Machines

What would a morality of a machine look like? We do have some examples.

Machines are a fancy word for tools or maybe they are just fancy tools. Human evolution has often been measured by the sophistication of the tools they could make and use. Machines are critical to our survival. They give us great ability to create and destroy. Machines can have great beauty and power. They can even have behaviors.

In terms of human strategy it seems best to consider a few aspects of machines. Obviously they are how we get most of our resources and they can be fantastically productive. They have been the primary tools of war through history. Some machines are software as opposed to hardware. That is very important. Some machines include people. Some machines, especially complex ones, can grow somewhat organically as opportunity presents itself. Machines can be a lot of things. If it's not animal vegetable or mineral, it's probably a machine. Already some machines are more capable than humans at problem solving. Machines tend to be very efficient and effective. The thing is, many machines are very like a kind of life.
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Consider one vision of machines. Consider broadly developed automation that can provide all the material wants of humanity. That seems mostly a plus, though that vision must include consideration of humans being weakened by not being forced to struggle for their needs. I suspect that can be treated, actually it must be treated like the removal of natural selection. We need to make sure that something replaces that struggle so that weakness does not become a danger, but that can be accomplished by a few things, especially moral education and attitude. Unfortunately, that situation of material plenty does not seem to be the problem we have to deal with from machines.

There are many machines in the human world that from another perspective could be called institutions including governments, political parties, education systems, armies, corporations, and even economic systems. As early as 1651, Thomas Hobb's book Leviathan described government as a machine. Corporations are interesting in that they can grow and reproduce. They can be easily produced by humans yet they can be amazingly independent of the society they exist in. They can be extremely powerful and long lived as well. More than other machines, corporations have survival strategies. How those relate to human strategies is where the issues arise.


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Sew, what does this add up to? Machines don't tend to make war. Machines are highly efficient and that is their primary way of competing. We ahve seen a tremendous amount of automation in the past half century and that was before machines were very capable of "thinking". Now, we see automation accelerating. It is not just in our machines such as assembly lines or 3D printers. There is a rush for companies to accomplish "digital transformation". That is to automate all the processes that humans have had to do in terms of data such as communication, records, sales, monetary transactions, etc.















What would a morality of a machine look like? We do have some examples.