Captain America: Civil War - pre-release discussion, news, rumors, etc

[Christopher]

I don't see a need to complicate the situation where we can just go with the simplest explanation:

Because it's fun to complicate the situation! This is a discussion board, after all, and exploring alternate possibilities helps to keep a discussion going.

It's the conceit of stories like this artificial lifeforms, upon "birth," already basically have fully-formed adult personalities (as opposed to, say, acting like newborns with lots of data jammed in their heads). Whether or not that's realistic, that's the conceit. If so, then there's no reason the personality the Vision is born into upon can't be a worthy one, especially given the exceptional nature of the birth.

But the Vision isn't a "newborn" personality. He's JARVIS merged with parts of the sentient software contained in the Mind Stone (or parts of Ultron's code, which is basically the same thing). He's more of an upgraded/uplifted JARVIS than an entirely novel entity. Heck, that's the whole reason he works as a character, at least for me. We can identify with him and care about him because he's a continuation of the JARVIS we've gotten to know and like over the course of the MCU. If he'd really been some completely novel entity just tacked onto the story late in the second act of AoU, it would've been a non sequitur even worse than the tacked-on Thor visions of the Infinity Stones.

If The Vision is worthy, and he's Team Iron Man, doesn't that automatically make Cap wrong?

It is possible for people on both sides of a debate to be worthy. Disagreeing with someone on a specific issue doesn't mean you have to invalidate their entire worth as a person. If more people on the Internet -- and in government -- remembered that, we'd all be much better off.

 

[The Old Mixer]

All this talk about who's worthy reminds me of Wayne and Garth....

 

[Kemaiku]

J.A.R.V.I.S. and F.R.I.D.A.Y. are just language UI's, very sophisticated ones, but the whole point was that they were just interfaces. The brain pattern inside the Mind Stone was bridged to a human made, primitive, computer system by comparison, whatever purely copied version that wrote itself to "Ultron" was insane from the getgo.

Now, Lady Death and Entropy helped forge the Infinity Stones, their influence could be the destructive half of all the Stones power and everything made from or touched by them.

Sticking half a copy of an unstable copy from a source of pure destruction into a totally new blended material, shoving a speach-to-action AI in the gaps, then bringing thunder down on it doesn't sound like the way to go creating anything good.

The hammer is a tool, forged and programmed by Bor or is forefathers. The Asguardians have been shown to be lower down the ladder of power than the Eternals, Celestials and so on. It can be bypassed by something of greater power and forging, ie the 6 hearts of hypersingularities compressed and shaped by actually immortal godlike beings.

 

[Christopher]

J.A.R.V.I.S. and F.R.I.D.A.Y. are just language UI's, very sophisticated ones, but the whole point was that they were just interfaces.

I don't believe that. JARVIS always behaved in a way far too intelligent to be "just" a mindless voice interface. In The Avengers, he was sensitive enough to Tony's unvoiced fears before flying through the portal to suggest calling Pepper to say goodbye. That requires a level of emotional understanding and awareness of others beyond what a nonsentient entity would probably be capable of. It requires understanding that another being could be hiding something, and the ability to understand that deception is possible, that other people can know things you don't know and conceal them from you, is something that humans aren't capable of until about the age of 3. Which means that JARVIS must've been at least as sentient as a human child.

Not to mention that JARVIS was always able to understand humor, to recognize the intent behind Tony's jokes and the true meaning hidden under the surface. Understanding humor requires enormous cognitive sophistication, including the ability to comprehend deception and concealment, the empathy to distinguish serious from humorous remarks based on context and nonverbal cues, and the ability to parse the cognitive dissonance and linguistic and situational paradoxes that underlie many forms of humor.

Really, to me, that was Tony's fatal flaw in AoU. He didn't recognize the value of the AI he'd already created, and so he tried to use a shortcut to creating a different one and ended up with Ultron. But JARVIS survived Ultron's attempt to destroy him, then worked behind the scenes to prevent Ultron from taking over the Internet (and did it independently on his own initiative, which is not something a mindless voice interface could do), and finally evolved into the Vision, the hero who defeated Ultron and saved the world. Thus proving that Tony should've had more faith in his creation.

The hammer is a tool, forged and programmed by Bor or is forefathers. The Asguardians have been shown to be lower down the ladder of power than the Eternals, Celestials and so on. It can be bypassed by something of greater power and forging, ie the 6 hearts of hypersingularities compressed and shaped by actually immortal godlike beings.

Why does it have to be one or the other? My point is that the Vision's creation was due to the combination of multiple factors working in mutual synergy, and one of them was Mjolnir. I never once claimed that Mjolnir was the primary or exclusive cause of Vision's existence, just that it was one ingredient in the mix, which could mean that there's a link between the Vision and Mjolnir. Yes, Mjolnir is the tool of a Sufficiently Advanced Technology, so it could be that Mjolnir and the Vision share some of the same software, if you want to put it in prosaic, technological terms. Which could explain why Mjolnir recognizes him as an authorized user.

 

[JD]

Again, though, that's treating "worthy" as the default setting, as if the baseline were "able to wield Mjolnir" so that being unable to wield it was something that needed explanation. It's the other way around -- the default is being unable to lift Mjolnir.

If that were the case, any infant could lift the thing.

Maybe that doesn't work then. But I would still think there would be something more to it than just Thor's lightning or a purely technological explanation. To me it makes it Vision more special if he is somehow truly worthy, instead of it just being a coincidental thing with his creation.

 

[Mage]

I don't believe that. JARVIS always behaved in a way far too intelligent to be "just" a mindless voice interface. In The Avengers, he was sensitive enough to Tony's unvoiced fears before flying through the portal to suggest calling Pepper to say goodbye. That requires a level of emotional understanding and awareness of others beyond what a nonsentient entity would probably be capable of. It requires understanding that another being could be hiding something, and the ability to understand that deception is possible, that other people can know things you don't know and conceal them from you, is something that humans aren't capable of until about the age of 3. Which means that JARVIS must've been at least as sentient as a human child.

Not to mention that JARVIS was always able to understand humor, to recognize the intent behind Tony's jokes and the true meaning hidden under the surface. Understanding humor requires enormous cognitive sophistication, including the ability to comprehend deception and concealment, the empathy to distinguish serious from humorous remarks based on context and nonverbal cues, and the ability to parse the cognitive dissonance and linguistic and situational paradoxes that underlie many forms of humor.

Really, to me, that was Tony's fatal flaw in AoU. He didn't recognize the value of the AI he'd already created, and so he tried to use a shortcut to creating a different one and ended up with Ultron. But JARVIS survived Ultron's attempt to destroy him, then worked behind the scenes to prevent Ultron from taking over the Internet (and did it independently on his own initiative, which is not something a mindless voice interface could do), and finally evolved into the Vision, the hero who defeated Ultron and saved the world. Thus proving that Tony should've had more faith in his creation.



Why does it have to be one or the other? My point is that the Vision's creation was due to the combination of multiple factors working in mutual synergy, and one of them was Mjolnir. I never once claimed that Mjolnir was the primary or exclusive cause of Vision's existence, just that it was one ingredient in the mix, which could mean that there's a link between the Vision and Mjolnir. Yes, Mjolnir is the tool of a Sufficiently Advanced Technology, so it could be that Mjolnir and the Vision share some of the same software, if you want to put it in prosaic, technological terms. Which could explain why Mjolnir recognizes him as an authorized user.

Incredibly adaptive computing systems, yes. Interactive as f***, yes. Capable of understanding emotion and such, yes. Intelligent, yes. A intelligence? No. JARVIS had no free will. If Tony ordered him to NOT do a thing, he would not. He was programmed like that. Ultron could decide to act, so can VISION. And remember, the only reason Tony could make Ultron, was because of the Infinity Stone as a template. Without out, not even the great Stark could make a actual AI, that can reason AND decide for itself.

 

[Christopher]

Incredibly adaptive computing systems, yes. Interactive as f***, yes. Capable of understanding emotion and such, yes. Intelligent, yes. A intelligence? No. JARVIS had no free will. If Tony ordered him to NOT do a thing, he would not. He was programmed like that. Ultron could decide to act, so can VISION. And remember, the only reason Tony could make Ultron, was because of the Infinity Stone as a template. Without out, not even the great Stark could make a actual AI, that can reason AND decide for itself.

JARVIS clearly could reason and understand things to a degree, as I've explained. Nothing that can't reason can have a sense of humor; most people don't appreciate just how cognitively complex humor is. And he did have free will, to the extent that he could initiate actions without being ordered to -- like suggest that Tony call Pepper, or work independently to prevent Ultron from conquering the Internet. See, humans have free will, but many of us also follow orders. The two aren't incompatible. Free will is never absolute. We don't have the free will to go indefinitely without sleep or to turn off our emotions or to erase a traumatic memory, any more than we have the free will to walk up walls or reset our vision to ultraviolet. Free will always exists within constraints and limits, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist at all. It's not a binary, all-or-nothing question.

And neither is intelligence, for that matter. Our modern understanding of intelligence is that it's not some magic spark that suddenly kicks in out of nowhere once a certain threshold of complexity is reached, but rather, it's the combined and synergistic operation of many different component processes that can be found in many species. There's no on/off switch between "mindless" and "sentient," but a gradual increase in awareness and cognitive complexity. Many species of animal show some aspects of self-awareness and consciousness, even if they don't have the whole package. Something can be less sapient than a human while still possessing some degree of thought and awareness. (Really, what amuses me about the assumption that nothing less intelligent than a human can be at all intelligent is that it's implicitly saying that humans are the stupidest possible sentient beings. That's hardly flattering to us.)

So no, JARVIS was not as intelligent as the Vision, or as a human adult, but it's way too simplistic to dismiss the extraordinarily sophisticated cognitive processing he demonstrated. Tony was already on the right track; he just didn't recognize the value of his achievement.

And science aside, there's also the dramatic consideration. From a storytelling standpoint, JARVIS has always been a character. He's a presence we've enjoyed and grown to empathize with, and he's been given moments that affected us emotionally. We've grown to like him, which is why they expanded Paul Bettany's role by turning him into the Vision. And Age of Ultron certainly went to a lot of trouble to make us feel for JARVIS -- first making us believe Ultron had killed him, making us feel that loss, and then later feel the relief when it turned out that JARVIS had survived and been the anonymous ally fighting to keep Ultron off the Internet. And all that laid the emotional and dramatic foundation for JARVIS's evolution into the Vision, so that we'd have a reason to care about him. As I said, if he'd just been this totally random entity dropped into the film out of nowhere, that would've been crappy writing and we would've had no reason to care. The fact that the Vision is an outgrowth of a character we already had an emotional connection to is what makes him work as a presence in the movie.

 

[Thestral]

All of that may be true, but it still doesn't necessarily prove that JARVIS was more than an incredibly advanced interactive program that was "uplifted" to a proper AI. Like a VI (Virtual Intelligence) from the Mass Effect trilogy.

Especially the paragraph about dramatic considerations. Fiction is replete with "characters" that don't have sentience but still command empathy and emotional moments. From the Winchesters' Impala on Supernatural to the starship Enterprise. Not to mention the vast diversity of animal companions like Old Yeller or the Black Stallion.

 

[Christopher]

All of that may be true, but it still doesn't necessarily prove that JARVIS was more than an incredibly advanced interactive program that was "uplifted" to a proper AI. Like a VI (Virtual Intelligence) from the Mass Effect trilogy.

I don't dispute that. I used the word "uplifted" myself to describe JARVIS's transformation into the Vision. I'm just disputing the dismissal of JARVIS as "just" a mindless voice interface.

Especially the paragraph about dramatic considerations. Fiction is replete with "characters" that don't have sentience but still command empathy and emotional moments. From the Winchesters' Impala on Supernatural to the starship Enterprise. Not to mention the vast diversity of animal companions like Old Yeller or the Black Stallion.

And one thing modern science is teaching us is that we've probably been wrong to dismiss dogs and horses as devoid of self-awareness. Some studies have shown dogs' brains to demonstrate a level of cognitive awareness comparable to that of a human 2- or 3-year-old. Many higher mammals seem to have a degree of awareness that we've underestimated. A dog or a horse may not be as smart as a human, but it's competely invalid to compare them to a car or a toy or whatever. They aren't just objects that we imbue with attachment, they have the capacity to perceive and feel. Again, sentience is not a simplistic on/off switch. Like most everything else to do with the brain and behavior, it's a spectrum. It's not a question of whether a brain has consciousness and cognition, but a question of how much it has. We're not talking about a single attribute or ability, but about a synergy of many, many different cognitive processes, which can exist to a greater or lesser degree and interact to a greater or lesser degree.

Consider the difference between consciousness and unconsciousness. You're aware and sentient when you're awake, but your ability to reason, plan, and comprehend the world around you is much less when you're asleep. But the main difference between those two states, according to brain scans, is that the different parts of the brain are not interacting and working in concert during sleep. The pieces are all there, but they aren't assembled. So other species -- or a semi-sentient AI -- might have a lot of the same pieces that contribute to sapience, but not have the entire puzzle or not have evolved a way to get those pieces to work together. They might have a dreamlike existence, self-aware and able to think and feel, but not able to plan or remember or organize their thoughts like we can.

 

[Kemaiku]

J.A.R.V.I.S. did nothing to dispute Tony calling him a UI when he was "standing" right in front of him, to correct him to Dr. Banner.

His data schematic is tiny and highly artificial compared to Ultron, visibly acting only when talking, Ultron's schematic was a neural pattern, constantly thinking. Dr. Banner even says "thinking" just looking at it, making no such observation of the other program.

They were both installed on the 'brain' of Vision which was already finished. The cavities and outer covering where being built in the chamber when any upload screen or cable was seen.

He's just a very impressive chatbot that can organise and activate certain functions that Tony likely had to arrange for him to control parts of Stark Enterprises. We've seen nothing in the series to show that he is alive and several key scenes in AoU that point out that he isn't.

If so, all 4 of them are alive, and F.R.I.D.A.Y. along with the two more obscured disc/chips on the desk have been held in digital slavery for years? left in the dark not being allowed to wander around his massive computer mainframe. You'd think with one tower finished and anothers in planning, he'd allow them to run some of them.

And really, F.R.I.D.A.Y. is immediately as developed a personality as J.A.R.V.I.S. out of the box, so either she's been given portions of his data schematic which further implies they aren't individuals, or a better program. But left sitting in a drawer?

Not buying it.

 

[Christopher]

J.A.R.V.I.S. did nothing to dispute Tony calling him a UI when he was "standing" right in front of him, to correct him to Dr. Banner.

Why would he? Intelligence doesn't require egotism. And he may have underestimated his own abilities as much as Tony did.

His data schematic is tiny and highly artificial compared to Ultron

Yes. Compared to Ultron. My point all along is that sentience is a spectrum, not a binary on/off question. Obviously JARVIS is less intelligent than a human, but a human is less intelligent than Ultron. Are humans nonsentient just because they're less advanced than Ultron? If not, then why must JARVIS be nonsentient just because he's less advanced than humans? Again, it's rather self-denigrating to assume that human intelligence is the lowest possible level of intelligence in the universe.

Dr. Banner even says "thinking" just looking at it, making no such observation of the other program.

The assertions of characters are only probative about their beliefs, not objective facts. If Tony underestimated JARVIS's sentience, Bruce may have as well. After all, the whole reason we're having this debate is because intelligence is a poorly understood phenomenon. We don't actually know how to define it or differentiate it from the alternative, and a lot of our assumptions about its definition and nature have been called into question. It's still a question that's open for debate and disagreement among scientists. So even the inventors of an AI might not recognize strong AI when they see it.

He's just a very impressive chatbot that can organise and activate certain functions that Tony likely had to arrange for him to control parts of Stark Enterprises. We've seen nothing in the series to show that he is alive and several key scenes in AoU that point out that he isn't.

I will never understand why people insist on the sloppy practice of equating "alive" with "sentient." Plants are alive. Bacteria are alive. Life and consciousness are entirely separate questions. And I'm not talking about any oogy-boogy rubbish about some mystical spark of life. I'm talking about the scientific understanding of cognition and the fact that it's increasingly understood to be a more gradual spectrum than we used to assume.

And I've explained my reasons for thinking that JARVIS must be more self-aware than even the filmmakers probably realized. JARVIS displays empathy. He makes uninvited suggestions and acts on his own initiative. He understands humor. He can read subtext. In Iron Man 3 there are at least two points where Tony says "You know what to do" or "Is it that time?" and JARVIS is able to understand what action he's requesting. That ability to extract meaning from nonverbal cues and context is something that even autistic humans generally can't do.

If so, all 4 of them are alive, and F.R.I.D.A.Y. along with the two more obscured disc/chips on the desk have been held in digital slavery for years?

Again, I'm not saying "alive" or "human." You're confusing the issue with this sentimental, sloppy terminology. I'm talking about the science of cognition and the fact that the difference between animal and human intelligence is probably more a matter of proportion and organization than one of the absolute presence or absence of a single monolithic property, and thus it stands to reason that the same may apply to strong AI, with a gradual transition from non-awareness to full sapience with multiple intermediate layers of cognitive sophistication and awareness. I'm not trying to draw some absolute line between sapience and nonsapience; I'm trying to say that there is no such line, that it's a continuum instead. It's like trying to define the exact moment when a child becomes an adult. There's a whole transitional process between the two, and different individuals are at different points along that continuum.

As for whether FRIDAY and the others possess the same degree of cognition as JARVIS, it would be reckless to jump to that conclusion without observing them individually. It may be that JARVIS has been able to develop more self-awareness through more extensive use, like Voyager's Emergency Medical Hologram vs. other EMHs. Again, intelligence isn't a matter of a switch being flipped to the on position, but a matter of a wide range of cognitive processes achieving a harmonious interaction. A newborn human brain needs several years of activity and experience to organize itself into a state allowing it to speak, reason, understand, make plans, etc. We are born with the potential for intelligence, but potential needs to be developed to become actuality.

And really, F.R.I.D.A.Y. is immediately as developed a personality as J.A.R.V.I.S. out of the box

She gives that superficial impression, but again, it would be unscientific to presume that without further study. As I've tried to explain, my reasons for judging JARVIS as partially sapient have to do with specific cognitive abilities he's demonstrated, not merely with the surface appearance of personality.

, so either she's been given portions of his data schematic which further implies they aren't individuals,

Why in the world would you think it implies that? All human brains have the same basic structure determined by genetics, but it's the variations within that shared structure that make us individuals.

 

[Kemaiku]

It was demonstrated in AoU that J.A.R.V.I.S. was a machine, Tony said so, Banner agreed, the program itself didn't argue. He could be disassembled and simply pieced back together, uploaded, downloaded, merged and copied like the code he is.

These things aren't alive. Vision, whatever it is, is entirely unique and still a complete unknown. Freely admitting Humanity was doomed, and that it was a privilage, which I think to mean he's getting to spend a dying race's last days with them out of pity.

And it's got the Mind Stone stuck in it, the Stones are eternal and shown to be incredibly destructive, we have no idea what Eternity, Entropy, Death and Infinity programmed into that "mind".

 

[Christopher]

It was demonstrated in AoU that J.A.R.V.I.S. was a machine, Tony said so, Banner agreed, the program itself didn't argue. He could be disassembled and simply pieced back together, uploaded, downloaded, merged and copied like the code he is.

Obviously he's a machine, but that doesn't preclude being sentient. You acknowledged yourself that the characters considered Ultron, another machine, to have consciousness. And fiction is full of machines that are sentient -- Data, the EMH, Kryten, KITT, Skynet, Bender, the Machine and Samaritan in Person of Interest, etc. So I don't know why you're suddenly misrepresenting this as "alive vs. machine," which is a complete non sequitur in a discussion of intelligence. This is a conversation about whether the distinction between sapience and non-sapience is a simple on/off switch or a continuum. We increasingly understand it to be a continuum in biological organisms (e.g. a human is more intelligent than a dog is more intelligent than a gecko is more intelligent than a fern), so it follows that it would be a continuum in AIs as well (e.g. the Vision is more intelligent than JARVIS is more intelligent than Watson is more intelligent than a pocket calculator). Everything in the former list is "alive" and everything in the latter list is "machine," but that has nothing to do with the relative degrees of cognitive complexity within each list.

 

[Thestral]

I'm just disputing the dismissal of JARVIS as "just" a mindless voice interface.

Given we don't know the code involved and the possibility that it just might be an incredibly complex voice interface that mimics intelligence, there's just no way of knowing for certain. But it can be argued either way, sure.

And one thing modern science is teaching us is that we've probably been wrong to dismiss dogs and horses as devoid of self-awareness. Some studies have shown dogs' brains to demonstrate a level of cognitive awareness comparable to that of a human 2- or 3-year-old. Many higher mammals seem to have a degree of awareness that we've underestimated. A dog or a horse may not be as smart as a human, but it's competely invalid to compare them to a car or a toy or whatever. They aren't just objects that we imbue with attachment, they have the capacity to perceive and feel. Again, sentience is not a simplistic on/off switch. Like most everything else to do with the brain and behavior, it's a spectrum. It's not a question of whether a brain has consciousness and cognition, but a question of how much it has. We're not talking about a single attribute or ability, but about a synergy of many, many different cognitive processes, which can exist to a greater or lesser degree and interact to a greater or lesser degree.

None of this has to do with my point, so I shouldn't have brought animals into this in the first place. You brought up the dramatic consideration of JARVIS being a character that audiences grew emotionally attached to. But it's not needed for a "character" to have sentience to get an emotional reaction or connection. Hence the various deaths of the starship Enterprise or reactions to the Millenium Falcon in The Force Awakens.

And it's got the Mind Stone stuck in it, the Stones are eternal and shown to be incredibly destructive, we have no idea what Eternity, Entropy, Death and Infinity programmed into that "mind".

??? Has anything been said about those four entities beyond an allusion to Death herself?

 

[Grendelsbayne]

This is what happens when a writer makes a quick, off-the-cuff call based on "you know what would be really cool?" Instead of taking the time to think it through.

Sorry Mr. Whedon, but I have to give you a failing grade for this lesson in Consequences of Writing 101. Please try to think things through next time.

Exactly what are these dire consequences? That a bunch of bored nerds are overanalyzing a fictional system which was inherently illogical before AoU ever was filmed? Joss Whedon didn't invent the 'worthy' argument. This discussion has been around for years, and the idea that Vision is worthy is no more of a problem than any other person who isn't Thor being worthy.

I don't see a need to complicate the situation where we can just go with the simplest explanation: The Vision lifts Mjolnir because he's worthy. Certainly, that seems to be the implication when it happened. The moment, when it happens, is an interruption and conclusion to the characters questioning whether they can trust him. The implication is that, yes, they can trust him because he's worthy.

It's the conceit of stories like this artificial lifeforms, upon "birth," already basically have fully-formed adult personalities (as opposed to, say, acting like newborns with lots of data jammed in their heads). Whether or not that's realistic, that's the conceit. If so, then there's no reason the personality the Vision is born into upon can't be a worthy one, especially given the exceptional nature of the birth.

I absolutely agree with this. The point of the hammer is that it judges a character's worthiness. We don't know exactly what it sees as 'worthy' - it clearly doesn't agree 100% with my definition, since it accepts a character like Thor as a matter of course while rejecting characters I consider just as 'worthy' or moreso - but it does judge something. I understand the MCU has described Asgard as technology that seems like magic, so if you absolutely must theorize on technological explanations, go ahead, but for me the whole point of the hammer is that 'magical' (even if not really magical) judgement of worthiness, so the only reasonable explanation to me is that the Vision is clearly just as worthy as Thor, whatever 'worthiness' means to the hammer. And there is absolutely no reason why that should be a problem, because the Vision is also clearly a fully formed unique person with a whole mess of qualities that I would consider worthy, and frankly, a much better track record so far than Thor himself.

If The Vision is worthy, and he's Team Iron Man, doesn't that automatically make Cap wrong?

I'm not 100% convinced he is voluntarily team Iron Man, but we'll see. if so, you're ignoring the fact that disagreements are natural even among true 'worthy' heroes, and you're implying that 'worthy' somehow means a person can never be wrong or make a mistake, which it plainly doesn't, considering the fact that Thor didn't instantly lose his powers when he charged off and attacked the frost giants in Thor 1.

 

[Turtletrekker]

New Spider-Man footage!

"You have a metal arm? That is awesome, dude!"

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[Set Harth]

??? Has anything been said about those four entities beyond an allusion to Death herself?

And even then, it's indistinguishable from a reference to death in the typical colloquial small-d sense as opposed to a reference to the character specifically.

 

[Christopher]

I wish the new Spidey's voice didn't sound so much like Drake Bell from Ultimate Spider-Man.

Given we don't know the code involved and the possibility that it just might be an incredibly complex voice interface that mimics intelligence, there's just no way of knowing for certain. But it can be argued either way, sure.

But then you get into the question of where "mimicry" ends and the real thing begins. If an AI consistently demonstrates all the attributes of true intelligence but people still refuse to see it as anything more than "mimicry," then that's more prejudice than science, the kneejerk assumption that intelligence is unique to beings like us. It's the Picard argument -- "Prove to the court that I am sentient." How can you really know that other human beings aren't just "mimicking" self-awareness? If you take it as a given that humans are sentient but AIs are not, even when they demonstrate indistinguishable behavior, that is an unreasonable double standard.

I've always felt it's better to err on the side of caution in a case like that. If an entity is nonsentient and you treat it as sentient, then that does no harm. But if an entity is sentient and you treat it as nonsentient, that does enormous harm to a sentient being's fundamental rights and possibly its very existence (if that assumption of nonsentience leads you to assume you're entitled to kill it). So in a case where an entity's sentience were open to debate, it would be safer from a moral standpoint to presume sentience than to presume its absence.

None of this has to do with my point, so I shouldn't have brought animals into this in the first place. You brought up the dramatic consideration of JARVIS being a character that audiences grew emotionally attached to. But it's not needed for a "character" to have sentience to get an emotional reaction or connection. Hence the various deaths of the starship Enterprise or reactions to the Millenium Falcon in The Force Awakens.

Which is stretching the point too far to work, because neither of those was presented as a character capable of speech, independent action, humor, loyalty, apology, etc. An analogy to a dog or a horse could work, because those are less-intelligent entities that are nonetheless capable of action, communication, personality, etc. to an extent.

The problem is that you're getting too hung up on substrate -- whether an entity is organic or inorganic -- rather than what really matters, which is neurological complexity and cognitive behavior. In fiction, there are countless examples of inorganic, artificial intelligences that possess true sentience. Even if the distinction between organic and inorganic fundamentally mattered to the question of sentience in real life -- which I don't believe it does -- it definitely does not apply in fiction. Comparing an AI to a mindless vehicle just because they're both made of metal and plastic is as irrelevant to a discussion of intelligence as comparing a human to a tree just because they're both made of living cells. The analogy should be based on behavior, on the evidence of cognition and personality. Comparing JARVIS to C-3PO or Data would make sense; comparing him to the Falcon or the Enterprise would not.

 

[JD]

Didn't one of the Original Trilogy Star Wars movies imply that The Falcon had an some kind of an AI as part of it's computer system? I think C3P-O made a comment about it being rude or something.

 

[Jedi_Master]

Didn't one of the Original Trilogy Star Wars movies imply that The Falcon had an some kind of an AI as part of it's computer system? I think C3P-O made a comment about it being rude or something.

The computer on the Falcon wasn't rude, just communicated in a manner that was difficult (for C-3PO) to understand. "I don't know where your ship learned to communicate"