"Human Rights" ? I recalled "Colonization", which was so popular and so
powerful hundrend years ago.

Peter Bi

----- Original Message -----
From: "R. Gancie/C.Parcelli" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Sunday, June 03, 2001 9:51 AM
Subject: Re: The Poetics of History Part IV


> Sorry. Human rights for automata, robots and "fifth generation"
> computers. CP
>
> R. Gancie/C.Parcelli wrote:
> >
> > Not Pound Materials per se. But the richness of the possibilities of
> > such materials for poetry. I hope you are right about the "overoptimism"
> > of the pursuit of human rights for computers. But the push has huge
> > corporate interests behind it, and corporations are already considered
> > 'individuals' in a court of law which is quite an ontological [e.g.
> > expansion of legal taxonomies] slight of hand in and of itself. CP Tim
> > Bray wrote:
> > >
> > > At 09:44 PM 02/06/01 -0400, R. Gancie/C.Parcelli wrote:
> > > >Because of the broad commercial applications in industry, the U.S.
> > > >Congress
> > > >and the courts will in the near future be taking up the question of
> > > >whether or not to grant
> > > >"human rights" to automata, or robots.
> > >
> > > This posting is technically overoptimistic.  Among other things
> > >
> > >  - Von Neumann provided one of the stepping stones that may get
> > >    us to intelligent machines, but not the biggest
> > >  - Machines are not remotely close to acting intelligent.
> > >  - The decades-long quest to make them intelligent has foundered
> > >    on the rock of our ignorance of how our own  minds work.
> > >
> > > One of these decades, these issues will become material.  Er,
> > > where does EP come in? -Tim
>