Comment Re:deterministic (Score 3, Insightful) 248
I was hoping someone would make this comment - I fully agree. It seems pretty arrogant to presume that just because we are so ignorant of our own internal mechanisms that we don't understand the connection between stimuli and behavior that there is no connection, but I understand that a lot of people like to feel that we are qualitatively "different" and invoke free will and all of these things to maintain a sense that we have a moral right to consider ourselves superior to other forms of life, whatever their basis.
Having RTFA, or scanned it, it seems like the authors are primarily concerned about issues of liability - i.e., if we anthropomorphize these intelligent machines and they hurt someone, we can't sue the manufacturer if their actions aren't firmly planted in the realm of the deterministic and thus ultimately some failure on the part of the designer/creator to prevent these things from being dangerous. Sort of stupid; I'm agnostic (more atheist, really), but this sort of thinking would have us make laws to allow us to sue $deity if somebody got hurt by anything in nature, by analogy, if they could. Pretty typical, though, of the modern climate of "omg think of the children" risk aversion and general need to punish _someone_ for every little thing that happens.