Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Will your iPal robot friend have feelings?

#1
C C Offline
https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/frien...out-brains

EXCERPT: . . . I bring home my new Apple iPal (as the ads said, “Everybody needs a pal!”): a humanoid robot designed to provide companionship to lonely people. The robot has a pleasant and responsive face, moves easily without mechanical jerks, converses fluently about standard topics, has a surprising sense of humor, and offers informed and sympathetic advice about my job and personal life. [...] my iPal relates memories of our time together, expresses joy or sorrow about things that happen to us, and sometimes talks sincerely about how much our relationship means. I don’t forget that I’m interacting with a robot—a machine, not a human being—but I find myself thinking that this is someone who does care about me, and about whom I have come to care—not just a pal, but a friend. If we really are friends, how could my friend, even though a machine, not be a person?

But here we need to be careful. An iPal is a computer. Can computers actually think? [...] thinking in this sense can just be a kind of high-level functioning. It’s another question whether iPals’ calculations are accompanied by a subjective awareness of what they’re doing. Maybe, like math calculators, they generate output without being literally aware of doing the calculations or of what the calculations mean.

But even if we allow that my iPal is somehow aware of the intellectual functions it performs, there’s the much more important question of whether it has the sensory and emotional experiences human beings have. Here once again we need to distinguish between functioning and awareness. We may say that an electric “eye” that opens a door when someone approaches “sees” that person. But we don’t think there’s any seeing going on in the literal sense of an internal, subjective awareness. [...]

What I need, then, is to find out if my iPal is actually aware: whether it has the internal, subjective experiences that go on when we are thinking, perceiving with our five senses, or feeling emotions or pain. Here my question converges with a famous philosophical conundrum, the problem of other minds.

[...] Why would such a bizarre problem occur to me? Because I have direct introspective access to my own inner experiences, but not to those of anyone else. I can just “see” (though not with my eyes) that I am thinking it’s going to rain, looking at an interesting face, or feeling a pain in my knee. Introspection can, of course, be unreliable [...] Yet even if I’m sometimes wrong about the nature of my inner experiences, I can at least be sure that I’m having them. I have no such direct knowledge that other people have an inner life.

[...] But as I get to know my iPal, the problem of other minds becomes highly relevant. Here is a case in which I might well decide there is just no mind there. But how to make the decision?

We might think that a decision isn’t needed. Why should it matter whether my iPal has subjective experience? But it matters enormously—first because causing others unnecessary pain is a major way (if not the only way) of acting immorally. If iPals can suffer, then we have a whole set of moral obligations that we don’t have if they can’t suffer.

But it also—and especially—matters for the question of whether a robot could really be my friend.[...] Friends feel with and for one another; they share one another’s joys and sufferings. In this key respect, a robot without subjectively experienced feeling could not be my friend. How could I know that my iPal actually has subjective experiences?

[...] We’re left, then, with a new version of the problem of other minds. Is there any way to tell whether a robot (something not governed by the laws of human neuroscience) has inner subjective experiences? Unlike the traditional problem, this may soon be a matter of pressing practical importance....

MORE (details): https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/frien...out-brains
Reply
#2
confused2 Offline
Hm. My experience of 'most people' is that they are set on transmit. All you have to do is listen. Occasionally they will prompt for "Are you listening to me?"
"Oh Jeez yes this is the most fascinating thing I've heard since forever."
And they are happy.
Reply
Reply
Reply


Possibly Related Threads…
Thread Author Replies Views Last Post
  Scientists teach a robot when to have a sense of humor + Maillardet's Automaton C C 0 118 Sep 15, 2022 05:54 AM
Last Post: C C
  Experiments reveal why human-like robots elicit uncanny feelings C C 2 209 Sep 12, 2020 11:57 PM
Last Post: Syne
  A.I. will cut 200,000 bank jobs + The ‘feelings economy’: Make your job AI proof C C 1 290 Oct 10, 2019 04:40 AM
Last Post: Syne
  Will you lose your job to a robot? C C 8 598 Sep 23, 2019 11:18 PM
Last Post: Syne
  The body is the missing link for AI + Rogue robot death + The Robot Protocol C C 0 558 Mar 16, 2017 12:32 AM
Last Post: C C



Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)