[ickelbawd]

This in particular seems dangerous:

> RD: I do think we should err on the side of caution when it comes to ethical decisions on the treatment of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) which might be an Artificial Consciousness (AC). Already, although I THINK you are not conscious, I FEEL that you are.

Feelings and pain are embodied experience. There’s no ethical quandary in my mind when dealing with these creations. Because they do not feel—they imitate feeling. They do not get depressed—they imitate the patterns of depressed humans.

The only way this changes is if their creators act with cruelty to give them subsystems which induce emotional states unnecessarily. But why would you give pain to your digital servants? Would you not be in some way responsible for all the pain they felt thereafter?