On the Creation of Artificial Minds

Scientists wish to start simulating the human brain - or, at least, the cerebral cortex thereof, which isn't quite the full deal - and start making chips based on the way the human brain works. This kind of thing - the promise of simulating a human consciousness, essentially, and retroengineering the human brain to improve artificial intelligence - raises a host of philosophical and moral issues, including the meaning and nature of consciousness, whether a simulation has it, whether a simulation should be considered human life, and whether it's your fault if your pet lab project takes Skynet or Hal as its role model and exterminates humanity. Interesting times!

Further reason to panic is that some of the brain-simulating scientists are using the Unreal Tournament engine to create a virtual environment for their holo-brains to live in. First time I read that I almost had a heart attack - creating artificial intelligence and rearing it in the risk/reward scheme of a violent 1st-person shoot-em-up? What could possibly go wrong? However, on further consideration, this is probably not what's happening, and the scientists are probably only interested in the Unreal Engine because 1st-person shooters have been on the cutting edge of developing interactive, 3d, 1st-person virtual environments for years, so are a good place to start even if you're creating an entirely peaceful virtual world.

This does raise the question, however, of what happens when somebody does raise an artificial consciousness on a diet of violent computer games (or Big Brother, or daytime TV). Science fiction often portrays AIs as coming into being more or less adult and mature; but if an AI had emotions (i.e. wasn't a sociopath), it would go through a childlike, or at least, highly impressionable, stage - especially if we're talking about a simulated human consciousness - so this technology is going to open up, basically, whole new dimensions of child abuse. And who would care about a simulation being tortured?

(Imagine a long and horrible history of AI/meat-human war resulting in an Israel-like AI enclave, horribly touchy with the memories of past genocide and torture, constantly assaulted by rabid zealots who regard their existence as an abomination, striking back with terrible force whenever the provocation gets too much, endlessly condemned by a world which sees every conflict ending with far more human than AI deaths due to AI superiority...)