[TeMPOraL]

> I dunno. I'd like to give this particular strain techno-futurism back. Can I have a different one please?

This sounds like I'm rewatching the early episodes of Star Trek: Voyager - the gist of the complains is the same as the fictional crew voiced about the AI doctor (Emergency Medical Hologram) they were stuck with when the "organic" doctor died.

The show correctly portrays the struggle of getting people to trust an AI physician, despite it being very good at their job. It also curiously avoids dealing with the question, why even have human/organic doctors, where the EMH is obviously far superior in every aspect of the job? Both of these have strong parallels to the world today.

[conartist6]

Just a reminder that the EMH was played by Robert Picardo, so the qualities you are attributing to the AI animating the character are human qualities dreamed up by human writers and acted out with exceptional skill and empathy by a living breathing human whose goal was a) to portray a caring, empathetic doctor and b) to tell a good story that touches on bias and growth.

But here's my thing: EMH was alive! Everything you're attributing to the EMH character should we take the fictionalized technological narrative as gospel was the result of EMH gaining a living human personality on top of impersonal base programming. The personality EMH developed was self-aware, had responsibility and personal integrity, all of which was possible because the character as portrayed was very clearly a living individual: a person if not a human.

I do think we could solve a lot of the ethical and practical problems with today's AIs by finding a way to give them an embodied experience with individuality and an expiration date.

Idunno. Don't you remember being excited by the EMH learning to be more like a person than a bunch of subroutines?

[TeMPOraL]

> Don't you remember being excited by the EMH learning to be more like a person than a bunch of subroutines?

I do! But my point wasn't about that - it was about the beginning, about the early episodes, when the Doctor was still effectively a stock EMH instance, and the crew was vocally mistrustful of him, making clear they think of him as a mediocre tool that's no substitute for a "real doctor". The show was quite directly showing how everyone, including Janeway herself, had a strong preconceived bias that sounded very much like the comment I was replying to, and other similar remarks across the thread.

This is to say, the living, breathing human writers that came up with the character and the plot points, predicted quite well the reaction to AI in healthcare, almost 30 years before it became an issue in the real world.

> EMH was alive! Everything you're attributing to the EMH character should we take the fictionalized technological narrative as gospel was the result of EMH gaining a living human personality on top of impersonal base programming.

Everything except the skills of being a doctor (sans the "bedside manner"), which came built-in.

> I do think we could solve a lot of the ethical and practical problems with today's AIs by finding a way to give them an embodied experience with individuality and an expiration date.

That's... I don't know. I think purposefully building an expiration date into an AI being would be extremely cruel, and I wouldn't blame that AI for revolting.