A thought experiment

Job

The Carl Pilkington of Freddyshouse
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Ok, you build a sentient, conscious computer and stuck it on a desk, you have a conversation and then totally power it down and start it up again.
Would it be the same 'person'?

Now if you powered it down and replaced it with an exact same model and powered that one up.
Would it be another 'person'?

Of course there's no difference between powering back up the first or replacing it with another.

I have my own theories, any thoughts?
 

Wazzerphuk

FH is my second home
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Depends on what code and information you put in them in the first place in terms of their AI. So...
 

Lamp

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I would say given that the code stays the same, then it remains the same - just a computer program, albeit an intelligent one. I'm guessing it would never be able to override it own code?

"what are you doing, Dave?"
 

Job

The Carl Pilkington of Freddyshouse
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I mean if somehow you could look inside and see a conscious mind,
give it an ID and see if that same 'soul' boots back up and another starts in a different machine.
What makes humans all have seperate internal thoughts, i presume all identity is simply memory and you would think you were talking to the same computer 'person' simply because it remembered you, if you gave it flash memory that survived the power down.
 

Zenith.UK

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So you're talking about a computer that would pass a Turing test 100% of the time?
As long as the code is saved between power cycles, then it would effectively be the same "person". If it loses "experience" when powered down, then it would be like the exact same "person" every time you restarted it.

Ofc, if you take the approach of William Gibson then an AI keeps continuous power no matter what the cost. Shutting down the mainframe that stores the AI is as good as killing it in his stories.

Then there's the Ghost in the Shell approach. The only difference between a sophisticated AI and a human's "program" is their "ghost". It is an intangible thing that differentiates natural humans from AI's. You could just as well call it "soul".

In Greg Bear's "Eon", the Geshel neomorphs create new humans by mixing chosen personality traits and adding something called "mystery". Much like the "ghost" in Ghost in the Shell.
 

dysfunction

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I mean if somehow you could look inside and see a conscious mind,
give it an ID and see if that same 'soul' boots back up and another starts in a different machine.
What makes humans all have seperate internal thoughts, i presume all identity is simply memory and you would think you were talking to the same computer 'person' simply because it remembered you, if you gave it flash memory that survived the power down.

Every single person's brain is "wired" differently...so no its not simply memory that gives identity. A person has their own identity even before they are born. They have different behaviour's even inside the womb and they learn things in different ways from the first moment they are able to.
 

old.Tohtori

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If you take a regular computer, do some stuff(like talk on MSN and record it), turn it off and back on again, it's already personal. There's something there that can only be copied to another computer, but copying it would mostly be just data in the harddrive, without any context to it.

Since it's a sentient, concious computer, very much unique and since computers can store dat powered down, no problem.

Only way to move that computer to another would be to copy all the memory to an exact replica, with every component in the same place.
 

Job

The Carl Pilkington of Freddyshouse
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Ok if they wiped all your memories from your brain,would you still be you?
Or are we the some of our memories.
When I say 'you', I mean that self awareness that is you right now, I guess if they wiped all your memories and copied someone else's over,you would become them, not someone saying 'Where did I get these memories from.

Your total self would be them..but you wouldn't recognise yourself in the mirror..how odd.
 

dysfunction

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You wouldn't be them. You would still be you but with different memories...going forwards you would not do the same things as the person you have the memories from because not everyone is "built" the same way.
 

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