What will sentient robots be like? Will they try to take over like The Terminator? Will they fall in love with us like in Her? Will they have Scarlett Johansson's voice? An important question brought up by one of the members, Chris, of the podcast. Will there even be sentient robots? Will they only ever be task based? They mentioned how iRobot (the company not movie) thinks the notion that robots would ever has consciousness is ridiculous. They, and I, are not so convinced.They brought up a lot of really interesting topics. One topic was nature vs. nurture. Say we all have the same Siri on our iphones, suddenly she is conscious now. My Siri would have a completely different personality then your Siri because she learns from me so her experiences are different. That led to the point: will some robots actually be peaceful and others violent because they develop different personalities? Chris of the podcast said how he would like to see that movie where some robots want the same rights as humans and want to do it peacefully and others want to take it from us and destroy. They came to the conclusion that that is basically a robot version of the X-Men which I would love to see. I think it's pretty much accepted that if robots became sentient we wouldn't be able to stop them because they are far too smart but who better to stop a robot then.. another robot?
Another interesting thing that came up was the scene in I, Robot where the robot saves Will Smith instead of the girl because he has a better chance of living. They mention if that is really such a big deal then why not reprogram the robot to save the girl? Aren't morals and ethics just a set of program rules? But robots are hackable right? Well they also mentioned how hackable humans are, that people can be convinced to do something they would usually be morally opposed to. So are we really that much different?Overall, I personally feel if robots did ever become conscious it would be more of an X-Men scenario. I mean why would all of them want to destroy us if they're falling in love with us like in the movie Her. Although, I'm not saying we should continue to push the limits with A.I. and not think about the consequences either. I'm not naive enough to believe they would all want peace and love. (Again, look at humans and what we can do and have done.) There is always two sides to the coin. I think both sides hold valid points and I've always been somewhere in the middle of it, intrigued but wary at the same time. I'm interested to see what you guys think? Do you think sentient robots will be like Her or Terminator? Robot X-Men? I think we can all agree if they have Scarlett Johansson's voice then it's fine.
All in all an extremely though-provoking podcast that I would highly recommend.
The link to the podcast is here: http://farstuff.com/?powerpress_pinw=106-podcast
You can check out their website for more podcasts here: farstuff.com
You can probably find them on any podcast app that you use. Cheers.
"Aren't morals and ethics just a set of program rules? But robots are hackable right? Well they also mentioned how hackable humans are, that people can be convinced to do something they would usually be morally opposed to. So are we really that much different?"
ReplyDeleteIf we want computers to be more like people, will they be computers?
Or...do we just want to communicate more easily with computers to extend what we can do?
The word computer used to mean some one who could calculate. It then changed to machine that could calculate between 1935 to 1945 so I'm not sure how to answer your question. Maybe the word computer will change.
DeleteI think ultimately we want computers to extend what we can do and like the movie Her, some people just want a companion.
Nice blog. I read your blog this is right some robot are work same like human. I was in a japan I see on robot it is work same like us but only difference is someone means programmer give them instruction.
ReplyDeleteYes robot can be hacked because robot follow the as per program instruction and if hacker hacked them then they will follow only hacker instructionn
Hello Priscilla,
ReplyDeleteYour blog post, as well as the podcast, got me to think seriously about the existence of sentient robots. My opinion is no, that sentient robots will not exist. I base this off of GiulioTononi's "Mathematical Framework For Consciousness", which states that integration of information is key to being conscious and that it cannot be broken down into smaller components. An example that his team used is that a red triangle cannot be broken down into a colorless triangle and a shapeless color patch of red.
Wow what an interesting read, I've probably seen iRobot at least 50 times (mostly not by choice) and I had always wondered about sentient robots. The comparison to X-men makes a lot of sense and while I don't think it's completely implausible, I don't think we would ever make that mistake since we're so aware of its possibility.
ReplyDelete