Videogame Turing Test of Future AI

[J T]

If artificial intelligence ever gets to be so good in videogames that non playable characters in a game are indistinguishable from humans other than their existence on a screen, will it then become unethical to kill or hurt them?

[AppleQueso]

I find it unlikely that video game AI will ever need to be on that sort of level.

[MrPopo]

If artificial intelligence ever gets to be so good in videogames that non playable characters in a game are indistinguishable from humans other than their existence on a screen, will it then become unethical to kill or hurt them?

Your question implies that the artificial intelligence would cease to exist if you killed its NPCs. I suspect that highly advanced AI would control its units and NPCs in the same way we control our units and PCs. Everything would be like playing a multiplayer match against real people.

[J T]

Well, imagine an AI that can understand written language and respond to anything you type. It also stores its experiences to memory in a way similar to humans, and those stored memories shape its personality. If you kill the AI, that memory is deleted. It is so advanced and realistic that it behaves entirely like a human behind a computer screen. Would it be unethical to kill such a game character?

[isiolia]

Well, imagine an AI that can understand written language and respond to anything you type. It also stores its experiences to memory in a way similar to humans, and those stored memories shape its personality. If you kill the AI, that memory is deleted. It is so advanced and realistic that it behaves entirely like a human behind a computer screen. Would it be unethical to kill such a game character?

Still no, since it's not capable of feeling. You'd be wiping established associations in a database. I don't feel bad about wiping the history/cookies from my web browser, despite that its "personality" in form of ad banners, automatically suggested sites, and so on might be based on it.

You'd also have the issue of why the game was designed to do that in the first place. Even moreso if the designers actually found a way to make a computer program feel pain so it could be "hurt". They'd really need to go out of their way to do that.

Besides the fact that game data gets eradicated in many other ways as it is. If "killing" a character in a game is a moral issue, then uninstalling the game would be too. Or deleting a save game. A HDD failure would be a disaster.

[Erik_Twice]

The reason I can tell when I play a bot and when I play against a human is that one makes penis jokes and the other knows how to aim.

[J T]

Besides the fact that game data gets eradicated in many other ways as it is. If "killing" a character in a game is a moral issue, then uninstalling the game would be too. Or deleting a save game. A HDD failure would be a disaster.

LOL! Good point.

I've always found the Turing Test to be fascinating. There is no way to tell that even a human actually experiences pain, except that they tell you they do. If a machine is advanced enough to behave as though it experiences pain, perhaps it actually has gained that ability. We don't really know what that aspect of our human selves is that allows us to feel, and we don't know if there is another way to generate it mechanically in a robot or piece of software, perhaps even by accident.

[DinnerX]

I can program a computer to tell you it hurts. Characters in games even act hurt quite frequently these days.

[Menegrothx]

The reason I can tell when I play a bot and when I play against a human is that one makes penis jokes and the other knows how to aim.

I wouldnt say that CS bots know how to aim. You'll see them crouching down, spraying a wall or something for 5 consecutive seconds most of the time, but some times they pretty much get aim shot kills. So they suck, but the programmers give made them do a few "unfair" kills every now and then so they wouldnt suck so much/would seem more realistic (because they dont have 0 kills) or something

[J T]

I can program a computer to tell you it hurts. Characters in games even act hurt quite frequently these days.

That somehow seems different though, right? Like it doesn't respond intelligently to input. It just knows if x happens, behave like y. But what if it was a more advanced AI that took in multiple streams of information (auditory, visual, tactile) and then integrated that information in a way that was adaptive over time in the way that pain is, so that it learned from its mistakes. Like if it had a sense of what its physical breaking point was, and could use information from its senses to adapt to pressure, temperature, and other forms of damage that approached that breaking point. Over time it would learn to be cautious as it moved around its virtual world. Is that sort of programming stil different enough from ours that it would not be considered aware of its pain? When does something become aware? And how do we distinguish what is aware from what is not? Can will kill replicants Bladerunner style, or do they eventually, for all intents and purposes, deserve to be treated with the same level of dignity as a more traditional biological organism?