Villains Change: Communists, Neo-Nazis, Media
<center><a href="http://www.geocities.com/vaksam/">Sam Vaknin's Psychology, Philosophy, Economics and Foreign Affairs Web Sites</a></center>
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<br>Sigmund Freud said that we have an uncanny reaction to the inanimate. This is probably because we know that - despite pretensions and layers of philosophizing - we are nothing but recursive, self aware, introspective, conscious machines. Special machines, no doubt, but machines althesame.
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<br>The series of James bond movies constitutes a decades-spanning gallery of human paranoia. Villains change: communists, neo-nazis, media moguls. But one kind of villain is a fixture in this psychodrama, in this parade of human phobias: the machine. James Bond always finds himself confronted with hideous, …show more content…
Should a robot abstain from obeying human commands pertaining to crossing busy roads or driving sports cars? Which level of risk should trigger the refusal program? In which stage of a collaboration should it be activated? Should a robot refuse to bring a stool to a person who intends to commit suicide by hanging himself (that's an easy one), should he ignore an instruction to push someone jump off a cliff (definitely), climb the cliff (less assuredly so), get to the cliff (maybe so), get to his car in order to drive to the cliff in case he is an invalid - where does the responsibility and obeisance buck stop?
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<br>Whatever the answer, one thing is clear: such a robot must be equipped with more than a rudimentary sense of judgement, with the ability to appraise and analyse complex situations, to predict the future and to base his decisions on very fuzzy algorithms (no programmer can foresee all possible circumstances). To me, this sounds much more dangerous than any recursive automaton which will NOT include the famous Three Laws.
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<br>Moreover, what, exactly, constitutes …show more content…
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<br>How much of the responsibility for the inaction or partial action or failed action should be attributed to the manufacturer - and how much imputed to the robot itself? When a robot decides finally to ignore its own programming - how will we be informed of this momentous event? Outside appearances should hardly be expected to help us distinguish a rebellious robot from a lackadaisical one.
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<br>The situation gets much more complicated when we consider conflict states. Imagine that a robot has to hurt one human in order to prevent him from hurting another. The Laws are absolutely inadequate in this case. The robot should either establish an empirical hierarchy of injuries - or an empirical hierarchy of humans. Should we, as humans, rely on robots or on their manufacturers (however wise and intelligent) to make this selection for us? Should abide by their judgement - which injury is more serious than the other and warrants their
<br>
<br>Sigmund Freud said that we have an uncanny reaction to the inanimate. This is probably because we know that - despite pretensions and layers of philosophizing - we are nothing but recursive, self aware, introspective, conscious machines. Special machines, no doubt, but machines althesame.
<br>
<br>The series of James bond movies constitutes a decades-spanning gallery of human paranoia. Villains change: communists, neo-nazis, media moguls. But one kind of villain is a fixture in this psychodrama, in this parade of human phobias: the machine. James Bond always finds himself confronted with hideous, …show more content…
Should a robot abstain from obeying human commands pertaining to crossing busy roads or driving sports cars? Which level of risk should trigger the refusal program? In which stage of a collaboration should it be activated? Should a robot refuse to bring a stool to a person who intends to commit suicide by hanging himself (that's an easy one), should he ignore an instruction to push someone jump off a cliff (definitely), climb the cliff (less assuredly so), get to the cliff (maybe so), get to his car in order to drive to the cliff in case he is an invalid - where does the responsibility and obeisance buck stop?
<br>
<br>Whatever the answer, one thing is clear: such a robot must be equipped with more than a rudimentary sense of judgement, with the ability to appraise and analyse complex situations, to predict the future and to base his decisions on very fuzzy algorithms (no programmer can foresee all possible circumstances). To me, this sounds much more dangerous than any recursive automaton which will NOT include the famous Three Laws.
<br>
<br>Moreover, what, exactly, constitutes …show more content…
<br>
<br>How much of the responsibility for the inaction or partial action or failed action should be attributed to the manufacturer - and how much imputed to the robot itself? When a robot decides finally to ignore its own programming - how will we be informed of this momentous event? Outside appearances should hardly be expected to help us distinguish a rebellious robot from a lackadaisical one.
<br>
<br>The situation gets much more complicated when we consider conflict states. Imagine that a robot has to hurt one human in order to prevent him from hurting another. The Laws are absolutely inadequate in this case. The robot should either establish an empirical hierarchy of injuries - or an empirical hierarchy of humans. Should we, as humans, rely on robots or on their manufacturers (however wise and intelligent) to make this selection for us? Should abide by their judgement - which injury is more serious than the other and warrants their