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February 11, 2005
Human robots?
A contradiction in terms, surely? Yet, this is a serious question posed by a number of writers recently in newspapers in response to the claim by a Korean programme expert that he had succeeded in creating a virtual robot. Under the banner headline "Can robots ever be human?", one of the national tabloid dailies ran a leading article written by a well respected science editor. His article certainly looked at all the ramifications and even at the science fiction "models" for this but, I think, missed the primary point.
In pointing out that achieving the humanoid, learning, thinking, and "human" robot described in Asimov's books such as "I, Robot" and others we will have created a machine which thinks, not a human being which lives, breathes, eats, sleeps, grows old, and dies. This is the dilemma explored so very well in Star Trek - Next Generation with the Android Lieutenant Commander Data and his constant search to be "human". Robin Williams' protrayal of the sentient robot who eventually finds a way to die like a human is equally educational.
The point which it raises is not "can a robot be human", but what is life? If we define "living" as "sentience" we open up a whole new range of thoughts on the reality of what is alive and what is not. Each step along the way of discovering how the world, the universe, and everything in it actually works and functions, makes us look anew at a range of things like this. Is a plant sentient? Some scientific tests seem to suggest that plants may well be "sentient". Does this mean they think, feel, and respond as we do? Probably not, but whatever it is they do, it seems certain that it would be appropriate to the manner in which they "live". The next question this raises is, of course, if sentience is the measure of "life", then does something which is sentient have a soul? And, if sentience is related to the spiritual concept of "soul", can a machine - such as a sentient robot - have a soul?
Putting this into the concept of the spiritual "soul" which Christians and other believers in God have, does the creation of sentient machines threaten our concept of ourselves as spiritual beings? Probably not, but it certainly means we have to revise our thinking on what makes us who we are and what the soul actually is.
Recently I asked a group of 8 - 14 year olds what they thought the soul was. After we had finished laughing at the usual joke about "the bottom of my shoes, sir", they got down to some serious thinking on this and came up with the definition:"Me, without a body." Now that is pretty good as a definition, but again, we run into the question of "sentience", purely and simply because, in terms of defining myself, I will use measurements which are bounded by and, indeed, determined by, my degree of sentience. Ergo, I am back where I started; is a sentient machine possessed of a soul?
As the science editor has pointed out, the human brain, as indeed the living brain of any sentient animal, is incredibly complex, and we have not yet figured out how, or even why, it functions the way it does. It is a mass of chemical reactions, electrical impulses, and neural pathways which, we think, are different in every individual. We know it malfunctions if the wrong chemicals get to work or if the delicate balances between some chemicals are disturbed - but we don't actually understand why. In a computer, we can create a "neural network" of wires, capacitors, transitors, and microchips, but we cannot, yet, create something which thinks spontaneous thoughts. And, if we could, would this be sentience? Would it be life?
I suggest that the jury is going to be out on this one for some considerable time. We may actually be quite close to creating a machine that is sentient if the Korean professor is right in his "virtual robot" programme which copies human genetic patterns as its base operating system. If we are, someone somewhere had better start getting to grips with the ramifications of a life created by us!
Even for those who claim there is no God, no soul, and no life to come, this is one question which raises some very interesting issues. Should we demand a halt to these experiments? No, I don't think so, for they are a part of evolution and a part of our learning journey.
Let us hope that with the outcome, we actually advance our understanding of both creation and God sufficiently to understand the ultimate question; "What is life?"
Posted by The Gray Monk at February 11, 2005 10:49 AM