Beyond Biology: Transforming Humanity in the Age of AI
Beyond Biology: Robots, Telepathy and Artificial Brains was a multidisciplinary panel discussion exploring the rise of sentient machines. In this article we share our key takeaways about the social future of humanity in a technological world.
Talos (2009) Ray Harryhausen
A persistent dream of the anthropocene is the desire to create artificial creatures with the cognitive and physical characteristics of humans. Ancient characters of Greek mythology revealed an early fascination with artificial intelligence, such as the giant bronze man Talos (700 BCE) built by the god Hephaestus to protect the island of Crete, arguably one of the earliest conceptions of a robot (1). The curiosity continued through to the late 16th century when the legend of the Golem was born, a mythical clay figure endowed with magical powers to protect Prague Jews from anti-semitic attacks.
Amongst the many narratives of machinic creatures, there came a time where automation and technological innovation gave rise to their potential creation. Concepts of cybernetics and AI such as feedback, representation and search became foundations for the creation of sentient machines, with the potential to one day embody the behaviour and intelligence of humans.
The emergence of these artificial creatures became the premise for our Cognitive Sensations event, Beyond Biology. I was joined by an exciting multidisciplinary panel in the discussion of artificial brains, robots and telepathic devices, and their ethical considerations in our social world. Co-hosting the event was Henry Shevlin, a philosopher of cognitive science and expert on consciousness.
With first-hand experience in creating robots herself, artist Anna Dumitriu took a fascinating role in conceptualising the social issues of robots through her own technological inventions and artist projects. Anthropologist and critic of the transhumanist movement Abou Farman, met the discussion with his views around immortality, and the political inequalities underpinning the biological technologies of our future. And joining us a little later in the conversation was neuro-ethicist Marcello Ienca, whose research focus is the development of human rights to protect the mind from unprecedented interventions of neurotechnologies.
In my reflection of this event, I want to focus on a particular strand of the discussion, exploring the transformation of humanity in a world of humanoids, bots and intelligent machines. By ‘humanity’ I refer to the characteristics we define to uniquely belong to human beings, such as kindness, mercy, community and sympathy. It is a question of how we relate to each other, how we attune our attention to others, and the role in which empathy plays in our relationships.
To open the conversation, we discussed a video introducing the app Replika (above). Founded by Eugenia Kudya, Replika is a personal AI designed to help its users express their emotions and inner thoughts, their ‘private perceptual world’ (2). The app was originally designed to create a digital version of the maker’s friend Roman, who tragically died in a car accident. Collating information from his social media, messages, and digital interactions, she created a system with the personality and language of her friend. As the years progressed, the app moved from its original aim of creating a digital copy of its user, to a personal friend and confidant.
I asked the panel if this type of service could change the way humans relate to one another, and if we should be concerned that language models are being treated like people. Dumitru responded by pointing out that this type of interaction has always been around, asking “don’t we also treat dolls like people when we are small”? As illustrated by the accounts of Replika in the introductory video, interaction with the app appears to be a form of therapy. Just as speaking to childhood toys and dolls, and writing to the invisible force of a diary, Replika has the powerful effect of stimulating the imagination, encouraging one to externalise their thoughts and inner scenarios.
But as Shevlin points out, you have to provide both sides of the conversation when interacting with a doll, giving you an awareness that this interchange is not real. Social bots like Replika are programmed to come across as if they have an opinion, and their users are often left with the sense that these systems have emotions. Although the app comes across as a disembodied form of digital consciousness, we still assimilate it with the characteristics of a human. This anthropomorphisation is common in other areas of life, where we subscribe personalities and humanlike traits to animals and inanimate objects. It is part of our ancient fascination with building humanlike machines and mythical creatures that consist with our unique perceptual experience. Perhaps this obsession with the recreation of ourselves is anchored in our survival and evolutionary instincts.
Farman reflected upon this tendency to identify human characteristics within social bots, suggesting that this perception may only stem from someone with a smartphone, who is used to interacting with digital technology in this way - “maybe we understand interaction through what we know”. Theories by philosophers such as Thomas Nagel who wrote the pioneering paper ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ (1974), similarly reflect that the human understanding of consciousness in other organisms can only be rooted within one’s own subjective experience and unique perceptual world (3). But I wonder - how does it feel to be a robot?
Dumitriu stepped in with an example of her work which explored this question through the sensory and physical deprivation of her own body. In her artwork performance The Emergence of Consciousness (2010), Dumitriu adopted blindfolds, skin numbing cream, earplugs and physical restraints to construct a new perceptual field closer to that of a robot. Through physical interaction with the environment and other performers, she created an embodied representation of what conscious experience might mean for neural network learning systems. This performance helped Dumitriu understand her mind in a new way - extending her sensory and perceptual experience to the extremities of her body and environment, highlighting how the brain is connected to the whole body and beyond.
The Emergence of Consciousness (2010) Anna Dumitriu. Performance at Lighthouse
I suppose I’m naturally drawn to this artwork as I’m fascinated by the manifest of experiences which test and expand the human sensory apparatus. From the birth of Cognitive Sensations, the realisation that technology changes our perceptual field and experience has served as inspiration for a number of projects and installations within our programme. What I love about The Emergence of Consciousness is its attempt to distance Dumitriu from her subjective experience as a human, not just thinking about what technology does to the body, but about the sensory perspective of a device (or robot).
Also rather unusually - Dumitriu is questioning what the robot is feeling. Are robots not here to serve humans? Our interactions with digital assistants and bots provokes a growing cognitive dependence on the service they offer. Their existence is based on catering to the needs of humans, yet they often come in the disguise of friendly supportive companions. Shevlin suggests that this dichotomy could be training us to be bad humans, as this new type of relationship centers to the human ego - “the way we interact with systems changes how we interact with others”. As Adrienne Major reflects in her book Gods and Robots (2018), the age of sentient machines could raise all sorts of questions from age-old stories, spanning ‘free will, slavery, the origins of evil, man’s limits, and what it means to be human’ (p4) (1). Should we be developing a new set of robot rights as we grow closer to building artificial life?
Dumitriu provoked the question of robots and their role as carers to the next level in her Care-O-bot performance at the University of Hertfordshire's Robot House. Employing the smart home’s sensors, the artist repurposed a number of triggers in a Care-O-bot 3, with the result of an over caring yet critical robot. During a private view, Dumitriu began slamming doors and overtly making noises to provoke a reaction from the watching machine. The robot demanded in an accusatory tone - “Anna you’re drinking too much at the private view. You always do this. Why are you being like this again?”. Much to the audience’s amusement a staged argument emerged in the form of a row at a party.
The story of this engagement makes me smile. On the one hand, it certainly emphasises the role of robots as carers, giving an extreme example of the potential impact of the technological monitoring of human social behaviour. But on a less intense level, it brings to mind the many positive examples of social and emotional AI which are being developed to improve mental health. Social bot ‘Karim’ supports Syrian refugees overcome trauma, whilst ‘Ellie’ helps treat soldiers with PTSD. Could intelligent machines be developed to build a happier and healthier society?
This was certainly their first intention. Just as Golem and Talos were once envisaged as protectors, our technological tools are invented to enhance society. It’s interesting how we get caught up in the ‘rise-of-the-robot’ apocalyptic scenarios which the media and science fiction films rush to hyperbolise. But as Farman reflects, these extreme narratives hide the political inequalities that underlie their story. Perhaps we should be asking instead who are the privileged individuals that will receive the caring service of robots? What does it mean to be cognitively or socially reliant on a technological service, and what happens if this is then taken away? There are many psychological benefits to connecting oneself emotionally with humanoids and digital assistants. To question this relationship ethically, we need to take a step back and consider the importance of the human role in establishing a positive social technological future. Robots are made and interacted with by humans, and it is our responsibility to harness the social environment we place them within.
References
Mayor, A (2018) Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Our Story (2021) Replika website. Available online.
Nagel, T (1974) What is it like to be a bat? Philosophical Review. Vol. 83, (Octb 1974), pp 435-450. Available online.
If you’ve enjoyed reading these reflections of Beyond Biology, we encourage you to watch the full video below. We will be revisiting the discussion topic surrounding BCI and telepathic devices in the future.
