There's also the whole idea of whether humans are consciousness or merely behave like consciousness. There's the idea that the sentient "you" is just a narrator for the decisions that your brain makes. This is one example of that: http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080411/full/news.2008.751.ht...
Well this would be the counterargument. We behave ethically towards humans. Yet we have no conclusive evidence that other human beings are conscious. So is that a good enough reason to treat conscious-behaving computers ethically?
Thanks for the links.
The same will happen for human consciousness. Does it sound more plausible that the human mind is conscious, because of billions of brain cells with trillions of connections or because of some magical thing?
The human mind is just an incredibly sophisticated machine and as soon as we can rebuild that, we will have an equally conscious computer.
One of the central tenets of our reality as human beings is that we can't truly know what it is to be another. We make up for it with empathy, and we should extend that to any being that we have the capacity of empathizing with through their shared external emotives.
And then, because you can't decide between those two philosophical frameworks, you quickly realize that you can't possibly prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a computer is or isn't conscious. If we can't prove that it isn't conscious, are we obligated to assume that it is?
I'm not entirely sure we are. It's like asking if we can't prove that there is no God, are we obligated - ethically - to behave as if there is one? Most agnostics and atheists would say absolutely not.
Not being able to prove the negation of a fact is not the same as proving a fact.