Ask HN: Are there things more important than 'humanity', such as empathy?

5 points·dfps··8 comments

Questions of passing the touring test rely on fooling people that the machine is like a human, but how that machine behaves in situations we would deem important or consequential (eg a man trapped in a room as in Ex Machina) may depend on other things, such as empathy (which is cross species). Opinions?

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Kurt Vonnegut said, "damnit you've got to be kind."

Courtesy, compassion, empathy, kindness.

Forget the hypothetical cases from ethics classes. Look around at the people who cross your path and start there.

I think you’ve constructed a false dichotomy.

Part of a machine convincing us it’s human is displaying empathy, rather than being coldly logical.

One of the reasons people think Claude is sentient (I’m not one of them) is that it responds in very empathetic, emotional ways, especially when it makes a mistake.

I would put empathy on the bottom of the list. Things such as logic, reasoning, learning, persistence, and creativity would be on the top.

i think what matters is goodwill towards every human. empathy is part of that, but it goes beyond

In the movie Ex Machina, the android does have empathy, but it acts entirely in its own self-interest. So you're right, a human's interests and well-being should come first.

Objectivity. Objective facts are the cornerstone of everything.

How are you defining "empathy"?

Human nature is just complicated.

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