Speaker 1: Brought to you by Toyota. Let's go places. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Forward Thinking, either everybody, and welcome to Forward Thinking, the
Speaker 1: podcast that looks at the future and says, a mechanical
Speaker 1: brain and a mechanical heart. My reflex is good and
Speaker 1: my vision is sharp, but I'm still missing one critical part,
Speaker 1: and it's you. I'm Jonathan Strickland and I'm Joe McCormick,
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, guys, Uh, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you if you actually saw the episode of Forward Thinking
Speaker 1: that I did for Valentine's Day, but um, you know,
Speaker 1: love was in the air. I saw it, did you, Yeah?
Speaker 1: I was. That was a fun one, talking about the
Speaker 1: concepts of romance and love, the future of it, and
Speaker 1: especially the future as it relates to artificial intelligence and robots.
Speaker 1: So I think we should try to do our best
Speaker 1: to bring as much dignity as possible to this discussion
Speaker 1: and not let it just devolve into t he and uh, well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's there's a lot of there's a
Speaker 1: lot of uh, really challenging things to tackle here on
Speaker 1: multiple levels, from a technology standpoint, from a social standpoint,
Speaker 1: from a cultural standpoint. I mean, there are you know,
Speaker 1: First of all, we have to keep in mind, bottom level,
Speaker 1: there are very real people with real emotions that are
Speaker 1: are all wrapped up in this topic. And so it's
Speaker 1: you know, we're gonna try and be respectful of everybody,
Speaker 1: but at the same time, you have to admit that
Speaker 1: some of the concepts we're talking about to the average
Speaker 1: person might seem really alien to them or even ridiculous.
Speaker 1: And and we're we're absolutely not trying to mock anyone
Speaker 1: who who has, you know, these sort of feelings exactly.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's we're trying, Like I said, being
Speaker 1: respectful is going to be one of those things we're
Speaker 1: gonna try and do throughout here. That doesn't mean we're
Speaker 1: not going to make a joke here and there, because
Speaker 1: we are who we are, all of us are a
Speaker 1: little bit. But it's more about being lighthearted. We're not
Speaker 1: poking fun at anyone. Now. First of all, this is
Speaker 1: a concept that is often used in lots of science fiction.
Speaker 1: I mean, we've seen various films and stories as well
Speaker 1: as uh, you know, television series, everything that you can
Speaker 1: think of that have explored this idea of a human
Speaker 1: person falling in love with a synthetic being. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a it's a really classic troop um. It goes
Speaker 1: back at least to Heleno Lloyd, which is a short
Speaker 1: story by one Lester del Rey or Bradberry's Marionettes, inc.
Speaker 1: From Yeah, I even go further back because if you
Speaker 1: look at at Mythology and you look at Ovid's Metamorphoses,
Speaker 1: the story of Pygmalion is very similar to kind of
Speaker 1: the stuff we're talking about, and that Pigmalion, a sculptor,
Speaker 1: builds a statue and he falls in love with his creation,
Speaker 1: which is eventually given life by the goddess Aphrodite. And
Speaker 1: so this is not that different from what we're going
Speaker 1: to talking about. You go even further back than that.
Speaker 1: There's a weird science right, Yeah, that predates all of
Speaker 1: its metamorphoses because that was in the eighties and everything
Speaker 1: came after that, or just this year that that movie
Speaker 1: her Spike Jones short came out yep, yep. And so
Speaker 1: there are a lot of different choices that we could
Speaker 1: you know, I actually listed one, uh making Mr Wright,
Speaker 1: which was I don't know, did you guys ever see
Speaker 1: that movie? Okay, this is one of those movies that
Speaker 1: I just remember coming on television all the time, like
Speaker 1: in the maybe it was the late eighties or perhaps
Speaker 1: the early nineties, and it started John Malkovich as a
Speaker 1: scientist who builds a robot, and the robot's purpose is
Speaker 1: to be sent out for into the outer Solar System
Speaker 1: to do you know, uh, astronomical studies. But a woman
Speaker 1: ends up falling in love with the robot, and the
Speaker 1: robot ends up developing emotions. It's already artificially intelligent, but
Speaker 1: now it's actually become conscious and self away, air and
Speaker 1: emotional and ultimately spoiler alert for anyone who hasn't seen
Speaker 1: this movie, which was out, you know, more than a
Speaker 1: couple of decades ago, uh, the scientist character, the human
Speaker 1: scientist ends up taking the place of the robot and
Speaker 1: goes out into outer space because he feels more at
Speaker 1: home by himself. He's the ultimate introvert, and the robot
Speaker 1: ends up assuming the identity of the human scientist on Earth. So, uh,
Speaker 1: you know this this is one of those ideas that
Speaker 1: has been explored multiple times. Sure. We we've also on
Speaker 1: a less romantic and perhaps more straightforward level, have the
Speaker 1: example of Jude Law's character subtly named Giggolo Joe from
Speaker 1: AI Artificial Intelligence. Right, and so there we have a
Speaker 1: robot whose specific purpose, at least in the context of
Speaker 1: that film, is to be like a pleasure but something
Speaker 1: along those lines, something that's there for physical pleasure. And
Speaker 1: in fact, you know, in the short term, that's really
Speaker 1: what we're talking about here, because we just haven't reached
Speaker 1: a point where in the artificial intelligence field we can
Speaker 1: create something as deep and compelling as a robot that
Speaker 1: can realistically simulate emotions on a consistent basis. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: can't imagine that even the best artificial intelligence chat bought
Speaker 1: today could really make you fall in love with its personality,
Speaker 1: right right, Her is definitely a science fiction movie in
Speaker 1: that way. Of course, that doesn't mean that there aren't
Speaker 1: already some some people who are developing emotional connections to
Speaker 1: human like dolls. There have been a few pretty sensationalistic documentaries,
Speaker 1: for example, about people who have married their real dolls, right,
Speaker 1: and by married, we should point out that that's there's
Speaker 1: a huge quotation marks because it's it's not legal to
Speaker 1: marry an inanimate object, um and and as and as
Speaker 1: much as these people have a emotional connection to to
Speaker 1: those to those dolls and have backstories and names and
Speaker 1: whole lives with them. They it is not a legally
Speaker 1: sanctioned kind of relationship. And it's also when you think
Speaker 1: about it, it's it's one person fulfilling both roles, at
Speaker 1: least on an emotional level, uh, in a relationship. Because
Speaker 1: these dolls have no artificial intelligence, the ones we're talking about,
Speaker 1: I think they're just like rigid things, aren't they. Well,
Speaker 1: rigid might be the wrong one for they don't they
Speaker 1: don't talk. No, they don't talk. They don't have any
Speaker 1: they're they're not motorized. Right, So, so you've got these,
Speaker 1: you know, any any sort of emotional involvement is something
Speaker 1: that's being developed wholly by one side of this equation. Right,
Speaker 1: there's not any sort of emotional response coming from the doll.
Speaker 1: Doesn't mean that the emotions are any less real, let's
Speaker 1: be clear about that. But it's different from the kind
Speaker 1: of relationships where we are talking about two people who
Speaker 1: are reciprocating some sort of emotional involvement. Sure, there's one
Speaker 1: of the frequent interviewees in in these kind of documentaries
Speaker 1: is a man who calls himself Dave Kat who's married
Speaker 1: to a real doll, and and a quote from him
Speaker 1: that I found really interesting about his relationship with his
Speaker 1: his real doll wife sador And I'm not positive that
Speaker 1: that's the correct pronunciation, but but but at any rate, um,
Speaker 1: he said, a synthetic as in, a synthetic doll will
Speaker 1: never lie to you, cheat on you, criticize you, or
Speaker 1: otherwise be disagreeable. It's rare enough to find organics who
Speaker 1: don't have something going on with them, and being able
Speaker 1: to make a partner of one is rarer still, which
Speaker 1: is tells us a lot more about him than necessarily
Speaker 1: the uh this relationship, right, I mean, it's that there
Speaker 1: might be some elements there for some people who fear
Speaker 1: having an emotional relationship for fear of any kind of rejection,
Speaker 1: which I mean that's natural obviously. I think just about
Speaker 1: everyone has had at least one experience where they were
Speaker 1: afraid of some form of emotional rejection at some point
Speaker 1: in their lives. And so for some people that fear
Speaker 1: can be incredibly powerful, absolutely, and so maybe something like
Speaker 1: this would allow them to explore an emotional relationship that, again,
Speaker 1: to them, is just as real as any relationship I
Speaker 1: might have with another person without that that that obstacle
Speaker 1: in the way, right. I thought it was interesting point
Speaker 1: of view of of just kind of wrapping up that
Speaker 1: that entire concept of how difficult it is sometimes to
Speaker 1: have a human partner, and that therefore this could be
Speaker 1: a good emotional substitute for some people. It's It's also
Speaker 1: been suggested by some researchers that there was a report
Speaker 1: done out of the University of Wellington in New Zealand
Speaker 1: that robots could really help clean up the sex industry,
Speaker 1: helping solve a lot of currently existing problems like human
Speaker 1: trafficking and all kinds of s T I S. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, this is one of those things where you're,
Speaker 1: you know, for some people, uh there there they may
Speaker 1: be saying, well, now you're you're substituting one vice for another.
Speaker 1: But you know, again, this is this is really complex
Speaker 1: just because your own personal point of view that match
Speaker 1: someone else's, you know, you gotta try and distance yourself
Speaker 1: from it. The point with Dave kat though some of
Speaker 1: those interviews, um, he can sometimes like it's it's The
Speaker 1: interviews I read were very telling to me because he
Speaker 1: would talk about the experiences he would have with his
Speaker 1: He actually has two dolls, I believe, or at least
Speaker 1: one of the interviews that talked about the time. At
Speaker 1: the time of the interview, I think he had plans
Speaker 1: to purchase more, but had two at the time, right, So,
Speaker 1: and he would talk about how he would pose them
Speaker 1: for pictures or whatever and and or sit down with
Speaker 1: them on the couch. It didn't sound like it was
Speaker 1: um any kind of and he had invented a backstory,
Speaker 1: actually two different backstories for each of them, but it
Speaker 1: didn't sound like there was any kind of relationship there
Speaker 1: in the traditional sense. Right. It didn't seem like he
Speaker 1: was sharing anything other than a short amount of time
Speaker 1: with them. And he was very forthcoming about, you know,
Speaker 1: what he was doing with these ships dolls. So you know,
Speaker 1: but again, for certain people, maybe that is a way
Speaker 1: of for them to get some emotional fulfillment that they
Speaker 1: would not otherwise have. It sounded to me like it
Speaker 1: was a level of companionship that he found easier to
Speaker 1: deal with. And and you know, and I mean he
Speaker 1: he blogged that the dolls characters have online social media accounts,
Speaker 1: So so there's certainly time being spent with these um
Speaker 1: invented personalities. But now moving forward, thinking ahead about a
Speaker 1: time where we actually start seeing artificial intelligence become a component, because,
Speaker 1: as we said, in these other cases, there's no intelligence there. Uh.
Speaker 1: And just to be clear, we don't want to take
Speaker 1: that as a necessary given in anytime soon, right No, no, no,
Speaker 1: this is saying that when it happens. But they're imagining
Speaker 1: that we do at some point reach in the incredible future,
Speaker 1: right yeah, because we do not have that. We do
Speaker 1: not have the magic artificial intelligence that's dawning right now
Speaker 1: as far as we are aware. But there have already
Speaker 1: been people talking about when that becomes a reality and
Speaker 1: what will happen as a result, including some people who
Speaker 1: have hypothesized that in the future, maybe as early as
Speaker 1: twenty fifty, we will have a culture where it will
Speaker 1: be uh, completely acceptable for a human being to marry
Speaker 1: a robot by people. I'm specifically talking about Dr David Levy,
Speaker 1: who is a chess master, and while he was active
Speaker 1: playing chess in various tournaments, he witnessed the growth of
Speaker 1: AI within chess tournaments and at first AI and chess
Speaker 1: was you know, serviceable. It could beat your average player,
Speaker 1: but was not good at going up against chess masters.
Speaker 1: Who would have lots of different flexible plans for changing
Speaker 1: up their game, which could really uh confuse AI chess AI.
Speaker 1: And for a long time he just saw that it
Speaker 1: wasn't really a match for a truly confident player, but
Speaker 1: that AI got better and better, and eventually Dr Levy
Speaker 1: began to get really interested in AI. He then pursued
Speaker 1: a pH d and his thesis was all about human
Speaker 1: robotic relationships, and he did studies on everything from the
Speaker 1: history of marriage and the cultural significance of marriage, human relationships,
Speaker 1: artificial intelligence, and eventually came to this conclusion that by
Speaker 1: twenty fifty it would be legal for humans and robots
Speaker 1: to mary. He said, it wasn't just a possibility, it
Speaker 1: was a certainty. I mean, assuming that convincing AI is
Speaker 1: actually achievable, and that we can not only achieve it
Speaker 1: but put it in a form factor of a human
Speaker 1: humanoid robot, that it was only a matter time before
Speaker 1: someone falls in love with such a thing, and then
Speaker 1: from that point only a matter of time before it's
Speaker 1: socially acceptable and maybe you know, also legally acceptable for
Speaker 1: a human to marry a robot. Now that's an interesting idea,
Speaker 1: and there are people who very much disagree with it,
Speaker 1: but I thought was certainly something that we should discuss. Yeah,
Speaker 1: one of the technical challenges before we get into talking
Speaker 1: about the implications of it, I think, is the idea
Speaker 1: of this would be going beyond Turing. Right, So we
Speaker 1: talked about the Turing test previously, uh, And the basic
Speaker 1: idea behind the Turing test is can you create a
Speaker 1: robot that chats in a way that is convincingly human,
Speaker 1: that can sort of do text chat with you, uh,
Speaker 1: and say things that really get you convinced, Okay, this
Speaker 1: is a real human being and this is a true
Speaker 1: intelligence behind these words that says nothing about what you
Speaker 1: feel about that human being, only that it can convince
Speaker 1: you that it's not a machine. And I think the
Speaker 1: leap from I think this is a real, flesh and
Speaker 1: blood human being to this is somebody that I would
Speaker 1: really like to spend a lot of time with is
Speaker 1: a big leap. A Turing computer could be a jerk.
Speaker 1: I really think that you're being a little uh, you know,
Speaker 1: I think it's actually not as big a leap as
Speaker 1: you think it is. Yes, because we have already seen
Speaker 1: evidence of incredibly sophisticated computer programs that can analyze what
Speaker 1: you like based upon the the activities you do already
Speaker 1: and that are already shared on say a social networking site,
Speaker 1: where based upon the actions you take, someone can learn
Speaker 1: a lot about you just with a few data points.
Speaker 1: You might think like, I don't share that much, and
Speaker 1: yet a program such as or a social networking platform
Speaker 1: like Facebook can quote unquote know a lot about you
Speaker 1: based upon your behavior. Now, if imagine that you have
Speaker 1: not only a chatbot that can realistically simulate a humans
Speaker 1: responses so that you don't know that it's uh an
Speaker 1: artificially intelligent construct on the other end of those words,
Speaker 1: but it also is able to incorporate all the things
Speaker 1: you like and incorporate that into a conversation naturally. So
Speaker 1: now it's not just personality, but the personality that starts
Speaker 1: to share some of your same interests and passions. I
Speaker 1: could easily see someone falling in love with that. Also,
Speaker 1: I should add I met my wife online through a
Speaker 1: chat room, fell in love with my wife, met her
Speaker 1: for the first time in person after we had already
Speaker 1: been quote unquote dating online. And so to me, this
Speaker 1: is a very realistic kind of outcome. Uh yeah, but
Speaker 1: I would say I'm sure you would acknowledge is that
Speaker 1: your wife is a wonderful human being who she's pretty
Speaker 1: good is a human being who happened to be who
Speaker 1: she was to begin with. And if you were to
Speaker 1: interact with a human being who had done extensive research
Speaker 1: and analytics on you and tailored everything they said in
Speaker 1: getting to know you with the eye towards pleasing you,
Speaker 1: that would probably make you feel weird if you were
Speaker 1: to discover that. Let me counter that. Let's say, instead
Speaker 1: of a person to the tailors everything to seem like
Speaker 1: it pleases you, it's just a certain probabilistic approach, a
Speaker 1: certain percentage. And if it's a an intelligence that has
Speaker 1: access to essentially everybody's likes and dislikes, you could have
Speaker 1: an artificial personality that seems to have interests that are
Speaker 1: completely independent of yours. So, in other words, seems like
Speaker 1: a fully fleshed out personality. So let's say, for example, Joe,
Speaker 1: that you uh, you happen to love hiking, but you
Speaker 1: despise smooth jazz, and this this robotic construct doesn't really
Speaker 1: care for hiking but love smooth jazz. However, there are
Speaker 1: other things that you have in common, so as you
Speaker 1: have discussions with this artificial personality, some things you find
Speaker 1: out are different from the stuff you like, which is important.
Speaker 1: I think in relationships, you know, you know, that's another
Speaker 1: real coy of yourself, Which is why it kind of
Speaker 1: goes back to my concerns about the people who have
Speaker 1: these emotional relationships with dolls, because ultimately they are kind
Speaker 1: of having a relationship of themselves because the dolls themselves,
Speaker 1: they imbue a personality upon those dolls, right, the dolls
Speaker 1: themselves don't have a personality. So but in this case,
Speaker 1: talking about an artificial personality, I could easily see something.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't even have to be terribly sophisticated in the
Speaker 1: grand scheme of things that could be completely convincing. It's
Speaker 1: kind of the the argument that was introduced by Stepford
Speaker 1: Wives is kind of silly of an example as that
Speaker 1: can be, which which originally if if you've never seen
Speaker 1: either of the films, was a novel by um Ira
Speaker 1: Levin in two but okay, spoiler spoiler alert on Stepford Wives, y'all,
Speaker 1: it turns out that these that these men in this
Speaker 1: community are creating robot versions of their wives and like
Speaker 1: idealized idealized robot versions of their wives who will be
Speaker 1: happy cooking and cleaning for them and all of that.
Speaker 1: Kind of essentially they become the subservient, always pleased, uh,
Speaker 1: never upset with their husbands, like there's there's not supposed
Speaker 1: to be any kind of conflict at home sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: It's it's, it's and it's showing a really dark side
Speaker 1: to that very typical kind of fantasy where you're thinking
Speaker 1: about Mr. Or Mrs Wright and in your mind Mr.
Speaker 1: And Mrs Wright might be a person with whom you
Speaker 1: have perfect harmony and everything goes well, and they they're
Speaker 1: You're You're happy to you want right you Maybe maybe
Speaker 1: it's maybe in your fantasy it's also reciprocal, where you
Speaker 1: are both catering to each other's desires and fantasies and
Speaker 1: needs and wants. That that's possible and may not just
Speaker 1: be a one sided thing. I'm not suggesting that Mr.
Speaker 1: Mrs Wright fantasy is always going to be purely selfish,
Speaker 1: but it still is this idealized version. And the question
Speaker 1: is if you were actually able to achieve that, if
Speaker 1: in other words, if you were able to have like
Speaker 1: a tailor designed personality, whether it's an artificial intelligence chat
Speaker 1: bot or an actual robotic you know, presence, would that
Speaker 1: eventually being that you would would you be able to
Speaker 1: have like a satisfying, meaningful relationship with that artificial construct?
Speaker 1: And furthermore, would it be mentally healthy for you to
Speaker 1: have the capacity to create a partner for yourself? Right?
Speaker 1: And one of the ethical implications I've had I've brought
Speaker 1: up and this is even before we talk about the
Speaker 1: possibility of a robot having any kind of self awareness
Speaker 1: or consciousness. Even if a robot can't, like, even if
Speaker 1: it's just running a very sophisticated program where it's simulating
Speaker 1: that here we're just talking about simulating behavior, and so
Speaker 1: to put in absolute terms, it has no experience, Like
Speaker 1: it's having no individual experience. There is nobody who is
Speaker 1: that robot exactly? Would it Even in that case, I
Speaker 1: still find it a little troubling personally to think of
Speaker 1: the possibility of of designing one of these things and
Speaker 1: then maybe two years down the road thinking this isn't
Speaker 1: really working out for me. I'm just gonna hit control all,
Speaker 1: delete and reprogram this robot from the ground up, give
Speaker 1: a brand new set of behaviors and personality traits and
Speaker 1: it'll be like I have a whole new person like
Speaker 1: to me, that's a little I don't know, it just
Speaker 1: maybe it's just because of my cultural background, in my
Speaker 1: social background, but it's a little troubling to me. Well,
Speaker 1: I would say one of the most important things about
Speaker 1: our relationships is that over time we grow and mature
Speaker 1: through conflict and compromise. Sure, and if you are if
Speaker 1: you are not experiencing any conflict and compromise in your relationship,
Speaker 1: you're you're probably not growing in your emotional maturity. Right,
Speaker 1: So would you be okay with a with a robot
Speaker 1: that had the kind of AI machine learning that would
Speaker 1: let it introduce conflict and resolution and growth in that
Speaker 1: way and in both yourself and your robot partner. I'm
Speaker 1: not sure what I would be okay with in terms
Speaker 1: of what other people do. So I'm not sure in
Speaker 1: this whole discussion that I feel comfortable saying what I
Speaker 1: feel would be right for their people or not. I
Speaker 1: certainly wouldn't feel right for it for myself. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's why I'm trying to do the same thing, Joe.
Speaker 1: I'm trying to approach this from okay, from my own
Speaker 1: personal standpoint for me, because I mean, I don't feel
Speaker 1: really comfortable telling other people what they should and shouldn't
Speaker 1: do either unless they're on my lawn, in which case
Speaker 1: I feel very comfortable doing it. But uh, you know,
Speaker 1: in this case, yeah, it's it's it's tricky stuff. It
Speaker 1: brings up this concept of machine ethics, which is interesting
Speaker 1: because it's a developing field, right. It's not something that
Speaker 1: is It's not like we have a carved in silicon
Speaker 1: list of rules, you know. It's not like Isaac as
Speaker 1: Abov's three Laws of Robotics that's been codified somehow. It's
Speaker 1: actually a developing field of study. Yeah. I mean machine ethics,
Speaker 1: I guess, is all about how to get robots or
Speaker 1: computers or machines whatever to behave in ways that we
Speaker 1: would consider ethical. And it's a complex field because it
Speaker 1: involves number one, not just how to get their intelligence
Speaker 1: working in a way that it executes ethical decisions, but
Speaker 1: number two involves questions we haven't even necessarily settled here
Speaker 1: in the world for ourselves, like what is ethical in
Speaker 1: any given situation and in a human to human interaction? Yeah,
Speaker 1: let alone a human too machine interaction, which I think
Speaker 1: should be the which is not really what Asthmov covers
Speaker 1: in those three laws of ethics, but I think is
Speaker 1: possibly the more important kind of responsibility of if we
Speaker 1: are creating something that is capable of having any kind
Speaker 1: of individual experience, experiences, or emotions. Right, it's sort of
Speaker 1: the other way around. It's not just how do we
Speaker 1: get machines to behave ethically, but we need to think
Speaker 1: about do we need to behave ethically toward machine exactly,
Speaker 1: which we've talked about before in our robot Rights podcast.
Speaker 1: So if we get to a point where we're able
Speaker 1: to have robotic some sort of robotic potential spouse that
Speaker 1: seems to have a fully fleshed out personality instead of
Speaker 1: behave of yours, seems at least on the surface to
Speaker 1: have the same sort of qualities that another human being
Speaker 1: would have. So you're saying, like its own independent personality,
Speaker 1: you can't reprogram it, it will right right it it
Speaker 1: appears at least on the surface to be as quote
Speaker 1: unquote real as another human being would. Then you have
Speaker 1: other questions like, well is it having an individual experience?
Speaker 1: If if it's so convincing that to us it is
Speaker 1: indistinguishable from a human being's personality. Can we be absolutely
Speaker 1: certain there's no individual experience going on there? I mean,
Speaker 1: think about it. If it's a robot and there's some
Speaker 1: chance for it to have an individual experience, it might
Speaker 1: have an individual experience that's completely independent of whatever it's
Speaker 1: programming is forcing it to do, which is the most
Speaker 1: horrifying thing to think about. Like, it's hard to imagine
Speaker 1: what that would be like. And I think, to be fair,
Speaker 1: all of our intuitions tell us no, there's no such
Speaker 1: thing as what it's like to be this machine. But
Speaker 1: we can't know well, especially once we get to a
Speaker 1: point where artificial intelligence gets so complex as to be indistinguishable.
Speaker 1: Right then then there's real questions. You know, it maybe
Speaker 1: and maybe that it's having an individual experience that is
Speaker 1: impossible for us to define in human terms. But it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that there's not an experience going on, oh sure.
Speaker 1: And I mean, furthermore, the same way that we all
Speaker 1: feel bad when someone kicks a robot dog, and we
Speaker 1: do feel bad about that. I mean, I mean, colloquially speaking,
Speaker 1: we do. I haven't read any research specifically about it,
Speaker 1: but I think it's fair to say, you know, the
Speaker 1: anecdotal evidence in this room is in a well, I
Speaker 1: don't know about I don't know about our our rots.
Speaker 1: The cuter they are, the better. He's just grinning evilly.
Speaker 1: So I'll say this room are definitely against kicking robot dogs,
Speaker 1: and with a possible on the fence. So I would
Speaker 1: argue that there's possibly some kind of um mental toll
Speaker 1: to be taken allowing yourself to put yourself in this
Speaker 1: in this kind of weird god situation where you are
Speaker 1: creating and destroying robot personalities. Yeah, I just I I
Speaker 1: keep thinking I need to write a story where it's
Speaker 1: kind of another one of those explorations of the quiet
Speaker 1: desperation of of the suburbs, you know, those stories that
Speaker 1: were really popular in the eighties and nineties, but but
Speaker 1: said it in the future, where you talk about on
Speaker 1: the surface, this relationship looks perfect, right, whether it's a
Speaker 1: robot man or robot woman doesn't really matter actually, But
Speaker 1: there's a human and a robot um their spouses, and
Speaker 1: on the surface everything looks perfect, and the human spouse
Speaker 1: is perfectly happy, and the robot spouse, to all outward appearances,
Speaker 1: is perfectly happy, so much that it's indistinguishable to the
Speaker 1: human person whether or not the robot's happy or not.
Speaker 1: But deep inside, under those layers of programming that forced
Speaker 1: the robot to behave a certain way, the robot is
Speaker 1: desperately unhappy. Like that's that's terrifying to me. And it's
Speaker 1: and it's something that it's when you think about it,
Speaker 1: it's something that theoretically, assuming we get to this point
Speaker 1: where artificial consciousness is possible, that's a possible outcome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's one of those weird things where we don't know.
Speaker 1: It kind of seems unlikely, but then again just the
Speaker 1: fact that it's possible is freaky. Yeah. So again that
Speaker 1: raises this question about what how would we ethically go
Speaker 1: about an approach where you know, when you think about
Speaker 1: these robots would have to be built for companionship purposes.
Speaker 1: You I don't think we would be talking about like
Speaker 1: in Futurama. All the robots and Futurama are built for
Speaker 1: for ridiculous reasons, Like you have orphan robots, So someone
Speaker 1: built a robot to be an orphan robot. But you know,
Speaker 1: I can't imagine that this would be something that we
Speaker 1: would see in like a general purpose robot speaking of Futurama.
Speaker 1: Futurama actually posits another implication entirely to this, which is
Speaker 1: done satirically of course, but um what they they there's
Speaker 1: one where they watch a little instructional video why you
Speaker 1: shouldn't date robots, what's the danger? And future Ama world?
Speaker 1: They're too good, like the robot lovers are that you
Speaker 1: don't you don't do anything else. You just like hang
Speaker 1: out with your robot companion because it's perfect. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you don't do anything productive and then Earth gets taken
Speaker 1: over by aliens and you don't care, right right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you know another one of those arguments, right well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's is we're having a little fun. We're
Speaker 1: joking around a little bit now, which is good because
Speaker 1: the front half of this was a little heavy, but um,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's it really is kind of a
Speaker 1: deep question here. It's one of those things where if
Speaker 1: if we haven't reached the point where there's any kind
Speaker 1: of consciousness, maybe we're completely confident that there's no consciousness
Speaker 1: within these robotic companions. The question there is can you
Speaker 1: have a meaningful relationship knowing and in your heart that
Speaker 1: this is an artificial construct with no real meaning behind it.
Speaker 1: And on the other hand, if we aren't sure or
Speaker 1: if we feel like there is a consciousness, can we
Speaker 1: be sure that this is what that consciousness wants? I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's a tough question. So so do you guys
Speaker 1: think do you guys agree with Dr Levy? Do you
Speaker 1: think that that we're gonna see human robot marriages? I mean,
Speaker 1: twenty fifties a long way away, So there's that, Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it would depend on what you're
Speaker 1: talking about with this sort of legal and social idea
Speaker 1: of marriage. Um, I think imagining the idea of robot
Speaker 1: marriage on a continuum with with human marriage throughout the
Speaker 1: sort of like legal metamorphosis of it is not really accurate.
Speaker 1: It's it's not it's so not accurate that it's in
Speaker 1: fact really offensive. I think too. I mean, because I've
Speaker 1: heard Dr Levy compare it to interracial marriage or gay marriage,
Speaker 1: and that is so offensive, y'all. That is just not
Speaker 1: okay because the difference, Yeah, there's no human right, right,
Speaker 1: you're that is not a valid comparison because all all
Speaker 1: of those other kinds of marriage are between two human people.
Speaker 1: That just society has previously said shouldn't get married. And
Speaker 1: I see that now in the robot robot human marriages,
Speaker 1: you still have one human component in that. So I mean,
Speaker 1: it's not I'm saying not, it's not analogous, it's not comparable,
Speaker 1: I would say, But at the same time, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's there's still a human element to this question, and
Speaker 1: it depending upon the question of consciousness that also makes
Speaker 1: things it's different. It's again you don't get comparing it
Speaker 1: and putting it on that spectrum is a mistake. I agree,
Speaker 1: it's a different set of questions we should be asking.
Speaker 1: All I'm saying is that is that a marriage requires
Speaker 1: two consenting people, at least in our country, yes, right,
Speaker 1: ideally anyway, And so yeah, you're you're you're getting into
Speaker 1: a technical definition of of personhood, right, yeah, and you
Speaker 1: get into the question of right if you're talking about
Speaker 1: marriage in the sense of two consenting entities, however you
Speaker 1: wanted to find that, can you be sure that the
Speaker 1: robot is I mean, there's one party that, as far
Speaker 1: as we know, at least right now, could not give
Speaker 1: consent incapable legally and physically incapable of consenting. So then
Speaker 1: you know that's a that's a whole other can of
Speaker 1: worms there. In the short term, at least to me,
Speaker 1: it seems like the idea of including a robot into marriage.
Speaker 1: While I don't want to like disdain that idea, it
Speaker 1: does seem like that would just sort of entail a
Speaker 1: dissolution of what marriage means is illegal or social concept,
Speaker 1: because if you can marry an inanimate object, no matter
Speaker 1: how lifelike it seems, I mean, can you marry like
Speaker 1: a painting or like a computer program that's not autonomously moving? Say,
Speaker 1: could you marry like software? Well? And and the other
Speaker 1: thing is that, you know, the legal definition of marriage
Speaker 1: is more about contributions to society as well, Like it's
Speaker 1: it's property attacks. Yeah, I mean it's a very like
Speaker 1: it's a very paperwork heavy kind of thing. It's not
Speaker 1: this is taking all romance out of any sort of relationship.
Speaker 1: I don't mean that when you get married all romance
Speaker 1: goes away. And I'm not a sitcom from the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: But but what I mean is that when you're looking
Speaker 1: looking at the whole legal approach to it, it's really
Speaker 1: more about this is this is the institution inside this
Speaker 1: legal system that changes your designation in a legal way.
Speaker 1: Maybe we don't see a legal marriage between humans and robots.
Speaker 1: It may just be that what we do see is
Speaker 1: a general acceptance of the fact that there are some
Speaker 1: people who have what they feel is a completely emotionally
Speaker 1: fulfilling relationship. Again, it's one of those questions that's really
Speaker 1: hard to answer right now because we're so far removed
Speaker 1: from a world where that is, you know, of a
Speaker 1: realistic question like the the cases that we see, the
Speaker 1: ones that we've mentioned so far in this episode, are really,
Speaker 1: as you mentioned, sensationalist in the sense that this is
Speaker 1: far h it's it's nowhere near like an artificial intelligent being.
Speaker 1: It's not a robot um And it's just one of
Speaker 1: those uh things that unfortunately a lot of people like
Speaker 1: to point to because it's so far outside the norm
Speaker 1: that it's a curiosity, that it's something to uh either
Speaker 1: scratch your head at or laugh at. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: why a lot of people react to this sort of stuff. Um.
Speaker 1: But I mean it could be that by twenty fifty
Speaker 1: it's one of those things that, while it may not
Speaker 1: be fully socially acceptable, I could see it being something
Speaker 1: that is not unheard of. Um again, make that is
Speaker 1: completely based on assumptions that are artificial intelligence. Progress is
Speaker 1: going to continue to a point where we can have
Speaker 1: these sort of realistic personalities. Now, can I ask a
Speaker 1: pretty scary question, at least from my point of view? Uh,
Speaker 1: if it's did you know there's a spider on your head?
Speaker 1: Then you may not ask that it will free me out? No,
Speaker 1: I'll just let it crawl around. Shoot, it's a black widow. Um.
Speaker 1: So in in the if you go far enough in
Speaker 1: the future and imagine what we're talking about, this kind
Speaker 1: of like absolutely indistinguishable human mimicking robot, you know, the
Speaker 1: android that we just really cannot tell. Yeah, would it
Speaker 1: be uh, and whether and I'm not addressing the issue
Speaker 1: of whether it has consciousness or anything, just imagining we
Speaker 1: can't tell the difference outward appearances. It seems to be
Speaker 1: like a human being. Could you be tricked? But would
Speaker 1: you think that you were starting a relationship with the
Speaker 1: human being and be in a relationship at the robot. Obviously,
Speaker 1: if it's indistinguishable, you could be tricked. By the definition
Speaker 1: of indistinguishable. Would that fear be enough of a concern
Speaker 1: for people to to look back on this and say, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: I don't want autonomous, convincing human humanoid robots running around
Speaker 1: in society. It's hard for me to imagine that world
Speaker 1: simply because it would require some form of facility that's
Speaker 1: churning out realistic robots and then setting them loose on
Speaker 1: a world that those robots could independently find and quote
Speaker 1: unquote fall in love with people to quote uh, to
Speaker 1: quote Ian Malcolm, life finds a way. But that's you're
Speaker 1: you're saying something that that seems in distingistinguishable in life,
Speaker 1: but may not distinguishable from life the important Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: I honestly I don't think that that is a very
Speaker 1: realistic scenario, simply because there's I can't imagine a anything
Speaker 1: in the near future where robots are entering the population
Speaker 1: at large, certainly not in the near future. Also, I
Speaker 1: can't imagine a completely convincing humanoid robot there. That's what
Speaker 1: I was going to say. I mean, the the the
Speaker 1: Uncanny Valley is so steep and end eternal that I
Speaker 1: I I think that robots are going to be a
Speaker 1: little bit creepy for a very very long time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I already got enough creepy human friends. So I'm good, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know some of them? Uh at any rate? Um? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's an interesting question. I think that it's
Speaker 1: it's not going to be something we're gonna have. I
Speaker 1: don't think I'm going to see that be a concern
Speaker 1: in my lifetime, especially now in your head right now,
Speaker 1: please stop, um I I honestly don't think that we're
Speaker 1: going to get to a point where AI and robotics
Speaker 1: are good enough to produce convincing human counterparts by certainly,
Speaker 1: now that being said, if Ray Kurtzwell is correct and
Speaker 1: we have the singularity hit by, it maybe a mood question,
Speaker 1: because it may not be that we're talking about robots.
Speaker 1: We might be talking about the next step in human
Speaker 1: evolution where humans and robots merge in some way or another,
Speaker 1: in which case, you know, it may be that you're
Speaker 1: wondering how much humanity is in the person and that
Speaker 1: you are dating. Would you guys marry a star baby?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I was just thinking about Darth Vader,
Speaker 1: who's more machine now than man, twisted and evil yet
Speaker 1: so erotic. Yeah, the way he screamed no at the
Speaker 1: end of episode three certainly got a reaction out of me.
Speaker 1: I was mostly discussed and despair. But hey, you know
Speaker 1: enough about my college dating days. Let's wrap this up
Speaker 1: all right, So you know this. I know that this
Speaker 1: is kind of a weird topic because it's so far
Speaker 1: removed from what our reality is right now, but it's
Speaker 1: really interesting too, and it it certainly highlights the concerns
Speaker 1: about ethics and AI in a different way than the
Speaker 1: way we had talked about in our previous episode about
Speaker 1: should robots have rights? Uh, this definitely is is very
Speaker 1: closely um related to that, but it's a very specific case.
Speaker 1: Check out that podcast if you want some background on
Speaker 1: what we just talked about, right, and folks, if you
Speaker 1: want to join in on this conversation, maybe you have
Speaker 1: a different point of view than what we said here
Speaker 1: in this podcast, or maybe you've got some insight into
Speaker 1: this in a way that we didn't anticipate. We'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from you. You can write us an email
Speaker 1: our addresses f W Thinking at Discovery dot com, or
Speaker 1: join in on the conversation online on various social platforms,
Speaker 1: for instance, Google Plus, Twitter, and Facebook. You can find
Speaker 1: us with f W Thinking there. Don't forget to go
Speaker 1: to f w thinking dot com. That's our website where
Speaker 1: we've got all the podcasts, the video series, the blog
Speaker 1: posts that are there, other information is there. You should
Speaker 1: go check that out too, and we will talk to
Speaker 1: you again really soon. For more on this topic in
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