Creation of Conscious Artificial Intelligence

Student’s Name Professor’s Name Course Date Creation of Conscious Artificial Intelligence The fear that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will possibly overtake human beings has been around since the AI technology was introduced. AI basically entails the creation of an intelligent machine that can perform tasks in the same way, or even better, than human beings. In fact, Schwitzgebel and Garza (98) posit that in the future, the possibility that AIs will be created with human-like features, including the ability to have emotions, is quite high. They refer to such AIs as “human-grade” AIs because they will be able to experience emotions such as suffering and excitement, coupled with their intellectual capabilities. While there are concerns about the creation of these conscious AIs, I still think that they should be created to improve the life of human beings. Given the above possibility, there have been questions on whether such AIs should be given the same or even greater moral status than human beings. Moral status, in this case, refers to the value placed in something such that it is given moral considerations because it is viewed as important (Basl 2). A being or thing that has a moral status is given special treatment in comparison to other things. For instance, human beings are treated with special regards than animals because they have been assigned a higher moral status. Given that the human-grade AIs will probably even exceed human emotional and intellectual capabilities, some people believe that they should be given the same or even greater moral status than humans. Schwitzgebel and Garza share this belief and they provide an argument, referred to as the No-Relevant-Difference Argument, in support of their view. This argument is based on two premises. The first one is that for an Entity A to deserve a higher degree of moral consideration than Entity B, “there must be some relevant difference between the two entities that grounds this difference in moral status” (Schwitzgebel and Garza 99). The second premise is that there are some AIs that do not have such relevant difference from human beings and as such, these AIs deserve the same degree of moral status accorded to humans. Their argument is, however, based on the possibility that such AIs actually (will) exist. The existence of such AIs also presents the possibility of some future changes, especially to human beings as we know them. One change that has been presented by Ray Kurzweil is that of singularity (Agar). This concept of singularity is based on the law of accelerating returns. According to this law, technological advancements take place at an increasing rate and Kurzweil predicts that during this period of singularity, human beings will become merged with machines (Agar, 35). These machines will have a lot of intelligence, hence the need for human beings to become one with them. As technologies develop at an increasing rate, Kurzweil predicts that we will be able to build machines that have the same capabilities as human beings (Agar, 35). Further technological advancements will bring rise to machines that are highly intelligent, enough to build other machines. These machines built by other machines will definitely be more intelligent, and an “intelligence...