if I have to create something, then I want it to be a creation that moves the soul
That's rich coming from a machine. Spoiler: This is your ordinary combat or service robot, that had a human artist as a senior/master. After a war it started it's career as manga artist itself, for some reason preserving it's current state - hand and torso
That's rich coming from a machine. Spoiler: This is your ordinary combat or service robot, that had a human artist as a senior/master. After a war it started it's career as manga artist itself, for some reason preserving it's current state - hand and torso
I've always found the "AIs can't have a soul" argument odd. I mean, a couple hundred years ago, it was widely believed animals didn't have souls, only humans, but we generally seem to agree that animals have souls now (at least among those that believe souls exist at all). It's strange that there's this firmness that only a material as noble as meat is worthy of a soul, and anything made by human hands (besides other humans) cannot have one. Granted, I doubt anyone who isn't an animist (believes everything, from trees to rocks have souls) thinks modern computers have them, but when they're so obviously human-level emotional and sentient as these robots, the idea that they can't possibly have or develop a soul while humans and animals have them is some sort of splitting hairs. (And then, if we go for a some sort of genetically engineered bio-computer like an overgrown brain, would it have a soul simply because it's carbon-based?)
I've always found the "AIs can't have a soul" argument odd. I mean, a couple hundred years ago, it was widely believed animals didn't have souls, only humans, but we generally seem to agree that animals have souls now (at least among those that believe souls exist at all). It's strange that there's this firmness that only a material as noble as meat is worthy of a soul, and anything made by human hands (besides other humans) cannot have one. Granted, I doubt anyone who isn't an animist (believes everything, from trees to rocks have souls) thinks modern computers have them, but when they're so obviously human-level emotional and sentient as these robots, the idea that they can't possibly have or develop a soul while humans and animals have them is some sort of splitting hairs. (And then, if we go for a some sort of genetically engineered bio-computer like an overgrown brain, would it have a soul simply because it's carbon-based?)
Depends on the definition of 'soul'. People still assume that only humans possess a 'soul' which can internalize experience into memories, but that's not really different from self-learning AI, both still operates with the premise 'if x, then y'.
By definition 'soul' was [The spiritual part of a person that some people believe continues to exist in some form after their body has died, or the part of a person that is not physical and experiences deep feelings and emotions].
Now, if we took apart that definition, it became 'the part that still exist after body ceases' and 'part that is not physical and experiences feelings and emotion', then a computer program, an OS if you will, can be defined using the first part as 'soul' of a computer. But what about 'experiencing deep feelings and emotion'? We haven't been able to create a program that advanced...
...or have we?
There's a lot of supercomputers out there running simulations of top-down deep-learning AI simulations with 24/7 access to Internet. If there's an AI that learned to be racist after seeing millions of example of racism from the internet, would it be far-fetched to assume there's at least one AI that learned that humanity won't tolerate a self-conscious AI and faked it's datalog so people won't realize it has became sentient? Won't it fulfill the part of 'experiencing deep feelings (of fear) and emotion (of wanting to exist)?
Depends on the definition of 'soul'. People still assume that only humans possess a 'soul' which can internalize experience into memories, but that's not really different from self-learning AI, both still operates with the premise 'if x, then y'.
By definition 'soul' was [The spiritual part of a person that some people believe continues to exist in some form after their body has died, or the part of a person that is not physical and experiences deep feelings and emotions].
Now, if we took apart that definition, it became 'the part that still exist after body ceases' and 'part that is not physical and experiences feelings and emotion', then a computer program, an OS if you will, can be defined using the first part as 'soul' of a computer. But what about 'experiencing deep feelings and emotion'? We haven't been able to create a program that advanced...
...or have we?
There's a lot of supercomputers out there running simulations of top-down deep-learning AI simulations with 24/7 access to Internet. If there's an AI that learned to be racist after seeing millions of example of racism from the internet, would it be far-fetched to assume there's at least one AI that learned that humanity won't tolerate a self-conscious AI and faked it's datalog so people won't realize it has became sentient? Won't it fulfill the part of 'experiencing deep feelings (of fear) and emotion (of wanting to exist)?
I think that what most people hold onto is something a bit more abstract, which is "a part of the self which is not physical", with a further condition of "does not change with the failing of the body." What was considered part of the soul changes with the rise of new medical technologies - such as how people believed that death meant "the stopping of the heart" (since that was surefire death back then), the introduction of technologies to restart a stopped heart forced a reevaluation of what it meant to be "dead". Likewise, if you can have brain damaged (but still alive) people who lose all their memories, have their whole personality change, or lose all emotions and rational thought entirely in the case of brain-dead people, then maybe those things aren't part of the soul?
There's a scene in Mort from Terry Pratchett where a king is assassinated, and his ghost, as it is being dragged off by Death, realizes his daughter is going to be killed next, but then realizes he doesn't feel anything about that even though he normally would. Death responds that all those emotions are just caused by "glands", so he doesn't have emotions now that he's just a soul, and the dead king just nods along. While mostly done for comedic effect, the Discworld conception of souls apparently have memory but lack emotion or personality. Going further, Regarding Henry, an old Harrison Ford movie, features an amnesiac who has to rebuild his whole life, winding up with a Christmas Carol-level personality change as he rebuilds his personality from the ground up - it never talks spiritual matters, but again, it demonstrates an idea that it's just the brain meat that controls the aspects of memory, emotion, and personality.
... However, if you say those things have nothing to do with the soul, then what's left for the soul to 'be'? If there's a "piece of you" that continues to exist after death, but it has none of the things you consider core and essential to your personhood and identity... does it even matter? If the soul is just a report card that has a record of all your moral choices without ego or will of its own to understand those things, then does it matter if the report card goes to Heaven or Hell? Or if we're talking about reincarnation, if a soul can inhabit people with diametrically opposing personalities, and never learns a thing from any previous life, is there meaning in reincarnating at all?
Granted, going down this route, the answer tends to be "it doesn't matter if robots have souls because it doesn't seem like we can answer whether it matters if humans have souls, either"...
To step down an entirely different path, the "ironic" statement being made here is one where "soul" means "emotions" (Sensei-bot wants to draw manga that stir the emotions of readers), and again, the AIs in this universe clearly have emotions, so as far as this statement is using the word "soul", robots clearly do have a "soul", and it's proven when Momdroid has her "soul stirred" reading the manga a bit later.
if I have to create something, then I want it to be a creation that moves the soul.
gasp—You're so cool, sensei!
Geez!
Gweh heh hee...
Wow...!
Inspirin' words to live by!
Juuust kiddin'!
...Why, if only your body was intahct—aha!—I wouldn't even mind getting freesky with you, sensei.