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Flórez Quintero, D. T., & García Duque, C. E. (2024). Is the Fear that Machines Might Become our Masters Philosophically Well Grounded?. Revista Guillermo De Ockham, 22(2), 117–133. https://doi.org/10.21500/22563202.7014
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Abstract

In this work, we critically analyze some fictional scenarios that support the thesis that, eventually, machines will reach the total domain of the world, including human beings, besides developing the arguments that reject such a thesis. To that end, we divide this paper into four parts. In the first one, we undergo an exercise of conceptual clarification of the essential terms for this discussion, among them “empirical possibility,” “logical possibility,” “machine,” and “dominance.” In the second part, we discuss the most popular plots in fictional film and literature, in particular, the argument of the overwhelming evidence, which supposedly shows that machines already dominate us. In the third part, as a reply to those arguments, we give a synthesis of some of the reasons which support the thesis of the empirical impossibility that machines might become our masters. Finally, we formulate the argument of the logical inconsistency and the epistemic inconsistency or the scenario of the machine’s government on the planet Kepler 452b, and we show that the fear that machines become the masters of the world is not philosophically well grounded.

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