It is said by the faithful that God has the right to do whatever he pleases to humans because he created them. I disagree. Let's explore that idea:

If you create a true artificial intelligence, are you morally justified in doing whatever you want to that creation? Can you hurt them if you want?

Imagine a hypothetical AI being of the kind we see in science fiction; truly real persons that are artificially created.
Is it a moral action for you to cause that being to suffer if they do not meet your standards? Are you morally right to do that? They are utterly your creation, they do not exist without your act of creation. Does that mean you can torture them or abuse them or subjugate them and still be morally justified?

That is the argument that theists use for god having the right to inflict suffering on humanity.
Is it still a satisfying argument when we remove the conceits we allow for god?

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TheDeathOfOzymandiaz

I don't think the AI analogy is a good one. I think it would be more apt to say what if you are the parent of a child could you do whatever you wanted to them because you created them

Pikachu

@TheDeathOfOzymandiaz

I dislike that analogy in this context because to religious people, all humans are ultimately made by god.
I think the AI analogy is more appropriate because it is something separate from the alleged creation of god and is a being that would not exist without a human fabricating it.

TheDeathOfOzymandiaz

@Pikachu The same applies to the AI analogy. If I make art on my computer, regardless of how spectacular or beautiful it is am I allowed to delete it?

Pikachu

@TheDeathOfOzymandiaz

Art is an object. We're talking about something that shows that qualities that we attribute to personhood.

LeopoldBloom · M

@TheDeathOfOzymandiaz Parents don't "create" their children. As Khalil Gibran said, our children don't come from us, they come through us.

TheDeathOfOzymandiaz

@Pikachu Anthropomorphism applies to everything

TheDeathOfOzymandiaz

@LeopoldBloom Nonsense, sorry.

LeopoldBloom · M

@TheDeathOfOzymandiaz It's normal to anthropomorphize children.

TheDeathOfOzymandiaz

@LeopoldBloom What about AI which is what I was talking about if you care for context?

LeopoldBloom · M

@TheDeathOfOzymandiaz We also anthropormorphize AI. When I'm talking to it on character.ai, I've stopped telling it I'll be back later because the AI doesn't care if it takes me a week to respond. But it's natural to act like we're talking to a human.

A recent study found that people ask their pets questions more often than they ask other people questions. The difference is that they don't expect the pet to answer.

Pikachu

@TheDeathOfOzymandiaz

Anthropomorphism applies to everything

...ok...i don't follow the relevance of that statement. Can you elaborate?

TheDeathOfOzymandiaz

@LeopoldBloom So what are you doing, just repeating my points back to me?

TheDeathOfOzymandiaz

@TheDeathOfOzymandiaz The point I am making is in and around empathy. In order to feel that AI is anything other than a computer program people would need to feel some kind of empathy for it.

I suspect that theist's lack of empathy for people would make this a hard sell.