Philosophy 101D

I found the video of the telepathic monkey!

Our final screening will be this Thursday at 7pm in Wohler Hall rm 24. Wohler is directly behind DKH.

We will be watching the documentary Love Machine by Peter Asaro and Doug Matejka. From the press release:

Love Machine considers the social and moral implications of building humanoid robots sophisticated enough to participate in social and emotional roles that are traditionally considered exclusively or even essentially human: friendship, sex and love. The film examines the actual technologies being developed in these directions, and discusses these issues with the people who are pursuing these technologies as well as those who seek to profit from them. It also confronts various social critics, commentators and philosophers of different perspectives in a effort to open a dialogue on what implications these technologies might have for human relationships in the future.

Among those interviewed are:

Roboticists:
Rodney Brooks, Director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
Hans Moravec, Carnegie Mellon University
Gill Pratt, Cynthia Breazeal, and Brian Scassellatti, MIT
Ken Goldberg, University of California, Berkeley.

Philosophers:
Daniel Dennett, Tufts University
Hubert Dreyfus, Univesity of California, Berkeley
Manuel DeLanda, Columbia University and Institute of Advanced Study-Princeton

Sex & Culture Commentators:
Carol Queen, Robert Morgan Lawrence and Lisa Palac
Ernest Green, Editor of Taboo Magazine

Childhood technology-use advocates:
Joan Almon, and Colleen Cordes

and the entrepreneurs building such products as the Sybian and Real Doll and others . . .

I was sent this video by a student I had last semester. Feel free to leave a comment!

Click the link below to see all the videos shown during last week’s movie screening. Comments are appreciated!

Continue Reading »

I hope everyone remembered to read the Kline article “What is technology?” for tomorrow’s class. We will spend most of the time discussing that piece.

Also, please schedule an appointment with me if you’d like to talk about the midterm! I haven’t heard from anyone, so let me repeat: I will be grading the midterm with a very critical eye, so don’t expect an easy grade. I figure that I don’t grade the website material very harshly, and you have plenty of opportunities for extra credit, so I am allowed to be harsh on the tests. Whether you have a few clarification questions or you’d like me to go over a draft, please meet with me to discuss your work. My office hours are right after class, and I have a fairly open schedule if you want to make an appointment.

Also, one last anthropomorphism vid:

Going over the posts, there seem to be a lot of people still of the opinion that machines can only do what they are programmed to do. Maybe this will help to shake that bias. All the machines in this demonstration were evolved using genetic algorithms, which means that their design was not imposed by a human, but are the result of competition for survival by a number of different designs.

You can read more here:

Virtual Evolved Creatures
Genetic Algorithms (Wikipedia)

After watching The Great Robot Race video, I am a little more convinced that robots can think and make judgments. Although, it took many people to build these complex robots over a long period of time and with a lot of money, in the end it was up to the robot to figure out how to make it through the maze. These robots were equipped with many different lasers, cameras, and GPS systems that told them how to take the information given (about the terrain) and decide what action to take in order to not get stuck or run into something. After the first obstacles at the California Speedway where none of the robots made it very far, I did not think that the robots would be capable to drive through a desert. The robots were given tunnels, terrain changes, obstacles such as cones and hay. When combined it took a very ‘knowledgeable’ and skilled robot to make it to the end. The whole time I was watching this movie, however, I just kept thinking of the ethical implications that having such advanced robots would do to our society. On one hand, it would be a great thing to replace military vehicles with a robot that does not have a person inside who is in danger. This type of contribution would greatly help the military especially in this time of war. However, there are other ethical questions that we need to think about before replacing other common items with a robot. Technological advancement can make it possible to have a robot do many things that humans do everyday. Driving to work, assembling a car, or doing household chores can all be done with a robot, which I then wonder if it is such a good thing to be doing. People lose jobs when robots can do it faster and for less money which can hurt thousands of people and their families. Also, if a job is done by a non-human, the person then is not responsible for it anymore (for example, a robot vacuum) which could either lead to more productive things in the human or more lazy behaviors. It’s hard for me to be completely pro-robot but as with any new technology, there are always complications that eventually people look past.

One thing not covered in any of the arguments about artificial intelligence, is the ethics and need for this technology. While it is interesting to know how far human capabilities go as far as engineering something so complex, does this technology provide anything else for the human race?

First of all, artificial intelligence seems to have stemmed from the questions that have long been discussed about what human intelligence is and how it operates. The quest for figuring out how to program a computer to complete human tasks or mimic human behavior, is just part of exploring how our own intelligence works. When it comes to this though, does exploring wires, energy, programming, and rule-based functions really relate to how the human brain works? We still don’t know for sure what is happening in our brains, so how can we compare our brains with how AI technology works? As brought up in the arguments for God’s existence, the strength of this argument is based on how closely related the two systems are (which in this case is very debatable).

If artificial intelligence stems from the ideas of solving how the human mind works, we know why AI has ever come up and is being pursued. But have we ever thought of the ethics behind the decisions we make in this pursue? After we figure out how to make a computer or robot act exactly like a person, what do we do with this technology? Are we going to use them for maintaining jobs that no one wants to do anymore? This would give us more leisure time, but at the same time people can lose jobs to these robots. If they are not used for that, they might be used for companionship. There are robots being made that can recognize facial expressions, etc. If we have these computers that act just as friends, aren’t they really just restraining us from having normal contact with other humans. Our society is already governed heavily by technological mediums. The Internet (and even cell phones), the most recent medium in keeping people in touch with the ‘world’ and loved ones, just makes us prisoner to our own technology. If artificial companions come from this research in AI, we are motivating people to interact less with other humans around them and more with technology. Not good. These are only a few ethical concerns that I have been thinking about when it comes to advancements in artificial intelligence.

Because of class, I’ve been thinking about this movie lately, so I thought maybe we could talk about it.

Bicentennial Man is about a robot named Andrew that starts to display several human-like qualities and his quest to join humanity.

There are several scenes which illustrate the difference between human thought and computer thought.

In one scene, he carves a horse figurine out of driftwood for the little girl. The father asks where he got the horses design from. Andrew says that he didn’t get the designs from anywhere. He just saw the horse in his head, and chipped away the pieces of wood that wouldn’t be part of the statue. The family takes this as one of the many signs that Andrew is not a typical robot. Creating his own design takes creativity and intentionality.

Most of the comedy in the movie comes from Andrew’s initial lack of understanding jokes and language. When the oldest girl says that the chicken “sucks” or tells him to jump, he takes everything literally. When Andrew tries to tell jokes to the family, he rattles off the sentences without pausing between the set-up and punchline and without pausing for laughter. The semantic use of language and comedic timing are both qualities of the mind that only humans can have. Eventually, Andrew will learn to use both, but that’s only because in this fictional world, there’s “just something different” about him.

Has anyone else seen this movie?

I thought this article was interesting, especially considering our latest topic in class. Apparently Japanese scientists have created a robot that can “taste” food.
Japanese unveil robot wine steward

This reminded me of “The Robot Reply” which is part of the Searle article. The argument is: if we put a computer inside a robot which apparently perceives the world around it (through seeing, doing, tasting, etc.) couldn’t we say that the robot really has the ability to understand? Searle says no, because the robot is still just manipulating symbols and facts.

All right, imagine this…. the total Turing test. Scientist build what they claim is an intelligent robot. It can decently carry on a conversation. It can see using cameras and scanning devices. It can taste with a more evolved version of the technology described in the article above. It can also detect sound, touch, and smell.

So… does this robot have a mind like we do?

My instinct tells me no.

The artificial intelligence tests we’ve discussed the most frequently are chess and using language. I don’t think either one of these is particularly good for comparing a computer to the human mind. Chess is a closed, formal system which the computer can play with probability and calculations. Even language can be sort of calculated, because of the structure that comes with grammar. The computer could pick out key words and arrange appropriate responses according to the Subject- Verb- Object foundation.

I think a better test would be analyzing a painting.

Take the robot I’ve described and tell it to say what it thinks the painting means. The robot sees the picture through the camera lens. It scans the painting from top to bottom, picking up on colors, lines and space. Assuming the picture isn’t abstract, the robot might be able to tell you if the subject is a woman, a building, etc.

The robot also might have certain information about paintings and symbolism programmed in, such as: blue is used in sad paintings, or a + shape might somehow allude to crucifixion; but, I don’t believe a robot could ever give an interpretation on what the painting might symbolize, or for that matter, decide whether or not the painting is beautiful. The thought process is too subjective. These decisions can’t be made with the manipulation of symbols.

I realize I’ve given somewhat of an “X- factor” response, but analyzing art is somewhat different from some of the other X-factors listed by Turing. Some of the examples he gives include: falling in love, caring, enjoying strawberries and cream, and having a sense of humor. I agree with Turing’s critics that the human mind is somewhat needed for these abilities, but they don’t necessarily have anything to do with the kind of intelligence that artificial intelligence tries to replicate. Learning art, however, most definitely requires intelligence…. the kind of intelligence computers simply cannot have.

Thoughts on this?

To continue from a previous thread, here are two more videos showing machines in an anthropocentric light.

Here’s another commercial by Wes Anderson you may have seen before:

This next video is very special to me. It’s by David Cronenberg, and I will probably show it again in a future screening:

We are a few weeks away from a discussion of technology, but I thought I’d flag this commercial for later discussion: