# Would it be immoral to turn off an intelligent, conscious virtual being? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 23, 2002, 3:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-turn-off-an-intelligent-conscious-virtual-being/144481 "2002-12-23T03:54:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2002, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-turn-off-an-intelligent-conscious-virtual-being/144481/21 "2002-12-23T16:37:14Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by TWDuke \* > \*\*Definitely, but technological development outstripped moral development the the day Og bonked Oog with a rock, if not earlier. \*\* > > I don’t know where you’re getting your data. I have always heard that Oog bonked Og, and I think the evidence of a “second stoner” by the grassy stalactite is pretty convincing as well. > > \*\*I humbly disagree. If (when?) we develop the ability to clone a human being, we will be duplicating their original programming, but murder will still be murder. And this ignores the effect of environment, if we’re talking about beings that learn. \*\* But unlike a clone, saving the file on a virtual being would include all of its thoughts and environment (which could also be saved to disk). It would be something to the effect of God (if you believe in him) having done away with all humanity in 1395, then a few billion years later saying “you know, I miss those crazy bastards” and rebooting the universe to that same day in 1395. Not even the people in 1395 would have a clue what had happened, let alone those of us in 2002. So, if Neo kills an Agent, is that murder or self defense? If you look at it from their angle, he’s breaking and entering into the matrix. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2002, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-turn-off-an-intelligent-conscious-virtual-being/144481/22 "2002-12-23T16:39:34Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by antechinus \* > \*\*It is OK to ‘turn off’ an embryo, but not a concious machine. \*\* Ooh… why is my head now filled with “Virtual Abortion”… MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP!!! (Oh my Gates, the SIMS PLANNED PARENTHOOD program has just been virused…) ---
**Author:** ![Ramanujan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/51bf81/32.png) [@Ramanujan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramanujan)\ **Post date:** [December 23, 2002, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-turn-off-an-intelligent-conscious-virtual-being/144481/23 "2002-12-23T17:18:30Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Urban Ranger \* > DNA seems to be quite definitive in figuring out whether somebody is human or not. 1. on what basis do you make this claim? a cheek cell has human dna. are all cheek cells human? 2. what does that have to do with what i said? ---
**Author:** ![erislover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/71e660/32.png) [@erislover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/erislover)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-turn-off-an-intelligent-conscious-virtual-being/144481/24 "2002-12-24T07:34:22Z")
I go to sleep every night, and I would imagine that I’d approve of induced unconsciousness during heavy surgery. ---
**Author:** ![Urban\_Ranger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e9c0ed/32.png) [@Urban\_Ranger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urban_Ranger)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 7:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-turn-off-an-intelligent-conscious-virtual-being/144481/25 "2002-12-24T07:45:56Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ramanujan \* > > 1. on what basis do you make this claim? a cheek cell has human dna. are all cheek cells human? I certainly do not have problems distinguishing a human from his cheek cells. > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ramanujan \* > 2. what does that have to do with what i said? It seems that you were having difficulties telling who is a human and who isn’t. ---
**Author:** ![AbsolutelyStark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/278dde/32.png) [@AbsolutelyStark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AbsolutelyStark)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-turn-off-an-intelligent-conscious-virtual-being/144481/26 "2002-12-24T08:10:37Z")
I don’t think it would be immoral to turn off a virtual world that you created, because you are the ‘god’ of that world. You created it, so you can turn it off whenever you want to. ---
**Author:** ![Tristan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tristan/32/18058_2.png) [@Tristan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tristan)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 8:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-turn-off-an-intelligent-conscious-virtual-being/144481/27 "2002-12-24T08:34:10Z")
I created (or helped in the creation of) two children. Can I turn them off? As for the pain doll, well, it’s good to see Al Gore getting work. On a lighter note, can we avoid turning this into an abortion debate, if at all possible? ---
**Author:** ![AbsolutelyStark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/278dde/32.png) [@AbsolutelyStark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AbsolutelyStark)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 9:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-turn-off-an-intelligent-conscious-virtual-being/144481/28 "2002-12-24T09:09:38Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Tristan \* > **I created (or helped in the creation of) two children. Can I turn them off?** You may have _helped_ create them, but you didn’t program them, or choose which combination of genes you wanted them to inherit from you or their mother. A robot is basically a computer, no matter how advanced it is. ---
**Author:** ![Tristan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tristan/32/18058_2.png) [@Tristan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tristan)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-turn-off-an-intelligent-conscious-virtual-being/144481/29 "2002-12-24T14:18:57Z")
Ah, but I am programming them. Without me to provide the proper input, they would not talk, read, eat on their own or otherwise function as humans. ---
**Author:** ![AbsolutelyStark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/278dde/32.png) [@AbsolutelyStark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AbsolutelyStark)\ **Post date:** [December 24, 2002, 6:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-turn-off-an-intelligent-conscious-virtual-being/144481/30 "2002-12-24T18:05:20Z")
But are only programming them after they are born. If you were one of the beings in the virtual world, you might be programming your children, but the creator of the virtual world has programmed _you_, so in a way the creator has programmed you to program the children. ---
**Author:** ![Ramanujan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/51bf81/32.png) [@Ramanujan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramanujan)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2002, 6:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-turn-off-an-intelligent-conscious-virtual-being/144481/31 "2002-12-25T06:29:57Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Urban Ranger \* > It seems that you were having difficulties telling who is a human and who isn’t. “who is human and who isn’t?” wasn’t the question i was asking. that question was “what proof do i have that all other humans have the consciousness that i appear to have?” i don’t think dna provides that proof by any means. ---
**Author:** ![Ramanujan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/51bf81/32.png) [@Ramanujan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ramanujan)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2002, 6:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-turn-off-an-intelligent-conscious-virtual-being/144481/32 "2002-12-25T06:32:05Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by AbsolutelyStark \* > But are only programming them after they are born. If you were one of the beings in the virtual world, you might be programming your children, but the creator of the virtual world has programmed _you_, so in a way the creator has programmed you to program the children. what about the people who are trying (and will likely eventually succeed) in cloning humans? are they the gods of their creations? they provide all the dna input they want, and can surely program their progeny after they are born. should they have the right to “turn off” their human creations? ---
**Author:** ![lucwarm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e19adc/32.png) [@lucwarm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lucwarm)\ **Post date:** [December 25, 2002, 1:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-turn-off-an-intelligent-conscious-virtual-being/144481/33 "2002-12-25T13:54:08Z")
IMHO, the “virtual world” question is in many ways more difficult than the “turning off Data” question. I’m speculating a bit, but I think that when we create intelligent machines, they will be created purely to serve humans; won’t have any emotions or feelings such as pain or fear; and won’t care one whit whether they live or die. I don’t think it’s inherently immoral to turn off such a machine. On the other hand, if we create a virtual world and virtual beings evolve there, those beings will be in many ways similar to humans. It would seem wrong to me to enter such a world an cause harm to such people (like in _The Thirteenth Floor_). As someone said in the debate over animal testing, the question is not whether animals can think, but whether they can suffer. IMHO, an analogous standard should apply here. ---
**Author:** ![coax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/3ec8ea/32.png) [@coax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/coax)\ **Post date:** [December 26, 2002, 12:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-turn-off-an-intelligent-conscious-virtual-being/144481/34 "2002-12-26T12:38:13Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Rucksinator \* > \*\*Can something be conscious and not be alive? \*\* Yes. i think so. there’s a difference between awareness and self-awareness. smaller animals are aware, ie conscious, but not self-aware. when the neural net of a brain grows to a certain size, it get’s 2 new attributes, among many others, #1 secondary emotions, #2 self-awareness. secondary emotions include guilt, shame, jealousy. but most importantly, it gets a sense of self, it knows what it’s doing and it can reflect on it’s emotions. if we made a robot that would have all this, i would say it’s immoral to ‘pull the plug’ on it unjustified. if it had the attributes of a smaller animal, like a squirrel, then i guess most people wouldn’t think too hard about killing it. ---
**Author:** ![AbsolutelyStark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/278dde/32.png) [@AbsolutelyStark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AbsolutelyStark)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2002, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-turn-off-an-intelligent-conscious-virtual-being/144481/35 "2002-12-27T02:17:26Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Ramanujan \* > \*\*what about the people who are trying (and will likely eventually succeed) in cloning humans? are they the gods of their creations? they provide all the dna input they want, and can surely program their progeny after they are born. should they have the right to “turn off” their human creations? \*\* No, because the creations still have human DNA. The people who created them didn’t create the DNA, they copied it. ---
**Author:** ![JasonFin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/4af34b/32.png) [@JasonFin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JasonFin)\ **Post date:** [December 27, 2002, 6:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-turn-off-an-intelligent-conscious-virtual-being/144481/36 "2002-12-27T06:20:59Z")
Imagine that the AI in video games keeps improving. If the artificial intelligence of a character in a game is sufficiently advanced, would it be murder to kill that character? What if you kill them, then reload an earlier save-state and go on as if nothing has happened? What if the character you killed was a bad guy who had killed other characters? Unfortunately, this issue is indeed intimately connected to abortion–it is the fundamental moral question of which entities have a right to exist. If someone thinks abortion is wrong, then they probably think that biological human beings have the right to exist, even if non-sentient. If someone thinks that killing a virtual being is wrong, then they probably believe that sentient beings have the right to exist, even if not biological humans. In practice, I suspect the two positions are usually mutually exclusive. ---
**Author:** ![antechinus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/fbc32d/32.png) [@antechinus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/antechinus)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2002, 12:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-turn-off-an-intelligent-conscious-virtual-being/144481/37 "2002-12-29T12:28:13Z")
When people refer to ‘turn off’, I assume this means wipe the memory, rather than turn off the power indefinately. Isn’t ‘persistance of memory’ the thing that is treasured by a sentient being? An artificial AI may be turned off and the memory saved. When the machine is restarted the memory will remain. The AI has not been terminated. Turning the power off would be akin to general anesthaesia. True death would be destruction of all memory. The pain the AI would feel is the awarenesss that it would loose ALL its memory. Wiping the memory of an AI that was aware enough to feel the pain of this loss would be immoral. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-it-be-immoral-to-turn-off-an-intelligent-conscious-virtual-being/144481.md?page=1)