The Ethics Team is focused on exploring the impact of having a machine that is tasked with finding its own destiny within the school. The intent is to engage the team in exploring the rules of ethics of machines in society at the high school level.
1) Would a machine be a "member" of the student population?
2) Should the machine have rights?
3) Should the have rules?
4) How are the rules enforced?
5) Can a machine run for class president?
6) Can it vote for class president?
According to Professor Searle (berkley.edu), that which is intrinsic to nature can be observed and a model created to explain how it works. Sometimes the model is wrong, but that is ok. We learn and develop better models. With a model, we can create an implementation. The implementation of the model as devised from the observer's observations does not recreate that which is intrinsic to nature. Thus, Professor Searle notes that you cannot create human consciousness inside a computer.
One thing we can all agree on though is that we can create models and with models we can create implementations. In modeling everything the machine knows as nodes in a graph, it becomes possible to model behaviors, create implementations, and attach them to the graph as things the machine can now do.
What happens if we model what it means to hypothesis, to guess, to infer, to conclude, or to think? What if we model goals and aspirations? What happens when goals conflict? There are numerous areas to explore.
The ethics team is reminded that the scope can easily overwhelm the team. Therefore, the team should work with an educator to isolate down the scope to something manageable that can be explored within the allotted timeframe of the program.
