A couple centuries in the future it might be possible for characters in video games to have a consciousness similar to our own. They’d assume that the reality they’re presented with is real unless they were given evidence to the contrary (e.g. The Truman Show)
These days people can get in big trouble for causing animal suffering. What about the suffering of characters in video games - they’d be able to reflect on their suffering and be aware that their suffering could be very long-lived.
On the other hand what if people want to simulate a world like our own? In our world other characters are responsible for torture though - unless the main player in the game wanted to possess a character and torture people first-hand.
What about people wanting to create the lake of fire or hell in a game? According to some Christians the lake of fire doesn’t mean its creator (God) is sadistic - it is just a sign of his glory.
Maybe some Christians would think that it is blasphemy to be God in a RPG. They might think it is ok for God to send humans to the lake of fire to suffer forever but that it is sadistic for players to do the same thing in a game.
Are there any novels or movies where people are concerned for the welfare of characters in video games (I think “Nirvana” is like that). Maybe there would be laws to eliminate certain kinds of suffering in games (such as eternal suffering). But some people might be really sadistic and there could be underground games to meet that demand which allow extreme suffering.
BTW according to Optimus Prime, “Freedom is the right of all sentient beings.”…
Not really close to what you’re looking for in the OP, but your thread title made me immediately think of the Virtual Hells in Iain M. Banks’ Culture novel Surface Detail.
Of course, once I read your OP, I kinda thought of the avatars in the Unincorporated Man novel by Dani and Eytan Kollin. They were conscious beings, but one of them had gone mad and was making their world over into his own twisted, hellish visions.
Maybe characters in the game could believe in eternal suffering but it doesn’t in fact happen… ? - except in some near death experiences where people believe they’d visited a mild version of hell.
BTW one thing people might want to play is a torturer in the Holocaust… it would probably be a banned game but it would be hard for the authorities to stop people secretly playing that game.
Human suffering and pain is an evolutionary benefit since it stops us from, you know, running headfirst into a wall or placing our gentalia in a tiger’s moth. There is no reason why digital consciousness has to have this hardwired into it.
Perhaps the concept of suffering is universal to consciousness, but that does not mean the same stimuli, or rather analogous stimuli, for a digital consciousness would induce the same state of mind. Why not program the AI to feel pleasure when they have their head blown off?
Which raises the question of whether or not a nervous system is required for consciousness. I have my doubts that a purely digital medium could create consciousness. It seems that, at some point, you need some mechanical doodads along the way.
It depends on the game. In GTA V you torture someone to tell you what they know… in it you can’t speak to them and their responses are limited. But in a version from the distant future you could talk to them for hours (not necessarily at one time) and show that they are sentient. On the other hand maybe there is a highly intelligent “script writing” program and the victim is kind of an actor… though the player would still experience pain.
The mechanical doodads could exist in a virtual physical world - e.g. their eyes - which their “brains” control - their muscles, etc.
With the exception of rights that are rationed*, any true AI should be entitled to the same rights as any person. It would be just as unethical to torture a true AI as it would be to torture a human being. The same does not apply to what Mass Effect calls VIs - which are basically fancy user interfaces for non-sentient software.
Giving an AI the right to vote is problematic because it’s probably much easier to create a thousand AIs that will vote Republican in eighteen years than it is to raise a thousand human children to do the same.
BTW it would be much less CPU intensive if games involved realistic computer-generated script-writing and acting… and that solves the problem of suffering for non-player characters.
Well, then, they might already be upset. There was a game I very much enjoyed playing where you got to be a god. I’m trying to remember the name of it, you started with a pretty bare tiled landscape, had followers, encouraged them to progress, the number of followers you had affected how much power you had, and you had some sort of opponent, either the computer or another person. You could inflict all sorts of annoyances on your followers, up to and including Armageddon.
Damn, now I’m going to be bothered all day I can’t remember the name of that game.
Yeah then there was also “Populous: The Beginning” which had spherical planets. It was made by Bullfrog and Peter Molyneux created a company called Lionhead and created another god game called “Black and White”. In it you can sacrifice people to yourself to get more magic.
You’re missing my point. My point is a digital consciousness need not have the same sensory input as a human being. It would experience what philosophers term ‘qualia’ differently, i.e. it wouldn’t necessarily ‘feel’ things the same way. Read this:
What Is It Like To Be A Bat? by Thomas Nagel
(I don’t actually agree with Nagel, but he elucidates why the problem of ‘knowing’ what it is like to be another consciousness being is nigh intractable.)
In most games the AI should act in the same way a human would act. So if they are tortured they would scream in pain. Perhaps they are actually feeling pleasure or no intense emotion but they should still act like they are in intense pain.
A strong Christian relative said that she doesn’t think simulations of hell should be banned since the AI doesn’t have a soul. She agrees that animals shouldn’t be subjected to pain - after all they apparently have a soul. She said she doesn’t want her hypothetical kids to play any video games (can’t remember the reason).
And Terry Pratchett’s Only You Can Save Mankind also touches on videogame characters and their feelings about existing for the sole purpose of being shot.
This is already a related real world issue to the OP. There is a group of … philosophers? … computer scientists? … nutcases? … who claim that humans have already created life – in the form of computer viruses. Computer viruses, they claim, have all the clearly defined traits of biological life, and that if we wipe out the last copy of a computer virus, we are exterminating a living species.
To which the sane response is “so?” If I could press a button to exterminate measles tomorrow I’d do it in an instant, and that’s not even a species we created.
I agree, and apparently the rest of the world does to, as PETCV (People for the Ethical Treament of Computer Viruses) does not exist. That is why the OP need not concern himself about future laws protecting computer generated beings.
