Philosophy 101E

Robots Inherit Human Minds

by Hans Moravac, who also appeared in the movie Love Machine screened last week.

Our first tools, sticks and stones, were very different from ourselves. But many tools now resemble us, in function or form, and they are beginning to have minds. A loose parallel with our own evolution suggests how they may develop in future. Computerless industrial machinery exhibits the behavioral flexibility of single-celled organisms. Today’s best computer-controlled robots are like the simpler invertebrates. A thousand-fold increase in computer power in this decade should make possible machines with reptile-like sensory and motor competence. Growing computer power over the next half century will allow robots that learn like mammals, model their world like primates and eventually reason like humans. Depending on your point of view, humanity will then have produced a worthy successor, or transcended inherited limitations and transformed itself into something quite new. No longer limited by the slow pace of human learning and even slower biological evolution, intelligent machinery will conduct its affairs on an ever faster, ever smaller scale, until coarse physical nature has been converted to fine-grained purposeful thought.

I made the point today that we are embodied on the internet. I hadn’t planned to discuss this, so my response was a bit scattered (stream of consciousness, heh). Let me try to make it a bit clearer:

We are embodied on the internet. Technology doesn’t simply extend our capacities, but it also changes the kinds of environments in which we act. This in turn changes the kinds of actions that are required for engaging in those environments. Sometimes this results in actions that are very different from the kinds of behaviors we make while engaging nature, but that doesn’t make them any less engaged actions.

It is harder for Dreyfus to make his arguments about technology stick now days, because the technology we use today is literally engaging our bodies in ways it never could before. Take a look at any video on YouTube that shows people using the Wii. These people are clearly engaged with their whole bodies.

But there is a sense in which the Wii example is too easy and superficial. I think it is better to think of the skill required to navigate any complicated website or program. Think about people who use Photoshop, or Final Cut, or any other big, complicated program. It is impossible to doubt that there is a learned skill involved in using this kind of software. It is something that requires practice and training; its the kind of thing that some people are better at than others. But Dreyfus’ argument is that skills are acquired through the use of the body. If he’s right, then we must be embodied when we are using these programs.

Or think about all the social rules and norms involved in interacting with any online community- your favorite message boards; Facebook; MySpace; Wikipedia; this blog. These are all very complicated social environments. We all have some sense of what is appropriate for these environments, and what is inappropriate, and how to behave. Some people do it better than others. MySpace is full of social cues- music, backgrounds, images, links, friends, etc. MySpace is just like a fashion accessory to your online identity.

If these places on the Internet are really environments that take skill to navigate, then you must conclude that we are embodied on the internet. If that’s the case, then the Internet doesn’t pose a threat to our humanity. At most it poses a threat to our current understanding of ourselves and our environment, because in a real sense it changes what we are, and what we interact with. But that doesn’t undermine our humanity; it reaffirms it.

Facebook and MySpace users aren’t examples of people who despise the body, or who think that the body is obsolete. They are people who desperately want to integrate these new possibilities and forms of expression into their lives. They are people who want to make their online identity real and meaningful and relevant. They are people who are trying to find a stable social environment, not just as an abstract mind or identity, but as a real person.

     When I first heard that we were going to have to read a book about how humans are cyborgs, I immediately thought that this was going to be a book that I would hate reading.  Men as machines is something that just does not appeal to me, and I thought that reading about it would be boring.  However, after reading the first chapter of Natural-Born Cyborgs, I found myself completely agreeing with Clark.  I think what made me agree with Clark was the way he used wording in his book.  He doesn’t simply say that men are machines, rather what Clark argues is that technology constitutes “”a cascade of mindware upgrades”: cognitive upheavals in which the effective architecture of the human mind is altered and transformed”.  What makes us cyborgs is the fact that our use of technology has become so crucial in our lives that it has changed the way our brains function and made it harder to distinguish what is human intelligence from what is human intelligence aided by technological tools. 

     Clark gives the cell phone as an example of how we have become cyborgs.  He discusses how we all get so wrapped up in text messaging and talking on the phone with others that we often seem to be leading divided lives.  On the one hand, we are in the space that we are physically occupying, but on the other hand, our minds are with the people that we are talking to.  I know that when I am talking to someone on the phone, my mind gets completely wrapped up in that conversation that I sometimes lose sight of where I actually am.  The same thing happens when I am texting with someone.  Physically I may be in class, but mentally I am with that person and focused on whatever it is that we are talking about.  Another way that I think my cell phone has become a part of me is just the fact that when I don’t have it with me or within my reach, I feel as if a part of me is missing.  I never feel comfortable when I don’t have my phone because I feel as though any communication that I have with the world has been totally cut off.  In reality this is not the case, but I rely on my phone so much to communicate with others that I feel as if it is my only means of communication with the world.

     The cell phone is one example among many that Clark gives, but I think it is the one that stands out the most and that almost all of us can probably relate to.  I doubt that I am the only one that feels lost without a cell phone and that relies on it for so many parts of my life.  I think that with all of the advancements in technology that have happened and are happening at this very moment, it is almost inevitable for us to become so integrated with it.  We have become one with technology in so many ways that we can no longer really doubt that we are what Clark refers to as natural-born cyborgs. 

We discussed in class about how Dreyfus thought that technology could possibly cause us to lead lives without meaning. Daniel summed up Dreyfus’s views by saying something along the lines of whatever hugs do for people, e-hugs will never be able to. I think Dreyfus meant for this statement to be hypothetical, but with advances in technology, the actual idea of an e-hug is becoming more and more plausible.

The appropriately named company CuteCircuit has several projects in the works that attempt to make technology more user friendly. Most of their projects incorporate some type of computing device into clothing. In this sense, we are coming that much closer to being one with technology, as Clark thinks. The most interesting and pertinent piece that they are working on now is the Hug Shirt. This is their description:

“The Hug Shirt is a shirt that makes people send hugs over distance! Embedded in the shirt there are sensors that feel the strength of the touch, the skin warmth and the heartbeat rate of the sender and actuators that recreate the sensation of touch, warmth and emotion of the hug to the shirt of the distant loved one.”

You can send and receive hugs through normal cell phones. The shirt “encodes” the hug before sending it out to whomever you choose. While this won’t be exactly like a real hug, it’s the next best thing to receiving a real one when you’re restrained distance. It’s a warm gesture that expresses how one feels. Besides, it’s the thought behind the action that really counts.

In addition, Cisco System has developed a conference system called TelePresence. It promises to bring people together even across great distances. The video pretty much explains everything.

With these new technologies emerging, we can now find out what their true potentials really are instead open ended debates with no resolution. Even though these existing technologies may not be able to prove Dreyfus wrong, we will be able to learn from these devices’ shortcomings and continually improve upon them. Maybe someday, e-hugs will be able to do whatever real hugs can.

Clark quotes Kevin Warwick in chapter 1 of “Natural Born Cyborgs” as saying: “I was born human. But this was an accident of fate - a condition merely of time and place. I believe it’s something we have the power to change.

This is a very interesting, though slightly pessimistic view of humanity. My first reaction was to question what was so wrong with humanity that we would rather change that fact and be cyborgs, which is implicated as clearly better. As I read on however, I discovered that Clark’s as well as Warwick’s opinion of cyborgs and our gradual and inevitable morph into them really depends on definition. As Clark acknowledges, his cat with a chip imbedded under his skin may not be considered “as much” of a cyborg as someone with a special hearing aid that connects directly to the brain stem. I will admit that I am much more willing to accept the positives of nonbiological devices improving humanity and turing us into cyborgs if they go deeper into the realm of “humanity.” The examples Clark uses to explain the extensive use of these nonbiological devices, pacemakers, chips, hearing aids, nerve implants, and more, demonstrate that the argument can be made just as easily for the other side as it can for Clark’s. I think this is important to realize as you are reading.

Also, as clark says, “We resonate with terror, excitement, or both to the idea of ever-deeper neural and bodily implants in part because we sense some rough-and-ready correlation between depth-of-interface and such transformative potentials”

I agree with this statement. It seems to me that he is saying that the grander the fix provided by the nonbiological device and the deeper it delves into what we see as the essences of humanity, the more likely we are to accept it. Clearly, the idea that those essences are fixable through human ‘technology’ will not sit easily with most at first because we are very set in our “belief that there is something absolutey special about the cognitive machinery that happense to be housed within the primitive bioinsulation of skin and skull.” However I agree with Clark in the fact that they may not be a valid belief, and is really one we should shy away from because we have proved time and time again that we can create certain technology that really does improve even that deepest sense of humanity: the brain. If we can manipulate the brain using nonbiological devices, I think Clark’s ideas of humans as natural born cyborgs are entirely feasible; it really depends on definition, and I think we, as humans, match that which Clark provides.

This post is just initial thoughts and impressions from the first couple chapters of Natural-Born Cyborgs. When I purchased the book I was assumed the focus was on electronic gadgets implanted into the body, such as pace-makers, cochlear implants, muscle stimulators/relaxors. He actually makes it his point NOT to talk about such things.

Clark spends the first two sections talking about how humans were cyborgs way before we ever had a pacemaker installed to regulate heart beats. The incorporation of technology into ours bodies does not have to be as concrete implanting something battery operated using surgery. Clark says that everytime we interface with any form of technology, that is the same as the well-imagined cyborg presented in sci-fi movies. Using a computer, writing down notes using a pen and paper, driving a car- all examples of cybernetic incorporations. This ability to interface with an infinite amount of different technologies is also what makes us different than the rest of the animal kingdom. The only exceptions would be the use of primitive tools by some mammals, but I think the degree of difference between using a stick to gather ants and using a cars with thousands of moving parts and electrical circuits obviously still separates us from animal tool-users. It is an interesting take on technology. But after thinkking about it, it doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch. Technology doesn’t have to be inside our skin to be integrated in our lives. Clark makes this point using cel phones as an example. It has become such a dominant part of everyday life. Many people keep it on there person at all times. Some have a bluetooth headset in their ear at all times. There is a slang term in Finland that refers to the cell phone as an “arm extension.” I would have to agree that many forms of technology are becoming so “everyday” that it would be hard to argue that they are not a part of us.