Robots are People Too

Posted 17 Oct 2002 at 02:27 UTC by steve

Nations Post is running an article by Joseph Brean about philosophical ideas put forward by Anne Foerst, a Lutheran Minister and Templeton award winner. Foerst is also the self-appointed "Theological Advisor" at MIT's AI Lab where she works with Rodney Brooks and other researchers. Foerst believes that "personhood is an ethical statement not an ontological one". Since any existing definition of personhood excludes some humans as well as non-human sentient beings, she proposes that the most important criteria are that a being believes itself to be a person and is treated as a person within its community. This allows humans, robots, and other intelligent beings to be considered as persons.

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yes! And they are always better than people, posted 17 Oct 2002 at 14:20 UTC by evilrobots » (Observer)

Because robots are not damned with sins and evil intents yet. Oh, God, one thing you can't let robots to become is priesthood.

Robot priests, posted 17 Oct 2002 at 16:09 UTC by steve » (Master)

Try reading Project Pope by Clifford Simak. Many of Simak's books dealt with the intersection of robotics and theology but this one in particular reads like a collaboration between C. S. Lewis and Isaac Asimov...

The age of spiritual machines, posted 17 Oct 2002 at 18:39 UTC by motters » (Master)

This reminds me of AISB magazine's long running spoof column "Father Hacker".

http://www.aisb.org.uk/publications_index.html

There was also a rather good radio play a while back called "alpha", where a vigilante priest sets out on a cruisade to shut down a blasphemous AI who claims that there is no such thing as a soul.

- Bob