Yup. We were joking about it when he was much older, he remembered the event, and remembered legitimately thinking it was a good idea to disuade us. He made a mess, didn’t want to get caught, and thought “I better let them know everything is ok. Then they won’t come check.”

He had spilled something quite badly, I don’t remember what it’s been more than 10 years, but then he had covered it up just as badly in true little kid fashion. Like, vaguely put a piece of paper over it.

My wife and I were hanging out in the living room, and my 5 year old came out and politely said “Mommy, Daddy, I just wanted you to know that nothing is wrong and you don’t need to come into my room.”

Seems like a modern Zeus. Hope so.

I’m very invested in this series

AI development is very different than a standard robot, in that it’s grown more than built. A standard robot is built, given instructions, and you can add ‘don’t hurt humans’ very simply. AI is a big black box in terms of how it really works at a fundamental level, and we’re literally not able to tell it ‘don’t hurt humans’ by nature of how it’s designed. We can (and do) encourage safer behaviors, but it’s more like encouraging a plant to grow in this direction not that direction.

As far as are they human and is it murder? Oof. No, not really at all. Machines are SO alien and different than humans it’s not even a fair comparison. Like, ants are a million times closer to being human than a machine is and may ever be. The critical part is that people will think they’re human, anthropomorphize, and then we’ll have these discussions without the machines ever being human.

I like the way someone described a similar retort:

Anyone can build a bridge that stays up and lasts a long time, but it takes a skilled engineer to build a bridge that just barely stays up a long time and minimizes costs and materials.