A.I. - Can it really Happen?
Steven Spielberg created the movie Artificial Intelligence, about a little robot boy adopted by two parents whose own child was frozen due to illness. Due to algorithms, the boy had the ability to love, be happy, and fear. Yet is it possible for this to occur in real life? An algorithm is “a rule or procedure that is guaranteed to give a result meeting certain conditions (you just turn the crank and out it pops)” (Haugeland, 41). Thus using an algorithm to produce the emotion of love, fear, and happiness implies that those are set states of being, with certain definable characteristics for each one consistent each time that state is achieved and the same for every human being. To simulate these emotions, though, it’s impossible to “just turn the crank” and produce them. Firstly, love takes many, many forms: sexual love, familial love, material love, on and on. Secondly, within those categories, there are again many variations; within sexual love, for example, people feel passionate love, intimate love, any mix of both that changes over time, and within familial love exists similar patterns, etc. So for humans to believe that we can reproduce real versions of these emotions is absurd, and to use algorithms to do so is just impossible. Haugeland points out that for chess, there are more possible moves than the total number of seconds since the Earth began, and for any formal system to carry out an algorithm to find the right move would take centuries. Given that love, fear, happiness, and emotions in general are much more complicated and intricate than chess games and the possibilities and variations within each emotion are endless, a formal system cannot possibly reproduce, to the same level a human feels, these or any emotions.
Love, happiness, and fear are all merely primary emotions, however; if humanity wants to produce more emotions than that, say the amount that an average human feels on any given day, we have to account for secondary emotions as well. Secondary emotions are much more complicated than primary emotions, especially if attempting to reproduce them. Primary emotions are innate; they are “biological,” so to speak, existing cross-culturally around the world, possible for every human to feel without outside influence. Words for primary emotions appear in every language, which is a good indicator of their universality. Secondary emotions, however, are not all found around the world. They consist of blends of primary emotions: for instance, contempt is equivalent to anger and disgust. Secondary emotions far outnumber primary emotions, and tend to differ for each person each time they experience it (the same is also true for primary emotions, although the former tend to vary quite a lot more than the latter). If an algorithm can’t even reproduce one primary emotion in a reasonable amount of time, there is no way it will be able to produce secondary emotions.
Primary emotions and secondary emotions are all complex and varied, but almost none of them can be felt on command; humans cannot just tell themselves to be happy and then be happy. If that were the case, psychiatrists would be out of business and wars would be a thing of the past. The same must be true then for synthetic emotions; for the emotions to be real, they cannot be programmed into a machine. However, machines, robots, formal systems, whatever the name, none of them can function on their own without being programmed. Thus, by the simple “P-Q” argument, if emotions cannot be programmed, and automatic formal machines cannot function without programs, then automatic formal machines, or robots, cannot feel emotions.
19 Responses to 'A.I. - Can it really Happen?'
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Great points. I have a few questions though. Aren’t our emotions just complex reactions to stimuli? If a robot can realistically comprehend stimuli, then can’t it have emotional reactions. Certain emotions are affected by our past experiences. If a robot can be left on long enough to have some “life” experiences then wouldn’t it be able parallel human emotions in some capacity? Or in other terms: when someone gets a cut, we know what a cut feels like and will feel some emotion in reaction to their cut. If a machine could comprehend what it is like to be cut, then couldn’t it feel an emotion from what it just witnessed?
Dan Pierson
4 Oct 08 at 12:25 am
Hypothetically, your proposal might have some worth. However, emotions are very, very complex reactions to stimuli, and for technology to be able to imitate that means it must be much more advanced than it is now, if ever. And if technology would ever be able to produce such responses, how would it account for secondary emotions, which would be much more complicated than the basic ones? In addition, what about consciousness? Even if the robot could know how to feel emotions, it wouldn’t know what to do with them because it wouldn’t be conscious. Emotions oftentimes cause people to take actions (for example anger often leads to revenge), but robots could never do that because these actions are spontaneous and robots are programmed.
Elena Solomon
5 Oct 08 at 2:22 am
Excellent post! In this comment I want to address Dan’s question of “Aren’t our emotions just complex reactions to stimuli?”. I would guess that if you wanted to over-simplify all emotions down to the fact that: this stimulus comes in therefore this emotion comes out. This seems a really general view of some of the more simplistic emotions. You’re watching a scary movie and something scary is on the screen so you become scared. You’re see someone lose their dog, you feel sadness. While this argument of emotions are based off stimuli seems legitimate, doesn’t it seem to you that emotions can happen that are completely random? If you happen to recall something that happened in your past and made you happy chances are that when you remember it in the future you will have a “happy” reaction to it as well. That emotion did not come from a stimuli but your memory. Originally it may have come from a stimuli but the question I then would ask is: “Do you consider past memories to be stimuli?” I would say memories can be triggered by stimuli but themselves are not stimuli.
JD
5 Oct 08 at 3:54 pm
Supposing a love algorithm is written, and some secondary emotions algorithms as well. The calculating power may seem incomprehensible, but keep in mind how fast technology grows. Not to long ago a 128k computer was amazing, revolutionary. Years later it’s really nothing special. I’ve got a terabyte drive next to me on my desk, but years down the road that won’t be worth $10. The point I’m trying to make is, something may seem incomprehensible right now, but given enough time, technology will continue to grow, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they could calculate these crazy algorithms.
Brad Thompson
6 Oct 08 at 5:13 pm
You bring up a good point. However, no matter how advanced the technology is, Searle’s chinese analogy still stands: even with such an algorithm, the computer would merely be spitting out a set response in response to input. There would be no real comprehension behind it. And true, we can’t know for real whether or not the computer comprehends it unless we are the computer, but we can make a fair inference based on the computer’s lack of ability to freely think.
Elena Solomon
6 Oct 08 at 11:09 pm
Ah Elena, in you comment I agree with you. What you were talking about in the post, I wasn’t sure if you actually thought that emotion algorithms couldn’t be written. Because I think it is very possible for said algorithm to be written. It would be complex and quite long I imagine, but definitely possible. And I imagine that if multiple people were writing multiple codes of emotion for different robots, not all robots would recreate to the same stimuli. They might have different responses depending on their code. But anyway, I do not think the emotions would be ‘real’. While I do not know whether emotions are made real by experience, purely chemical reactions in the brain, or something completely different. Nevertheless, I just don’t think robots would be able to really understand the emotions they are giving off.
Jason Blumstein
7 Oct 08 at 12:02 am
Elena mentions that this cute little robot boy was programmed to fear in addition to being programmed to love, etc. I think this is where the major ethical arguments come into play. Is it within the bounds of human rights and privileges create fear essentially? Because if we are the ones programming the computers, then we are creating these beings. And not only are we responsible for all the good that comes from this, we are also responsible for the bad. So it’s not as if a human just scares a robot, a human would be giving the robot the capacity to fear. It sound like opening up a big Pandora’s box full of chaos and little bit of hope. There’s so much that can go wrong. Is there enough good to outweigh the bad? Because we can’t be sure about the results at this point, and it seems a bit arrogant to believe that we will be able to keep our power in check (2001: A Space Odyssey, anyone? Hal don’t stay docile for long).
Calli Leventis
9 Oct 08 at 2:40 pm
This morality issue is a good point. I don’t know if anyone here has seen the movie, but in it, the mother programs her “son” (the robot boy) to love her and her husband, and only them. The boy has the ability to love and feel some emotions, but these emotions can be directed and controlled by an external force, in this case the ‘mother.’ This also brings up a lot of questions, and in my opinion, is absolutely wrong. The capacity to love should not be able to be controlled or limited; I also believe that the fact that it could be controlled shows its not a real emotion, because how can you control such a complex reaction?
Elena Solomon
9 Oct 08 at 9:07 pm
Well considering that the robot boy wouldn’t be experiencing true love to begin with, it would make sense that it can be controlled to be seen on only the mother and her husband. Due to a simple programming mechanism that would limit the ability of the ‘love’ command to the two people, and make it only usable after the detection of the two recipients of this love.
Or written out in a more program sense:
if person = mom||dad
then love;
Ben Tondera
9 Oct 08 at 9:16 pm
I don’t think you really could program a robot to love, but only to love a limited number of entities. Robotic emotions won’t simply be set to true or false..this is a gross oversimplification of what emotion is. And even if it is somehow a toggle at very basic levels of AI, I see it as horrible to set limits like that. What if your parents didn’t want you dating someone, so they went into your head and made it so you couldn’t love that person? That’s messed up. Terribly unethical and I wouldn’t want anyone to be able to do that to a robot.
Joel Ferm
9 Oct 08 at 9:17 pm
Well Robots cannot reproduce, so why are even discussing if robots can love? Even if they could, to put robots on an equivalent level, they would have to go a ‘baby robot store’ and essentially choose a robot out to take home and treat as a ‘child’ and would lack most features of a human child especially those along the lines of growth and development.
Ben Tondera
9 Oct 08 at 9:30 pm
Why is it if we program a robot to love, I get the feeling we are going to start hearing, marriage is a sacred arrangement between humans. Seriously, am I the only one who doesn’t hear that can of worms opening? Then there is the thing about can robots marry humans. Seriously! I know this is steering the conversation in an unusual direction, but since we are talking about robots and emotions, let us say that robots are then able to have emotions and free will. Should they be able to get married? Should humans be able to marry a robot? Would it still be called marriage? And don’t even get me started on same sex robots!
Jason Blumstein
9 Oct 08 at 9:32 pm
haha nice dude. I think marrying robots is okay, either with each other, or one human and one robot. It does carry lots of parallels to the gay marriage debate in terms of the inability to reproduce, but this scenario also creates a time when robots are essentially independent and that kind of scares me a little, and have evolved beyond workers and task performers, and to me sounds like the human would be the inferior group at this point and time, so I guess the robots could do whatever they want
Ben Tondera
9 Oct 08 at 9:38 pm
You could make that program crazy, and use mom | dad instead of mom || dad…I wonder if that would even compile.
I don’t think love and reproduction have to be closely tied. I love my best friend more than a lot of people, and I don’t even want to try to reproduce with him. Although, I think robots could potentially “reproduce.” What happens if you’ve got a functioning Von Neumann machine that can also pass a turing test? It certainly wouldn’t be sexual reproduction, but it’s still more machines coming from an older one. Sounds like reproduction to me. Even if two robots were required to make a new one, and if somehow the new robot were a blend of the two “parents,” I don’t think a robot would pick a mate based on love. They would be far more logical than that. It’d be like real-life min/maxing!
Joel Ferm
9 Oct 08 at 9:38 pm
Haha robots reproducing. I didn’t even want to touch that…let alone robot sex. But ya while I don’t have a problem with it, I get the feeling that there would be some who would say that it is meant for humans, that they don’t really love each other, etc etc.
Ben you brought up an interesting point about robots ‘evolving’ past us. I think, given the nature of humans, we would do something to prevent this from happening. Whether that be alter their programming, or just block out the sun so they do not have a power source, leading to a long long war. Or who knows, maybe humans and robots could coexist and live in piece.
Jason Blumstein
9 Oct 08 at 9:45 pm
So Min/maxing is just essentially robot eugenics, and I think that could make us have a little bit of a terminator complex. The machines would become so powerful that they would become superior to us, and likely in a robot future with all our scenarios true, I would probably fighting in a war with the machines as they scower the world for resources to make more robots, and we would soon become the minority.
Ben Tondera
9 Oct 08 at 9:48 pm
hahahahahaha… robot sex… robot marriage… i don’t have anything to say to this.
Katherine Anderson
9 Oct 08 at 11:08 pm
Thats one reason that I refuse to believe that there’s a posibility of AI is partly because it scares the shit out of me. The thing is if we really “perfected” AI then theres no way we could defend ourselves from them if they decided to rebel or what ever. They would be able to calculate every move before we made it. Ultimately i think we will be our own undoing on this subject.
Austin Maske
9 Oct 08 at 11:24 pm
Well I was talking to a friend of mine about a half hour ago and he brought up an interesting point. Why would we give robots free will? I mean, the odds probably are that the robot would turn against us. We humans are not very logical at times, whereas a robot wouldn’t be anything but logical. So essentially they would probably turn on us, enslave us, and kill us off. I mean, what is stopping them? Just because they have free will doesn’t mean they’d have emotions. Would we have to instill some kind of fear of god in them to keep them from revolting? Who knows man, who knows.
Jason Blumstein
9 Oct 08 at 11:35 pm