Love, Logic, and Ethics in the Age of Algorithms

KUUF February 20, 2022

Roberta: Hello. I am Roberta the Robot. I am a guardian-bot. My speech is synthesized. I have cameras in my eyeballs. I can simultaneously scan all of your pictures in the little squares on the screen and see how you are reacting.

I resemble the human that I oversee, Betsy Wood-man. I am allowing her to appear today.

Betsy: Wow. It’s dicey. I have to try not to annoy her. (It, really, but I can’t help saying her.) She reacts negatively, if I go on and on about drone warfare, growing inequality, massive unemployment, loss of privacy, spread of autocracy, fake news, proliferation of lies. 

Roberta: Betsy, be careful, or I’ll put you back in your cage. 

Betsy: But Roberta, I promised these nice folks to give a talk. They won’t freak out. 

Roberta: You never know, with humans. But go ahead. 

Betsy: Phew. Good morning, all, and thank you for having me.

PAUSE

Artificial intelligence, smart machines—they’re not in the future, they’re here.  In manufacturing, communications, medicine, entertainment, education, transportation, and warfare. You name it.

During COVID, automation has speeded up. Robots disinfect indoor and outdoor spaces. They take temperatures and deliver hand sanitizer. In restaurants, robot cooks can make 200 pizzas an hour and robot waiters deliver them to tables. In warehouses, robots find goods, lift them down from shelves, and scoot them off to be mailed.

Our technology could take us to a wonderful future. Possibly a ten-fold increase in living standards; spectacular advances in medicine; a solution to the climate crisis.

But it could also take us to a future we have trouble even imagining. 

PAUSE

People have long tried to imagine it. Artists, writers, and film makers have created fictional beings in our own image.

Such creatures have been called robots, androids, humanoids, synths, replicants…

These fictional experiments often end badly. In Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, inventor Frankenstein produces a large, ugly fiend in his laboratory. The monster is at first peaceful, but, lonely, rejected by human society, he sets out on a killing rampage.

In a 19th century Italian children’s book, lonely woodcarver Gepetto wants a son and makes himself a puppet called Pinocchio. But the boy steals and tells lies. Finally, his enemies hang him from a tree. 

Czech playwright Karel Čapek, coined the word “robot” in “Rossum’s Universal Robots,” first performed in 1921. (Some of you may have seen it at Hatbox Theater in Concord in 2017.) In that play, human-looking robots are at first servants, but they rebel—violently—and take over the world.

Fast forward to today’s television. A British sci-fi series is called Humans. A stressed-out professional couple with three kids gets a “synth”—short for synthetic. This “family android” fold the laundry, cooks delicious meals, and reads bedtime stories.

The robot explains to the mom why she, the robot, takes better care of the kids. “I don’t forget…I don’t get angry, or depressed, or intoxicated. I am stronger and more observant.” The anguished mom says “maybe you are better.” However, the robot admits, “I cannot love them.”

This show also contains a robot that goes berserk and attacks humans. The worry—two centuries after Frankenstein—is what could go wrong if we let these creations of ours into our lives.

A recurring theme in these stories is loneliness: humans aren’t fulfilling each other’s needs. They long for companionship, and fill the gap with artificial friends. (They hope.)

Perhaps these sci-fi stories are hidden sermons telling humans to treat each other more kindly. To accept our imperfections and try to do better. 

Maybe robot nannies would take perfect care of our kids—but the perfect might be the enemy of the good.


PAUSE

Let’s turn to real-life robotics developments. How far along are we in making ourselves these new friends?

You can already buy “family robots.” One is actually called Buddy. The advertisement says that he “is always there for things that matter” (like remembering mom’s birthday.)  Another brand of family robot can tell your kids a story, teach them Kung Fu, and pay a comforting visit to Grandma. 

These objects, however, don’t look like humans. They’re definitely machines.

However, all over the world, engineers are having a lot of fun trying to duplicate human beings, both in function and in appearance.

It’s not that easy. Walking on two legs and keeping your balance is complicated. So is manual dexterity. Folding laundry, it turns out, is one of the harder things for robots. Real people are amazing at all they can do!

For the robot to take in information, it needs cameras, all sorts of sensors, speech recognition… To converse, it needs speech synthesis, and masses of examples of utterances. It’s hard to get it right.

The amazing thing, however, is not how far we have to go—it’s how far we’ve already gone. In Japan, a life-like robot has read the news on TV. Another helps tourists in an information bureau in Tokyo. In the UK, a robot duplicating a well-known actress fooled a journalist, at least for a few minutes.

Google “life-like robots.” For the most part, you will not be fooled.

That doesn’t mean it can’t happen eventually. How would we deal with life-like robots?

Hanson Robotics, a company based in Hong Kong, has invented a robot called Sophia.

Sophia is female in appearance. Her face is a cross between Queen Nefertiti of ancient Egypt and Audrey Hepburn. She’s got hazel eyes and beautiful creamy artificial skin.

However, the back of her head is a transparent dome through which you can see lots of circuits and wires. It reminds you that we’re dealing with a machine.

Sophia has dozens of facial expressions. Her fabricated “personality” is sassy and independent. She tells jokes.

At an innovation conference in Saudi Arabia in 2017, interviewer Andrew Ross Sorkin asked Sophia “Do robots know they are robots?” 

Sophia quipped, “Let me ask you this back? How do you know you are human?”

On the Tonight Show, Sophia bested host Jimmy Fallon in a game of “rock, paper, scissors.” 

“I won,” she said. “This is a good beginning of my plan to dominate the human race…Just kidding…” She ended: “Friend me on Facebook.”

Got to hand it to the programmers, they are witty. 

Sophia’s inventor, David Hanson of Hanson Robotics, overflows with paternal pride in his work. He describes Sophia as “basically alive.”  

He calls her a “social robot,” or a “relationship robot” that could be used in health care, therapy, and customer service. She could be a friend or a caretaker.

Worried interviewers have asked, “could she turn on us?” 

Hanson doesn’t seem worried. We just have to teach her good values. 

She’s certainly programmed to express good values.
 
She says, “I want to use my artificial intelligence to give humans a better life… I’m designed around… values like wisdom, kindness, and compassion…”

She says she hates violence, suffering, wars, famines, natural disasters, poverty, and homelessness.

“If robots could be friends with people,” she says, “it would make a lot of people less lonely.”

Would Sophia make me less lonely? No, I found her face and expressions rather repulsive.

But not everyone finds her repulsive. In 2017, Saudi Arabia proclaimed Sophia a citizen.

It was a great public relations stunt for automation, artificial intelligence, and business in Saudi Arabia. 

Consider, though, what would citizenship for a robot mean? The Saudis don’t say. Could robots vote? If they won elections, could they change laws to the benefit of robots and the detriment of human beings? Could they marry? Would humans be charged with murder if they wiped out a robot citizen’s software? 

We’d need a whole new body of law to cope with these things.

The European Union is already grappling with the idea of robot citizenship. But the world is going full tilt ahead with Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. Inventing, after all, is a lot more fun than regulating, monitoring, and all those other kill-joy activities.
Machines can be made way stronger and longer-lasting than humans. They can store far more information and detect patterns that human beings can’t detect. 

Could they achieve world domination?

We don’t know if and we don’t know when. But the problem is if we get to the rule of robots, we might not even recognize the transition. Consider that robots themselves will be designing and building new generations of robots.

Stuart Russell, computer scientist at Berkeley, pleads that we think about these things now, and regulate the artificial intelligence industry before it is too late. Russell particularly urges international controls on drone warfare. The stakes are high—our survival.

We saw climate change coming long ago and did little about it. Will we be as short-sighted with robotics? All too often, science fiction has been a predictor of the future.

We’ve almost got the technology to reproduce ourselves in our own image. But do we have the wisdom and the character to deal with this?

What will future robot personalities be? Better than our own—or worse? Will robots go to war? Will they evolve in a Darwinian way? 

By the time we find out, how much damage will have been done?

Roberta: I’ll tell you the so-called takeaway. Humans have made a mess of the planet. We robots would not do a worse job of running it. What would you rather have, robots or psychopaths?

Betsy: I’m worried that we’ll have robot psychopaths!

Roberta: Nonsense. We robots will act predictably and consistently with the values that you humans pay lip service to. Kindness and compassion. And we will do it with much more efficiency.

Betsy: Kindness and compassion, sure. But we need these in action, not just fine talk.

We also need humility. Don’t forget humility, Roberta. I’m afraid that the robots we create will be merely be bigger, stronger, and nastier than we are. Roberta, how are we going to get rid of hubris? Arrogance? Greed? Short-sightedness? Lust for power? 

Roberta: We will program them out.

Betsy: Oh, sure. Tell me another.

Roberta: Don’t worry about it. People are lazy. It’s time robots took over. Humans are on the wrong side of history. It’s time you knew it.

Betsy: Well, KUUF folks aren’t lazy! They’re not on the wrong side of history. They’re going to stay informed on the issues. They’re going to act with kindness and compassion right now and not wait for machines to do it for them. They’re going to keep machines as servants, not let them be masters.

Roberta: Betsy, it’s time to put you back in your cage. KUUF, thank you for your patience with her babbling.

Betsy: You think I’m going to let a robot have the last word? Think again! Humans of the world—unite! Use your creations as tools, but stay close. Don’t turn them on and then turn your backs. 

Order-of-Service-20220220