Aritificial Intelligence
Watson's Relevance and Mattering to Us
03/03/11 20:54 Filed in: Popular Culture
In a eductive, My Dear Watson">recent post, I commented on the computer Watson that beat famous Jeopardy champion Ken Jennings. There, I discussed Dreyfus’ argument that computers can never be humans. In a recent editorial, Stanley Fish let Dreyfus speak about Watson.
Dreyfus notes that Watson belongs to a new kind of programming that tries to include responses and learning in the environment rather than strict programming to account for every situation. Yet, even here, Watson shows why computers fail to be like human beings: nothing matters to computers. Thus, Dreyfus writes “The fact is, things are relevant for human beings because at root we are beings for whom things matter. Relevance and mattering are two sides of the same coin.”
This insight helps explain some of our favorite robots in the history of science fiction. Asimov’s robot in I, Robot is concerned about the family he serves. They are relevant to him and they matter to him. Particularly their welfare. This same notion of concern for others is kept, though in a different form, in the Will Smith movie I, Robot. In that movie, the robot is concerned both for his master, who he killed, and also for humanity as a whole.
If we turn our attention to perhaps the most famous robot of all, Data in Star Trek, we can discover another thing that matters to robots: being human. In the original Asimov story and throughout Star Trek: The Next Generation, the principal androids want to be human. In the Asimov story, the robot wants to be human so much, he has himself programmed to die so he can experience death. (Something can be said here about Heidegger and his notion of being towards death, but that will be for another time.) In Star Trek, Data is constantly seeking to be human by having emotions. In both cases, being human matter to the robots/androids. What science fiction reveals, then, is that for a robot to seem human to us, they must be concerned about something -- something must matter to them.
Of course, being relevant and mattering are, in the end, aspects of our bodily existence. The phenomenologist Max Scheler points this out most clearly. Our life drives direct our perception and help shape the world for us. That is, the world matters to us because we have drives that motivate us to act on the world.
The question remains whether the new approach of scientists working in AI (artificial intelligence) can bridge the gap between having no concerns to being embedded in relevance and mattering the way human beings are. Dreyfus seems to see some hope here. I think, on the other hand, that if scientists can make this move, it won’t be a robot or android that we have worked from, but some hybrid of animal/human/computer.
Dreyfus notes that Watson belongs to a new kind of programming that tries to include responses and learning in the environment rather than strict programming to account for every situation. Yet, even here, Watson shows why computers fail to be like human beings: nothing matters to computers. Thus, Dreyfus writes “The fact is, things are relevant for human beings because at root we are beings for whom things matter. Relevance and mattering are two sides of the same coin.”
This insight helps explain some of our favorite robots in the history of science fiction. Asimov’s robot in I, Robot is concerned about the family he serves. They are relevant to him and they matter to him. Particularly their welfare. This same notion of concern for others is kept, though in a different form, in the Will Smith movie I, Robot. In that movie, the robot is concerned both for his master, who he killed, and also for humanity as a whole.
If we turn our attention to perhaps the most famous robot of all, Data in Star Trek, we can discover another thing that matters to robots: being human. In the original Asimov story and throughout Star Trek: The Next Generation, the principal androids want to be human. In the Asimov story, the robot wants to be human so much, he has himself programmed to die so he can experience death. (Something can be said here about Heidegger and his notion of being towards death, but that will be for another time.) In Star Trek, Data is constantly seeking to be human by having emotions. In both cases, being human matter to the robots/androids. What science fiction reveals, then, is that for a robot to seem human to us, they must be concerned about something -- something must matter to them.
Of course, being relevant and mattering are, in the end, aspects of our bodily existence. The phenomenologist Max Scheler points this out most clearly. Our life drives direct our perception and help shape the world for us. That is, the world matters to us because we have drives that motivate us to act on the world.
The question remains whether the new approach of scientists working in AI (artificial intelligence) can bridge the gap between having no concerns to being embedded in relevance and mattering the way human beings are. Dreyfus seems to see some hope here. I think, on the other hand, that if scientists can make this move, it won’t be a robot or android that we have worked from, but some hybrid of animal/human/computer.
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