Kireatic

I was browsing YouTube today, as I do, and looking at my recommended videos, which as per usual included some Miku Hatsune music. Those who know me will also be familiar with my fondness for the robotic singer, and her music videos. However, this video actually rather upset me, despite the song being quite pleasant to listen to.

The song details the end of Miku’s life, or existence as it were, and from what I can tell, is as she develops a fault in her program, and loses the the ability to sing, her thoughts and her memories, piece by piece. Brought a tear to my eye; but why so? She’s a robot, and not an intelligent one at that, the actual Miku is nothing more than a collection of voice samples. This was nothing more than the death of a persona, an avatar, of something which didn’t really exist in the first place. But it got me thinking.

Artificial intelligence, in my view, is an inevitability. The human brain is simply an organic computer, simply complex due to it’s inherently haphazard nature. Eventually electronics will be able to mimic the brain, and we will have digital conciousness. Putting a pause on the nature of conciousness, I’d like to focus on what a digital life would mean. Would it have the same rights as organic life? Or would that depend on the complexity of the consciousness? It probably would – we don’t all consider an ant to have the same right to life as a human, so a simple conciousness with only a small capacity to learn would probably be far easier switched off than one with a fully working personality on a human level.

So what if that Miku avatar existed like that. If she had feelings, and wants and thoughts on a level at least as complex as a human? If she developed a fault in her program, the obvious solution is to reinstall – like when you want to solve all Windows problems, you reformat, right? But that would likely mean removing her memories and personality development, and you’d be – for want of a better term – killing the entity that you started with and replacing her with a new one who just happened to have the same origin. Twins don’t turn out to have identical personalities. So how hard would that decision be? Should an AI have the same value to their life as a human? More importantly, could you do it?

When does a collection of computer algorithms start to be a person?

Come to that, when does a collection of instincts start to be human?