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I was watching a National Geographic program last night while cleaning the kitchen. With hushed narration, it contemplated the future of a brave new world that included androids whose neural net processors would blur, if not erase, the line between natural and artificial intelligence; between humans and humanlike machines. The program went on to pose the question, almost fearfully, of “What does it mean to be human?"
The question stayed with me as I wiped off the counters, put the leftovers away, and turned off the TV. The images of IBM’s Watson beating the best chess and Go players in the world, and a beautiful, helpful, but still kind of creepy android named “Bina48” who self-identifies as “human,” stuck with me throughout the evening, and not in a pleasant way.
But now, at 2:54 AM - according to my very helpful, but not at all human, iPad - the question of what it means to be human seems far less daunting. The answer, in fact, is rather prosaic. Being human is not programmable, because “human-ness" is neither a process or a product. Being human is a feeling. We will never learn to program "compassion." We may well be able to program androids like Bina48 with "artificial compassion," able to mimic compassionate behaviors. And it will be easy to anthropomorphize such creations, as a child imbues a beloved stuffed animal with human qualities. But, until The Velveteen Rabbit actually becomes "real," draws breath, hops about, and feels human emotions all on its own, even the most wondrous of our creations will remain but pale imitations of the glorious entity enclosed within the fragile wrappings of our skin.
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From a behavioral perspective, the distinction you want to make may not be useful. The distinction between compassion and artificial compassion has its human analogue, too.
ReplyDeleteAh, true. We need only think back to the myriad blind dates in our lives when one or both parties were guilty of at least flashes of artificial compassion. As to artificial passion - well, let's not go there 😀
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