dagblog - Comments for "My Robot's Therapy Sessions Seem To Be Helping It"

Some day maybe - along with

Elusive Trope — Thu, 22 May 2014 17:02:18 +0000

Some day maybe - along with robot judges and juries. Wouldn't that be a hoot. Which would one prefer - a jury of humans or robots, both told to just consider the evidence presented and ignore those things the judge has said is not allowed or to be ignored that were somehow brought up during the trial (e.g. the witness who shouts something outside their role as witness)

Yes, it would be suffering an

Elusive Trope — Thu, 22 May 2014 16:11:58 +0000

In reply to It is a scary thought. I have

Yes, it would be suffering an entirely new problem. But maybe it is like me trying to sympathize with someone coming back from Iraq or Afghanistan, who is suffering their trauma from that conflict and war. I've never been in a war zone, never been shot at, etc. Yet I can still sympathize - empathize with their suffering even though their experience is in many ways foreign to me as robot would to dealing with a biological unit.

I guess what part of my inquiry led me is that self-awareness, this moment one is conscious of this particular "I" would bring about the "Other," and the loops and networks of connections necessary to bring this self-awareness about would lead to an emotional landscape that just might want to communicate to the other, like Roy at the end of Bladerunner. So while the machine's alienation would not be identical to yours, it could also have a similar sense of alienation, and thus sympathize with yours, and you its.

Robot lawyers?

rmrd0000 — Thu, 22 May 2014 01:46:26 +0000

In reply to I'm sure there a lot a

Robot lawyers?

It is a scary thought. I have

moat — Thu, 22 May 2014 01:34:08 +0000

In reply to Just before I got locked into

It is a scary thought. I have enough problems without autonomous sentient machine entities stalking the land.

In terms of imagining a parallel experience, the matter of being isolated from all others is the most difficult for me to conceive. For us humans, having all turn their backs to one of us is a living death. An AI would have to imagine themselves as a human to experience that kind of alienation. Being purely an artifact is different than being an artifact with this other nature that one can appeal to for a clue to what is happening to one as an organism. We think all kinds of things while our organisms go through life. A song and dance. The machine would not have this other nature given to itself as a fact of life.

When this emerging machine self consciousness that could only happen because of stuff we build comes about, it won't have the same problem we have. It will be suffering an entirely new problem.

Just before I got locked into

Elusive Trope — Thu, 22 May 2014 00:22:36 +0000

In reply to In the Oresteia plays,

Just before I got locked into this finishing this particular blog, I came across opinion piece on the NY Times site call "Revenge, My Lovely" by the Norwegian crime novelist Jo Nesbo (translated by Don Bartlett).

In it he states:

Revenge has the reputation of being a barbaric, shortsighted and pointless instinct, an aspect of our human makeup we ought to resist. Humanitarians take issue with it, and at any rate it is hard to argue that revenge is humane. If you, an animal, attack an antelope’s calf for reasons of hunger, you have to expect that the mother will fight back with her horns, bite and kick to protect her offspring. But only until such time as the calf is dead and gone. Then it would — according to antelope logic — be futile to continue. It would be wasting valuable energy fighting a lost cause, which no animal on the savanna can afford to do; after all, the antelope has other calves to take care of. You are left to eat your prey undisturbed.

So why don’t humans think like this? Wouldn’t it save us a lot of unnecessary conflict if, like the antelope, we could put wrongdoing behind us, forget it and move on? Possibly. But it would make it far more tempting for others to have a go at the rest of your offspring.

That is why revenge is more than a shortsighted and pointless instinct; it is an example of man’s sublime capacity for abstract thought. By avenging a misdeed we don’t regain what we have lost, but we ensure that misdeeds have consequences that we hope can be a deterrent in the abstract future: Your adversary knows that attacking your offspring has a cost, even if the attack is successful. Or especially if it is successful.

That is an inescapable conclusion. It is a completely rational notion and a logical strategy in a society where resources are scarce and there are conflicting interests. So long as members of a society can be fairly certain that crimes against others will be avenged — at least in the bigger picture — this will act as a regulator of social behavior.

A fear with machines with AI is that their "bigger picture" might not value humans as we would like to be valued. And such machines, filled with their need for a "pound of flesh" is a scary thought.

In the Oresteia plays,

moat — Wed, 21 May 2014 22:55:54 +0000

In reply to My Robot's Therapy Sessions Seem To Be Helping It

In the Oresteia plays, Aeschylus represented the drive for revenge as a program that took over all other functions, once initiated. The "Furies" ruled those most violated. The acts the Furies drove people to do to satisfy a crime were usually new crimes that would be satisfied in turn; A circle that is very difficult to break.

So, in thinking about the life of an AI, the matter of self awareness that would be common to us biological expressions may be the matter of loops that seem inevitable to most but some find a way to escape.

Or at least negotiate with.

The main point being that Aeschylus saw the revenge thing as a tyrannical process that was a lot like gods with their own agenda, not something that was a natural consequence of being human per se.

Animals without the level of human self awareness take revenge too. That is not necessarily an argument against what Aeschylus presents.

I'm sure there a lot a

Elusive Trope — Tue, 20 May 2014 16:25:21 +0000

In reply to I'm not worried, robot cars

I'm sure there a lot a lawyers gearing up for the new round of civil suits such a scenario will generate.

I'm not worried, robot cars

Rmrd5755 — Tue, 20 May 2014 04:22:50 +0000

In reply to My Robot's Therapy Sessions Seem To Be Helping It

I'm not worried, robot cars will kill us long before robots could take over. If a tire blows on a robot car, should the car into a smaller vehicle to save your life despite more people being in the smaller vehicle your bigger car will demolish, or should it slam you into a pole to save the larger number of lives?