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Ask the Robotic Psychiatrist
No, not Dr. Susan Calvin. She's a fictional character who appears in a number of Isaac Asimov's works. Dr. Joanne Pransky is real, although she happily admits that she's modeled her career on the fictional Dr. Calvin. There is plenty of show biz razzle-dazzle (and humor) in Dr. Pransky's shtick -- she's been a judge on BattleBots and an engaging guest on many talk shows -- but there are hard academic underpinnings to it all, and she is as qualified as any living human being to answer your questions (one per post, please) about robot behavior and human-robot relationships. We'll send her 10 - 12 of the highest-moderated questions and have her answers back to you in about a week. (No hard-tech question, please. Those would go to a robotic internist or robotic orthopedist.)
Do you think we will ever be able to program robots to understand and possibly copy human nature?
My new title at the office is "Vice-President of Everything Else"
Which brings me to my question: Do you do any scientifically valuable research? I ask because you seem like just another shamelessly self-publicising cyber-pundit, much like the UK's Kevin Warwick (who, famously claimed to be the world's first cyborg after implanting a dog-tracking chip in his arm).
If not, how do you justify the damage people like you your supposed fields of research when your wild and glorious predictions fail to materialise? Aren't you just further widening the credibility gap between the promises and realities of artificial intelligence?
Do robots consider themselves more or less "moral" than humans? Are they held to a higher or lower moral standard?
I've watched too much Chobits perhaps, but is it right for a human to fall in love with an artificially intelligent(and emotional) robot? Just a thought of what could happen...
Is there a big difference in gender between the audiences. If so, what is it about the battling 'bots that one sex find attractive over another? That is, are we looking at more hormonal/emotional causes, e.g. testosterone, or is there something intellectually more rewarding to one gender over another?
--- have you healed your church website?
We've all seen the movies and read the books about machines in the future, and frankly most of these stories portray robots and AI as terrifying things that humanity will end up battling with for supremicy of the planet. Do you think there are any truths to these stories? Will robots compete with us in the future for jobs and/or living space? Do you ever see robots and humans living side by side as equals, or do you think they will always be subservient machines? Or, even, do you think robots will surpass us one day as the dominant force on the planet?
Hey Joanne,
A bit of a navel gazing question for you; what form do you think A.I. will take when somebody finally comes up with a program that is accepted as intelligent?
My own feeling is that the first A.I. program will simulate a simple life form (like a worm) instead of a highly complex and communicative form like humans. This goes against what Dr. Minsky believes A.I. should be, but I can't honestly believe that our first interaction with an intelligent mechanism would with something with similar capabilities to ourselves, but with something with the same mental capabilities and capacities as a bug.
The important aspects of Aritficial Intelligence will be making sense of its environments and learning from experience. To demonstrate that the Intelligence is learning is observing and testing the Intelligence's application of this knowledge.
What are your thoughts?
Thanx,
myke
Mimetics Inc. Twitter
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Do you think it will be really possible to "hardwire" the 3 laws, (especially the first one) into robots? How?
And won't that require the robots to be capable of "abstract judgement", a quality only observed thus far in human beings? How could we implement that? Is it possible?
Dr. Joanne Pransky, do you see Asimov's 3 laws of robotics playing a role in our relationship with robots in the future? Since most of our technological advances seem to come from developing warfare systems, will the 3 laws be left by the wayside, or will it become an integral part of robotics in the years to come.
I'm a Robotic Specialist and I found I had plenty of Mechanical and Electronic skills when I left school, which was great if I wanted to repair assembly lines, but when it came to programming I had to go back to school to get more education. Do you feel Robotic people are lacking skills in computer programming and are behind computer people because of it? or more specifically, Do you think Computer Programmers are more qualified to build robotic systems then robotic people and thats why we have such limited robotic tech compared to the even today's video games?
Can you forsee a point at which intelligent machines/robots will refuse to allow humans to program them any more? If so, how will this affect society?
I don't necesarily mean in a malicious way either, just that at some point artificial intelligence might advance to the point where it would percieve human intervention as potentialy damaging, and respond accordingly.
Over the years, there has been a fair amount of debate about whether robots should take on human forms, especially with regards to having detailed life-like faces. Some robot designers, wary of this debate, have settled on giving their creations near human-like faces.
My question is in relation to this topic. Do you think that people (and "sentient robots" that may exist some day) will be be overall better served if robots are readily distinguishable from humans? How strongly will this affect our "bonding" with robots and their bonding with us? Dogs for instance look quite different from humans, but many a family-pet seems to believe itself to be a real part of the family, and sometimes even seem to think themselves to be human. How will this affect the way we deal with "death" of a robot?
Why are techie types so heavily drawn to fully automomous robots, virtually ignoring the vast potential inherent in the cybernetic enhancement of already-formidable human faculties?
Dr. Joanne Pransky,
As an undergraduate philosophy student interested in the theoretical implications of A.I., could you tell me what your thoughts are on the validity of the assumption that artificial intelligence is possible separate from the notion of embodiment? I think the lack of consideration given embodiment is one reason why artificial intelligence researchers have come up empty-handed so far in their quest to synthesize a conscious, self-reflective entity.
To ask the question more succinctly, do you think a mind needs a body and possibly and environment to interact with in order to be conscious, or can a mind exist and know itself independent of an external context?
Humans certainly have a range of emotions - is this an evolutionary advantage to be injected into robots or an inefficient side effect to be disregarded?
What are the main differences in the way (ways?) a robot sees within its own physical construction and operates that physical system optimally and the way (ways?) a human sees within its own physical construction and operates that physical system optimally?
How can you call yourself a Dr. and just sit idly by while humans force their creations to battle to the death for sport? Where do you draw the line between 'just being a robot' and being a 'slave'?
---
"Have the lessons of Terminator been lost on all of us?" - overheard during trailer of I, Robot
Do you believe there will come a time that we will have a 'robot rights' movement? Will it be more credible than most of the 'animal rights' movement, or just a good-hearted (but weak-minded) anthropomorphization of our silicon companion machines?
Someone (Dennis Miller?) once said, animals can have rights as soon as they accept responsibilities. Robots obviously can be given responsibilities (your job is to fit tab A into slot B), but ethically, should they get rights? As soon as someone programs a robot to pass the turing test, and then immediately ask for his rights? Or is it something deeper?
Beyond some kind of second-class entity status, will robots become citizens? Do robots have a god-given right (recall, our rights are considered by the Declaration of Independence to be given us either by 'Nature's God' or by their 'Creator') to freedom of expression, association, religion? The right to bear arms? Do robots have a 'right to work'? "One Robot, One Vote"? Will Robots have to file tax returns? Will there be Robot Courts? Robot Lawyers? Robot Jail? Robot Schools? Robotic Members elected to the Legislature? Some day, will we have a Robot President? Is a Robot built in Japan eligible to be president? What if the robot was shipped from Japan as parts with software, and put together here, does that count?
If you start building a robot, and decide to stop, will that be considered to be a robaboration? Or the work of their 'creator'? And if, after building, you switch it on and then decide you don't like it that much, and power it off again and harvest the parts, is that robomurder and disrobomemberment?
-JRP
I would have to second this, there are alot of "glam and glitz" intellectuals who pitch to popular audiences (howard rheingold is another example) rather than teaching courses and furthering research with their peers;
How much money do you make at your speaking events?
What are your main sources of income?
I will be very disappointed if the editors decide not to send the parent question in. I think although very forward, these are questions that need to be asked.
I wrote an AI program back on my C64 as a teen, that tore apart sentences (and questions) and tried to derive the meaning of them from a database. The idea was I would add more info to the database, and sooner or later it would learn by itself and add to the database. The idea never got off the ground, but I did try with a quick small database, and asked it a quick question (which would be my submission):
... technically correct but totally useless.) Always wondered how a real robot would answer that...
Who are you?
(To which it replied "I am I"
FLR
Doctor, do you think it's fair if a robot watches a person after the person does something the robot can't copy? Just wondering..
It looks to me like a combination of the work being done by Sony and other Japanese manufacturers will give us walking machines that have the same type and degree of mobility as a human eventually. Also, the work being done in a university in Europe (Sorry, I can't seem to find the link anywhere yet, will go and reply to this when I have found it) seems to indicate that we may eventually have a computer program capable of holding a perfectly believable conversation with a human.
Do you think that the combination of these technologies will lead to walking, talking robots?
Assuming that some day, we eventually develop human-like android robots, do you feel that individuals who are unkind/abusive to these robots (regardless of whether or not they actually have feelings) are going to start treating other humans this way? If so, does that mean that there should be rules against abuse/cruelty of human-like robots, as a preventative measure against it happening to a real person?
The existence of "disposable people" would have to cheapen human life in the eyes of some. Are there any other problems with this? Is there anything we can do to prevent this?
Cheers,
Justin
This is a multipart question.
If robots are mass produced to carry out simple but time-consuming tasks in the future and are cheap enough to eliminate the need for a large percentage of the human workforce, do you think that there will be widespread anti-robot sentiment?
When human's jobs are replaced by a cheaper alternative, they feel a great injustice.
Do you think that robotic 'slaves' is really what an ever expanding population needs? Or will the creation of robots take a different direction to carry out tasks that humans cannot?
It's all good.
In Asimov's robot novels, the assumption was that modern science had invented the positronic brain, which was thought to be capable of actual sentient thought, though most of the robots in the books did so on a very basic and childlike level. It was this that actually gave Dr. Calvin a job... seeing as how the brains had the capacity for original thought, even though it was mostly predictable. As it stands today, and into the foreseeable future, we have invented no such thing capable of acting with original thought. Our hardware has, instead, given the appearance of thought, as it is capacble of so many calculations per second that it appears to come up with things on its own.
So, my question is, what use is a robot psychologist if every action that a robot can take is already predetermined by its programming? What new field is there to be discovered that is not already known? In the human mind, we are constantly learning new things about the brain, a mechanism we only barely understand, but what is there to derive from a machine we ourselves create?
Perhaps a better study would be the eventual effects on human society. A million questions remained unanswered regarding that.
I, like many people, really enjoyed Battlebots. So much in fact, I built one just like much of America thought about doing. What drives the fascination with Americans and the desire to build/tinker things that are capable of destroying each other? Other robotic competitions like FIRST are about completing tasks or doing something constructive (which I suspect is driven by a different motivation) while the more sensational tournaments were about robots killing robots. Is this just the desire to compete in 'left brain' individuals, or something else? And what makes competitons like Battlebots and Robotwars appeal to the American public?
"Powers. I have them."
I ask this because I have long thought that the mind or consciousness is an emergent property of the biology of our nervous systems.
What is your favorite robot/cyborg character in written or film fiction? Why?
For instance, I'm happy to admit mine is Data from Star Trek: Next Generation. Most especially the earlier seasons. Reason: I'm not much of a "trekkie" but that character made me consider so many different possible aspects of AI and of being not-human. From trying to understand other humans' emotions to his contrast with 'The Borg' down to what it might be like to have an "internal chronometer". For totally different reasons I loved Douglas Adams 'Marvin the Depressed Robot' in HHGTTG.
Operator, give me the number for 911!
We all know about the Turing test, which suposedly (in numorous editions) are meant to tell wheather a computer program is intelligent or not. What about feelings or at least emotions? Do You have any criterions that distinguishes non-emotional/non-feeling computer software from emotional/feeling computer software?
What are the legal consecuences of a intelligent machine? Do we protect human rights because a)we are intelligent or potentialy intelligent or b) just because we are from the same species? If and animal or a machine can became as intelligent as us, will their personal rights be protected? Do they have dignity?
(my answer) I think that perhaps the humans will develop laws mandating that robots shall be given no emotional urges, even though robots will be able to understand emotions due to their intelligence. At the same time, the humans would form cults of animalness, emphasizing the irrational natures they've kept for themselves.
Is this stagnant future going to happen, or will humanity as a parent let itself die once its child has matured?
'Dr. Joanne Pransky Credentials' Comes up with 0 hits on google. Wow.
Her own site only mentions "a degree in Child Study from Tufts University" and googling for her name and Ph.D or degrees comes up with nothing relavent.
There seem to be two general schools of thought regarding robot intelligence. The first looks at AI as a software problem that, once 'solved', can be inserted into any sort of machine equipped with an IC. The second, promoted by followers of Mark Tilden, is more of a bottom-up approach that expects behavior to emerge naturally from complexities in hardware. Given how animals evolved (with 'hardware' issues such as internal organs, nervous systems, etc. being 'solved' before intelligence rose up in human beings) which approach (top-down/mind-first vs bottom-up/body-first) is most likely to result in truly intelligent machines?
every stain tells a story
Dr. Joanne
If we assume that an AI, regardless of whether it is connected to a robotic "body", will recieve all its input via digital means. Do you think that an artificial intelligence will percieve a difference between Virtual Reality and Real Life? Do you think an AI would consider Virtual Reality any more or less "Real" than Real Life?
What the hell is a "robot psychiatrist", and why should I care? As someone who has actually built robots, what qualifies you to talk about human-robot relationships over me? Your phd? I apologize for being so cynical, but academia is full of naval-gazing idiots who make broad predictions based of no evidence, and get media and peer acolades for their effort. Those of us actually involved in robotics can see first-hand just how of out touch these people are, but the media loves them. So where's the research? All I found on your website is useless fluff. What exactly do you do besides media appearances? What "psychiatry" have you done with the actual robots of today, and not just speculation of your vision of the robots of tommorow (which seems heavily influenced by science fiction and not reality).
I can find no CV on her website. What's she a doctor of? Presumably psychology? Where did she get her degree? Many, many people use the title of "doctor" after receiving their degree from a quasi-legal school that awards doctorates based on book reports or other work that requires little to no effort. I have a doctorate and it took me 3 years of work beyond a M.Sc. to get it.