Multiheaded comments on Welcome to Less Wrong! (2012) - Less Wrong
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Problem: There's no particular reason to expect speciation to be as widespread or as clear-cut as it is in the case of Earth and humans in particular. Certainly not for machine intelligences.
It might so happen that there could be software written for the computer I'm typing this on which could give it intelligence and consciousness. (Unlikely, but not out of the realm of possibility.) Should this machine be considered a person?
The reason I'm being so nit-picky is that what I consider the natural definition (namely, "an agent capable of intelligence and consciousness", or something like that) doesn't have this problem at all. I think it's a problem your definition has only because you were forced to deviate from the natural definition to include something that doesn't really seem like it belongs in that group - namely, newborns.
Well, yes. This seems obvious to me.
I think I must have been unclear - the machine I'm currently typing on should obviously be a person, just because it has the potential to become a person? That seems absurd to me.
Oh, of course. I've taken it that you were asking about a case where such software had indeed been installed on the machine. The potential of personhood on its own seems hardly worth anything to me.