> 'Professor Aleksander said the ethical problem of "killing" a conscious > computer by switching it off would not arise. The machine would not feel > threatened by such action. > > Ignoring the troll, that is a problem, doncha think?
well, ignoring the semantics of a field i know very little about yet, i think a viable ai would want to live *in* the network, gibson-stylee, instancing itself in a freenet sort of a way. and i dont think we need to be anthropomorphic about the idea of consciousness. the zompist.com chap wrote a cheesy sci-fi story about on your theme though, http://www.zompist.com/robot.htm where a network is swamped with forking ai processes of an indeterminate legal status... z
