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

by dhw, Monday, August 23, 2010, 17:59 (5014 days ago) @ xeno6696

MATT: Furthermore, if the goal of the machine was to create a sentient and independent entity ... then by definition the designer loses culpability if the machine had fulfilled this requirement.-Yes indeed, but that is the whole point of our discussion. I'm questioning whether such a machine can possibly be independent of its designer. But please don't misunderstand me. This is one of the many subjects I know nothing about, so I'm picking your brains to find out just what is and what isn't feasible. That means questioning whatever seems unclear to me, so I hope you'll remain patient. (I should add, though, that my main interest is not in culpability but in the implications of robotics for the concept of the soul. However, your explanations shed light on both subjects.)-MATT: All the things that make up an individual's personality are built from experience, and as a set of consequences from the actions they take to deal with those experiences.-ALL the things? I can do no more than repeat what I wrote earlier: "a child is born not only with instincts but also with a will of its own and a vast array of inborn characteristics: personal temperament, individualized intelligence, selective memory etc. How it responds to the impressions created by its sensory equipment [for which you can substitute experiences here] will largely depend on these inborn elements [...] Your robot is born with nothing except the programme its designer has given it." -You're quite right when you say that "only by moving through our world and experiencing ... both through what we taught him and he taught himself ... does his knowledge base grow." But our innate capabilities and leanings help to determine how great that knowledge base becomes, and they determine how we use it. Of course experience changes people, but nobody on this earth can tell you the degree to which inborn characteristics and outside circumstances are responsible for the evolution of personality. -Your robot has no inborn characteristics. You have said yourself that a true AI is a tabula rasa. Humans are not. You're again quite right when you say we do not punish the parents for the behaviour of the child, but no parent deliberately implants degrees of willpower, intelligence, memory, sensitivity etc. in the child. Its sentience might be called natural, whereas the robot's sentience has been designed. The parent may be culpable for the upbringing (external), but not for the response to the upbringing (internal), and so one child exposed to alcohol may turn into a drunkard, while another may become a teetotaller. If the designer starts hitting his robot with a hammer, will it just howl and let itself be hammered, or will it fight back? What will dictate its response?