What if they were created in a good environment and then abruptly destroyed because the AI only needed to simulate them for a few moments to get whatever information it needed?
I think closer to the latter. Starting a simulated person, running them for a while, and then ending and discarding the resulting state effectively murders the person. If you then start another copy of that person, then depending on how you think about identity, that goes two ways:
Option A: The new person, being a separate running copy, is unrelated to the first person identity-wise, and therefore the act of starting the second person does not change the moral status of ending the first. Result: Infinite series of murders.
Option B: The new person, since they are running identically to the old person, is therefore actually the same person identity-wise. Thus, you could in a sense un-murder them by letting the simulation continue to run after the reset point. If you do the reset again, however, you’re just recreating the original murder as it was. Result: Single murder.
Neither way is a desirable immortal life, which I think is a more useful way to look at it then “happy”.
That it would be wrong. If I had the ability to spontaneously create fully-formed adult people, it would be wrong to subsequently kill them, even if I did so painlessly and in an instant. Whether a person lives or dies should be under the control of that person, and exceptions to this rule should lean towards preventing death, not encouraging it.
What if they were created in a good environment and then abruptly destroyed because the AI only needed to simulate them for a few moments to get whatever information it needed?
What if they were created in a good environment, (20) stopped, and then restarted (goto 20) ?
Is that one happy immortal life or an infinite series of murders?
I think closer to the latter. Starting a simulated person, running them for a while, and then ending and discarding the resulting state effectively murders the person. If you then start another copy of that person, then depending on how you think about identity, that goes two ways:
Option A: The new person, being a separate running copy, is unrelated to the first person identity-wise, and therefore the act of starting the second person does not change the moral status of ending the first. Result: Infinite series of murders.
Option B: The new person, since they are running identically to the old person, is therefore actually the same person identity-wise. Thus, you could in a sense un-murder them by letting the simulation continue to run after the reset point. If you do the reset again, however, you’re just recreating the original murder as it was. Result: Single murder.
Neither way is a desirable immortal life, which I think is a more useful way to look at it then “happy”.
Well—what if a real person went through the same thing? What does your moral intuition say?
That it would be wrong. If I had the ability to spontaneously create fully-formed adult people, it would be wrong to subsequently kill them, even if I did so painlessly and in an instant. Whether a person lives or dies should be under the control of that person, and exceptions to this rule should lean towards preventing death, not encouraging it.