The elder sage supports the orphaned child;
The tiny child knows the direction.
Why is this an issue? Will there be a time when it may be considered unethical to turn off a machine? My Amiga computer communicates a sense of ethics that was programed into it. It is not unethical for me to turn it off but it reacts strongly to a bad disk. The red warnings against the black background let me know that I may be "hurting" it. Since this computer is a useful extension of myself, I feel some sort of empathy with the computer and feel a twinge of pain (or guilt) when the warning comes up. The people who programed this computer instilled in it the means to condition its user an ethics of behavior towards it.
241-242
Transactions between male and female -
Ten years; no admonishments.
Any AI program, no matter how "conscious," will probably have its own rules for how it should be treated and communicate those rules to others that may affect it. This process for passing on ethics can be seen as similar to the way humans have acquired their sense of ethics; genetically (a priori), through conditioning, and through language. Our ethics and behaviors fit our own circumstances and it would be silly to do the incredible amount of research to create a machine that imitates every human quality, but it is important to continue to develop machines that can work more independently and respond to more external stimuli.
243
Reaching the ears: prosperous to stay,
Refusing to listen: prosperous to go.
As a performer, I enjoy my machines' abilities to make sights and sounds which alter the environment. I don't enjoy having to push a button or turn a knob to make them respond to changes in the preexisting "natural" environment. I consider a live performance defective if it cannot respond to unexpected occurrences that may be perceived by the audience or performers. If a performer cannot incorporate the audience's responses and even create subtle variations in the flow of the performance, then it might as well be shown on a movie screen or video. I presently cannot afford the necessary equipment to experiment with AI programs in real-time performance, so I have worked with analog equipment, feedback, and a digital delay to produce the effect of an artificial machine-generated environment which changes with the natural environment. I will describe one piece which uses this kind of system. Please refer to the diagram below: