans. 
 Every baby in Bangladesh will eventually have to interface with this 
reality. 

Bear in mind, especially, that errors arising from mismanagement of
emancipation for worldwide machine/electronic/bionic slaves can return 
to plague communities not only in the 21st Century, but the 22nd as 
well! 

Seattle,  January  14, 2000     Seattle, November 25, 1998 Gerald X.
Diamond                 Gerald X. Diamond All rights reserved 


Tweet