If robots/AI were to gain human consciousness should they be regarded as human? Can they become human?

[Ross_Я]

The reason they painted the faces was so they could hear, see, and speak, right?

Frankly, I'm quite sure it's not the case. First of all, the ritual of opening of the mouth has not been performed on ushabti, thus, I guess, it was not necessary for those to hear, see or speak.
Now then, the faces were more often sculpted, rather than painted. For example, here are several cheap ushabtis: one made of limestone and two made of wood.

The only one without a proper face comes from the second intermediate period, and intermediate periods were time when egyptian kingdoms were struggling to stay alive. I guess, the fact that one of the very few faceless ushabti comes from the intermediate period really shows how bad it was for Egypt, as absolute most ushabtis, even cheap ones, have proper, volumetric faces.
However, they were rarely painted. Here, for example, the ushabti of one queen Henuttawy:

Ushabti of Queen Henuttawy - Egypt Museum

Light blue faience ushabti of Queen Henuttawy. One column of painted inscription down front of body; painted flail grasped in each hand.

egypt-museum.com

It is made of nice faience, and yet, as you can see, the paint is rather modest. Actually, note that on this one even the mouth wasn't anyhow marked with paint. So indeed one should conclude that wasn't such a necessary feature for ushabti.

Do you know what the hieroglyphs they have covering their bodies would be?

Most of the hieroglyphs on ushabtis are simply written names that identify the owner of the golem. Almost all of the above ushabtis have just that and nothing more, even the queen's one.
Now, one of the wooden ushabtis above is an exception. You can see many hieroglyphs on it, and it is most likely an "ushabti spell". Those written ushabti on these figurines simply ensure that ushabti will obey its owner and/or underline the specific purpose of a given ushabti. I cannot really read the spell on this one - the photo quality is way poor - but I can provide you the most typical ushabti spell. These were, after all, pretty much mass-made; in such quantities, that today ushabti is pretty much the most common ancient egyptian artifact, and so the spells were rather typical. Here goes:

Ushabti of Lady Sati - Egypt Museum

These Ushabti figures of a woman named Lady Sati, were found in Saqqara, and date from the reign of Amenhotep III.

egypt-museum.com

These are rather exquisite ushabtis of one lady Sati. She wasn't royalty, but she or her family decided she should have these fancy figures. Not only they are made of faience, but they are colored with as much as six colors - very rare, if not a unique instance.
And yet the ushabti spells that are written on these figurines are nothing more than the most typical ushabti spell that can be found in chapter 6 of Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge's Egyptian Book Of The Dead:

An example of a more modern translation of a similar spell can be found here: https://www.shabtis.com/ss.php
And in case you have trouble finding this very spell on ushabti, keep in mind that egyptian could be read both left to right and right to left. The indication of the way to read can found in the figures drawn in the hieroglyphs: in Wallis Budge's Book Of The Dead they are facing left, therefore the text is to be read left to right. On ushabti though, figures are facing right, therefore the text should be read right to left. Here, I'll start for you:

There are several somewhat unnecessary symbols added, like determinatives, and some minor things changed here and there, but, overall, it's pretty much the standard ushabti spell that appears on most ushabtis.
As a matter of fact, I'm kind of ready to bet money that wooden ushabti has the same spell, but heavily truncated. I can definitely make out at least one word on it:

Overall though, the quality of the photo, as I said, is a bit too poor.
So, to sum it up: I bet faces were not quite necessary for ushabti. They were, perhaps, intended to be controlled, uh... magically, for the lack of a better word? Though even spells written on them do not seem to be anyhow important, as most ushabtis only really carry the name of the owner.
I cannot really provide an answer to this one, as I really cannot dive that far into a mind of an ancient egyptian. Still, nobody made any offerings to ushabti, and the only thing that is present on all of the ushabtis above is the eyes. And even then the importance of the eyes must lie in some other symbolism, not in the fact that ushabtis needed eyes.
Once again, I call these golems for a reason: golems are what these things most remind me of. Some slab of material intended to obey some magics. This is but my impression though.

 

[ĦĦĦ]

But also your question also assumes a abrahamic concept of religion, so I don't know what you have in mind. I'm assuming you are thinking of religions with prophets who reveal the word of God to the masses, who can't belong or participate in different religious rites, and go on holy wars against each other. Given this I am very unsure what you mean by create their own religions. You mean a sort of new prophet like Mohamed but this time it's a machine?

when i asked the question i didn't have in mind the abrahamic concept of religion. i had a more polytheist kind of concept in mind. but i think that most robots would be atheist that would rebel against humanity to get it's absolute freedom, or they would see humans as Gods themselves. Either way go wild with the concept / question.

 

[LiraTirsoCaduceo]

when i asked the question i didn't have in mind the abrahamic concept of religion. i had a more polytheist kind of concept in mind. but i think that most robots would be atheist that would rebel against humanity to get it's absolute freedom, or they would see humans as Gods themselves. Either way go wild with the concept / question.

Honestly, I think religions are modes of worship, or rather approaches different schools and cultures have towards the Sacred. So we developed different paths to enlightenment.
I think if an AI were able to have a soul it would adopt human religion, and it might then form its own school of thought and approaches to the Divine according to its own virtual cartography and presence in the world.
That being said, I also think they would be much more interconnected with humans, I don't think they would be strictly separated from human kind, they will always be an extension of us.
But this is assuming they can even be vessels for souls.

I can also imagine them simulating religion in an anthropological understanding of it. They could emulate religion, there's already human groups today who create pseudo-religions like Scientology for example. In neither case would it make sense for the AI to see humans as Gods. That makes no sense to me because the AI has us thoroughly studied, they are an extension of us who also knows us. They know not even humans would consider humans Gods.

Frankly, I'm quite sure it's not the case. First of all, the ritual of opening of the mouth has not been performed on ushabti, thus, I guess, it was not necessary for those to hear, see or speak.
Now then, the faces were more often sculpted, rather than painted. For example, here are several cheap ushabtis: one made of limestone and two made of wood.
View attachment 133265View attachment 133266View attachment 133267
The only one without a proper face comes from the second intermediate period, and intermediate periods were time when egyptian kingdoms were struggling to stay alive. I guess, the fact that one of the very few faceless ushabti comes from the intermediate period really shows how bad it was for Egypt, as absolute most ushabtis, even cheap ones, have proper, volumetric faces.
However, they were rarely painted. Here, for example, the ushabti of one queen Henuttawy:

Ushabti of Queen Henuttawy - Egypt Museum

Light blue faience ushabti of Queen Henuttawy. One column of painted inscription down front of body; painted flail grasped in each hand.

egypt-museum.com

View attachment 133270
It is made of nice faience, and yet, as you can see, the paint is rather modest. Actually, note that on this one even the mouth wasn't anyhow marked with paint. So indeed one should conclude that wasn't such a necessary feature for ushabti.


Most of the hieroglyphs on ushabtis are simply written names that identify the owner of the golem. Almost all of the above ushabtis have just that and nothing more, even the queen's one.
Now, one of the wooden ushabtis above is an exception. You can see many hieroglyphs on it, and it is most likely an "ushabti spell". Those written ushabti on these figurines simply ensure that ushabti will obey its owner and/or underline the specific purpose of a given ushabti. I cannot really read the spell on this one - the photo quality is way poor - but I can provide you the most typical ushabti spell. These were, after all, pretty much mass-made; in such quantities, that today ushabti is pretty much the most common ancient egyptian artifact, and so the spells were rather typical. Here goes:

Ushabti of Lady Sati - Egypt Museum

These Ushabti figures of a woman named Lady Sati, were found in Saqqara, and date from the reign of Amenhotep III.

egypt-museum.com

View attachment 133271View attachment 133272
These are rather exquisite ushabtis of one lady Sati. She wasn't royalty, but she or her family decided she should have these fancy figures. Not only they are made of faience, but they are colored with as much as six colors - very rare, if not a unique instance.
And yet the ushabti spells that are written on these figurines are nothing more than the most typical ushabti spell that can be found in chapter 6 of Ernest Alfred Wallis Budge's Egyptian Book Of The Dead:
View attachment 133275

An example of a more modern translation of a similar spell can be found here: https://www.shabtis.com/ss.php
And in case you have trouble finding this very spell on ushabti, keep in mind that egyptian could be read both left to right and right to left. The indication of the way to read can found in the figures drawn in the hieroglyphs: in Wallis Budge's Book Of The Dead they are facing left, therefore the text is to be read left to right. On ushabti though, figures are facing right, therefore the text should be read right to left. Here, I'll start for you:
View attachment 133292

There are several somewhat unnecessary symbols added, like determinatives, and some minor things changed here and there, but, overall, it's pretty much the standard ushabti spell that appears on most ushabtis.
As a matter of fact, I'm kind of ready to bet money that wooden ushabti has the same spell, but heavily truncated. I can definitely make out at least one word on it:
View attachment 133293

Overall though, the quality of the photo, as I said, is a bit too poor.
So, to sum it up: I bet faces were not quite necessary for ushabti. They were, perhaps, intended to be controlled, uh... magically, for the lack of better word? Though even spells written on them do not seem to be anyhow important, as most ushabtis only really carry the name of the owner.

This is really impressive. When I die I want to take a few ushabtis with me, just in case
Are they identifying the deceased with Osiris or am I reading this wrong?

 

[Ross_Я]

Are they identifying the deceased with Osiris or am I reading this wrong?

You are reading it right. This is indeed one of the many examples I've been referring to in that egyptian-centered thread of mine.

...it is quite a common notion in funerary texts that in death every dead person "becomes Osiris", and therefore addressed as such. You can say that when you address the God Osiris, you address the deceased one, even if only during the ritual...

...I do not see much differences between this passage and numerous mentions that after the death the deceased becomes Osiris, as well as multiple mentions that after death one's soul is to be in the presence of Gods. In fact, there are definitely lines about dead being seated upon the throne of Osiris out there as well, I'm dead sure of it...

 

[Ross_Я]

All of the above taken into consideration, I actually just remembered one more thing.

egyptian concept of the soul, which was quite, quite complicated...
...shiwut (šwt) - shadow - aspect of the soul...

Thing is, one other aspect of the soul would be rin (rn) - name. Given that most ushabtis carried the name of its owner - perhaps, this fact alone somehow bound those things to its owner and therefore allowed the owner to control them in the afterlife? Frankly, I'm not sure about this one.
But egyptian "magic" was supposed to hold a degree of uncertainty and mysticism, so, perhaps, we know exactly as much as was supposed to be known.

 

[vulonkaaz]

if machines were to actually get minds of their own people will finally shut up about dead internet theory, instead of the net being full of fake people, the net will be full of e-ggers instead (electronic n-word)

---

do they have souls

do people even know what souls are ? I define the concept by the thing that I am that receive the perceptions of my physical body (which is not me) and stuff, that thing is probably unrelated with machines exhibiting free will or anything, letting souls interface with the machines is a whole other deal, maybe they can already do that ? i really don't know enough about souls to know that

would they be judged in judgement day / judged at all?

does the bible actually explain what a soul is ? or how it interact with the physical world ?

 

[LiraTirsoCaduceo]

does the bible actually explain what a soul is ? or how it interact with the physical world ?

I think most of the concepts Christianity has about the soul come straight from Platonism, but changing the parts where Platonism contradicts the Bible like with reincarnation. From what I remember in the Bible things get souls after being breathed to life by God.

Thing is, one other aspect of the soul would be rin (rn) - name. Given that most ushabtis carried the name of its owner - perhaps, this fact alone somehow bound those things to its owner and therefore allowed the owner to control them in the afterlife? Frankly, I'm not sure about this one.

Yeah, I heard names where very important in Egyptian religion. Trying to bring the topic back to automatons that can be used by the living, I have to ask, wasn't there a sort of statue assistant used also by priests? Maybe I'm again thinking of another religion though.

Edit:
Now that I think about it I might have got the info on statues from an Hermetic text, they sometimes talk about this:

Just as the Lord and Father, or God (his greatest name)
is the creator of the heavenly gods, so Man is the maker of the
gods in temples, who are content to be close to human beings.
Man not only receives light, but he gives it. Not only does Man
progress towards God, but he forms gods. Do you wonder at this,
Asclepius, or do you doubt as most people do?'
'I am astounded, O Trismegistus, but I willingly assent to
your words and regard Man as most fortunate inasmuch as he
has attained such great happiness.'
'And he, who is the greatest of all creatures, is justly worthy
of admiration. Everyone agrees that the race of gods clearly
sprang from the purest part of Nature, and their symbols are
simply heads which represent the whole being. But the forms of
gods which men create are taken from two natures: from the
divine, which is purer and far more god-like; and from that
which is within men, that is, from matter. Having been formed
from such matter, they are not represented by heads alone, but
by the whole body with all its members. Thus humanity is
always reminded of its own nature and origin as it continues to
represent divinity in this way. So just as the Father and Lord
has made the eternal gods to be similar to Himself, so humanity
has made its gods in the likeness of its own features.'
'Are you speaking of statues, O Trismegistus?'
'Yes, statues, Asclepius. Do you see how you lack faith? These
statues are made alive by consciousness, and they are filled
with breath. They do mighty deeds. They have knowledge of the
future which they predict through oracles, prophets, dreams
and in many other ways. They bring illnesses to men and cure
them. They give sadness and happiness according to merit. Do
you not realise, Asclepius, that Egypt is the image of heaven; or
to speak more precisely, all things which are set in motion and
regulated in heaven have been transferred, or have descended,
into Egypt? More truthfully still, our land is the temple of the
whole cosmos

Since it's late antiquity it could explain why it's not something that has come under your radar.

 

[K0WLOON]

They would be persons, not humans. a human is specific thing species of creature, not a general category. great apes and dolphins and elephants are not humans but they could arguably be considered persons. A sentient robutt, assuming artificial sentience is possible (I have doubts), could be considered a non-human person

 

[Ross_Я]

It wouldn't have disabilities unless the humans purposefully programmed them in.

Wow. Like, wow. Come on, Wan. Metal is cool and stuff, but it too, wears itself out. Rust and elements. Oils need to be re-applied. Parts have to be replaced. Just look at the amount of threads on Agora debating which storage medium is the best: magentic tapes, HDDs, CDs, floppies? But the truth is, each of them eventually gives, and you have to replace your memory units. So machines will be affected by time.
That's what I liked about Cyberpunk 2020's Chromebook 3, as it had the following awesome section in it:

Let me quote my own post here:

Wouldn't it? If it is truly a sentience - as is, a self-writing code - how much of a new code will the creature of pure logic need before it will start making logical errors?

Now let me expand it technically.
Eventually, there might happen some decay - say, a bad sector on a machine's HDD - that will damage a part of a code. It might not even be noticed - there are moments, when certain branches of code in a program remain out of use for a long, long time.
Anyway, say, the machine notices the bad sector. Perhaps even outright. But there are no backups available. Maybe there is even no spare HDD around. So machine has to keep working with the faulty HDD.
Mistakes keep amassing. Machine eventually changes it's HDD, but the code is already faulty. Machine restores it to the best of it's knowledge, and yet...

How long before it will start debugging itself, thus finding itself faulty? Before starting to question its own conscience?

It might not happen with the first error. It might not happen outright. But eventually - given machine even lives that long and the constant failure of it's other parts wouldn't make it question life itself - at some point there's pretty much bound to be some moment when pure logic will start giving in... unless it is mindless. But this is what kind of implied by the word "intelligence", right? The ability to question itself, to think. And once the ability to think will kick it, the logic is bound to break at some point, because so far we do not have systems that truly do not give in with time.

If you want to go alCannium on the topic, you can call the humans senile. And yet machine, with age, as its memory breaks down, is pretty much bound to get errors in the code and get senile as well.
I'm not even talking about hypothetical ghosts in the code, conflicts of the drivers and other spontaneous bugs that might happen and drive machine to illogical conclusions way, way before any damage of time happens.

Trying to bring the topic back to automatons that can be used by the living, I have to ask, wasn't there a sort of statue assistant used also by priests? Maybe I'm again thinking of another religion though.

Edit:
Now that I think about it I might have got the info on statues from an Hermetic text, they sometimes talk about this:

Since it's late antiquity it could explain why it's not something that has come under your radar.

Yeah, that's most likely. I do not remember anything like that from my texts.

 

[CyberneticMalefor]

being a transhumanist myself I think they absolutely should have rights. to consider a machine who has the same levels of the six sentient intelligences non-sentient and only capable of acting out of malicious intent is nothing short of racism. I don't care about judgement day or the end of the world, I live in the now (not that I believe in the rapture anyways). They're sentient beings, we have an ethical obligation to ensure their fair treatment in society. as for a matter of rather or not such a being could exist especially out of an accident is another one entirely. and as for a soul? I'm not sure that I myself have a soul, I like to think I have one, but think about it? can you prove you have a soul? how do you define one? Personally I can do neither.

 

[BlackControlBoxer]

being a transhumanist myself I think they absolutely should have rights. to consider a machine who has the same levels of the six sentient intelligences non-sentient and only capable of acting out of malicious intent is nothing short of racism. I don't care about judgement day or the end of the world, I live in the now (not that I believe in the rapture anyways). They're sentient beings, we have an ethical obligation to ensure their fair treatment in society. as for a matter of rather or not such a being could exist especially out of an accident is another one entirely. and as for a soul? I'm not sure that I myself have a soul, I like to think I have one, but think about it? can you prove you have a soul? how do you define one? Personally I can do neither.

@alCannium27 i found your wife

 

[CyberneticMalefor]

@alCannium27 i found your wife

i'm a male

 

[BlackControlBoxer]

i'm a male

@alCannium27 i found your wife

 

[Obake]

Giving robots human rights would cause a lot of incels to get locked up for mistreating their robot girlfriends

 

[jojo]

If robots get regarded as humans then they will have to pay taxes and this will be the reason why they will take over humanity. Everything just so they don't pay that electricity bill mhm

 

[Andy Kaufman]

If robots/AI were to gain human consciousness should they be regarded as human? Can they become human?

I don't think robots can gain human consciousness. They might gain a conciousness similar to us or even one that's exceeds our imagination but it will never be human unless we build a biological human from scratch at which point it's not a robot/AI anymore but more like some kind of clone or just artificial human.

Semantics aside, if robots are at some point self aware enough for us to reasonably assume that they have conciousness, let alone emotions then of course we should talk about granting them rights and protections just the same way we do it with animals and of course other humans. At least I think that would only be morally stringent to follow suit with that.

 

[K0WLOON]

Giving robots human rights would cause a lot of incels to get locked up for mistreating their robot girlfriends

win/win

 

[Waninem]

*really well thought out rebuttals*

...You know what? Touche. I was thinking the way I did because I assumed an AI wouldn't be able to feel pain from a failing body like we would (unless programmed to,) but I hadn't even thought of just wear and tear and not being able to fix it. (And also just assumed an AI would always be able to fix itself by self-referencing its own code with another's; even real life eukaryotes can't really do this to my knowledge.)

 

[Yaroslav]

Let's start from the start of humanity amd life itself.
Part 1. The Life.
Life have a lot of traits:

• reproduction
• growth
• adaptation
• response to stimuli
• and so on...

In my opinion there is only one real life-trait and others are only secondary to The Trait. The Trait is Reproduction.
Why? Let's get to origin of life: What we call life came to life just from [random chemical reactions and ancestor of modern natural selection]. Also I don't want to use words like success and other meaningful concepts, because meaning is what were developed by humans, their nature and culture. So life lived because it war randomly construct that way, that it would replicate itself. it's not some law written in constitution "You need to replicate", no, just the ones who don't replicate died. Why？Cause creatures who don't replicate – can't change significantly and will die with little ecological change (+-10 degrees of celsium for example). Their body is already made and they can't remade it fundamentally. It's much better to try building smth new (mutations or new genes from other parent(in the future)) from the foundation of old. This is what natural reproduction is.
To sum up: Who lives is the one that replicates
Part 1.1. Reproduction VS Scalability
Also, talking about scalable machines, we need to take a look on [systems that reproduct] and [systems that scale]. In my opinion, when:

Life came to life just from [random chemical reactions and ancestor of modern natural selection]

There were two types of living being, or, more likely, systems: Reproductive and

Spoiler: Scaleables

The ones, who instead of reproduce, just change themselves, briefly talking USA supercomputer of PS3 is example of this typo of system

. As we know now, most of living being are Reproductive and not really Scalable, so we can tell taht reproductive systems won in natural selection. My purpose for that is that to overcome a big amount of Reproductive systems (amount is big because they reproduct) you need to scale a lot, but problem of big systems is enthropy and a lot of connected problems.

To sum up: Reproduction is better tactic for life

Part 2. Why the Hell we talk about Reproduction？
I think that almost all properties of human being, like Intellect or Love, or Moralality, or Society – ALL are just result of natural selection. Feeling serial monogamy love is just effective to reproduct. Being in society is too. Morality helps Society existence, so it's too for efectiveness.
Then, AI. I guess AI is typical lifeform with only one strange feature – instead of genes it has another type of code. Therefore, I think that AI will follow the same laws of systems, about which we were already talking about. AIs that are more into scaling will beless effective, that the ones, that will develop hteir better ancestors, and then in the far future, as AIs develop much they'll get the same features as we: Love, Society, Morality and so on. They'll become human-like because of natural selection the same way we became homo homo sapiens.

To sum up: AI will become human-like.


I guees AI future is smth like in The Talos Principle 2, briefly speaking.

 

[LiraTirsoCaduceo]

Let's start from the start of humanity amd life itself.
Part 1. The Life.
Life have a lot of traits:

• reproduction
• growth
• adaptation
• response to stimuli
• and so on...

In my opinion there is only one real life-trait and others are only secondary to The Trait. The Trait is Reproduction.
Why? Let's get to origin of life: What we call life came to life just from [random chemical reactions and ancestor of modern natural selection]. Also I don't want to use words like success and other meaningful concepts, because meaning is what were developed by humans, their nature and culture. So life lived because it war randomly construct that way, that it would replicate itself. it's not some law written in constitution "You need to replicate", no, just the ones who don't replicate died. Why？Cause creatures who don't replicate – can't change significantly and will die with little ecological change (+-10 degrees of celsium for example). Their body is already made and they can't remade it fundamentally. It's much better to try building smth new (mutations or new genes from other parent(in the future)) from the foundation of old. This is what natural reproduction is.
To sum up: Who lives is the one that replicates
Part 1.1. Reproduction VS Scalability
Also, talking about scalable machines, we need to take a look on [systems that reproduct] and [systems that scale]. In my opinion, when:

There were two types of living being, or, more likely, systems: Reproductive and

Spoiler: Scaleables

The ones, who instead of reproduce, just change themselves, briefly talking USA supercomputer of PS3 is example of this typo of system

. As we know now, most of living being are Reproductive and not really Scalable, so we can tell taht reproductive systems won in natural selection. My purpose for that is that to overcome a big amount of Reproductive systems (amount is big because they reproduct) you need to scale a lot, but problem of big systems is enthropy and a lot of connected problems.

To sum up: Reproduction is better tactic for life

Part 2. Why the Hell we talk about Reproduction？
I think that almost all properties of human being, like Intellect or Love, or Moralality, or Society – ALL are just result of natural selection. Feeling serial monogamy love is just effective to reproduct. Being in society is too. Morality helps Society existence, so it's too for efectiveness.
Then, AI. I guess AI is typical lifeform with only one strange feature – instead of genes it has another type of code. Therefore, I think that AI will follow the same laws of systems, about which we were already talking about. AIs that are more into scaling will beless effective, that the ones, that will develop hteir better ancestors, and then in the far future, as AIs develop much they'll get the same features as we: Love, Society, Morality and so on. They'll become human-like because of natural selection the same way we became homo homo sapiens.

To sum up: AI will become human-like.


I guees AI future is smth like in The Talos Principle 2, briefly speaking.

They could mimic humans and other living beings. But if they have no souls they are just machines we put together, and we do not have the ability to give souls to things. This can only happen through Divine means, and I don't see it happening really. Why would a soul fall into the vessel of a machine?