First Robot able to Show Emotion & develop bonds (Humans)

by dhw, Wednesday, August 11, 2010, 14:07 (5217 days ago) @ xeno6696

A robot can learn from the environment, register emotions, form relationships, and be given an individualized set of responses. I asked Matt what light this shed on consciousness and identity, and whether he thought there was any limit to the range of mental activities such robots might eventually achieve.-Many thanks, Matt, for your reply. You think that the mechanism for consciousness lies "not in the mechanics of the brain (neurons, synapses, etc.) but in their collective ability to process information. (The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.)" This is probably the nub of the matter, and links up with both remaining elements of my question. If (a huge "if") a robot could produce all the mental activities ... emotional, intellectual, imaginative, behavioural ... of a human, that would in my view prove that there is no such thing as a "soul", the case for which depends on the neurons, synapses etc. being the receivers and not the producers of consciousness. -If consciousness is the product of our materials, then presumably so too is identity, as what you call "an emergent property of the whole". By "identity", though, I don't just mean what makes you you and me me, but the mechanism that governs the way each of us uses the neurons ... the individual self that both controls and is controlled by the body. You sort of answered my question about the limits when you envisaged a possible scenario in which machines might emulate humans by innovating ideas and developing a sense of self. Even if in the "simplified world of machine intelligence", the "combination of computational and emotional intelligence" has not yet been attempted, it seems to me that Nao is very much a step in that direction. The logical progression would indeed be for machines eventually to become fully sentient, and that would prove that identity is not only dictated by materials, but ceases to exist when they cease to function. (The alternative would be to believe that machines have souls, which I for one would find hard to swallow!) -Of course, this hypothetical scenario would not settle the chance v. design debate, since the robots have been designed, but it would have an enormous impact on the God issue. Without a "soul", there can be no afterlife, and we would be in the same situation as our robots: functioning while the power is on, and thrown on the scrapheap when our various parts are no longer repairable. The existence of a god in a psychic dimension beyond the material world would then become virtually irrelevant to us, except for those who believe that such a being is actively interested in our earthly lives. -With regard to machines being treated as sentient beings, the ethical ramifications are vast. Robot rights are inseparable from robot responsibilities, but is it possible to separate the programme from the programmer? (Current theologians may ponder the same question, and in any case we have never really established the parameters of human responsibility, given the impact of heredity and environment on our identity.) As I said, it's all a huge "if", and perhaps it will remain indefinitely in the realm of science fiction. I'm just trying to clarify the implications, but who knows ... the science and technology of robotics may yet provide the biggest philosophical revolution of them all.