Traveling
by thumbing for a ride or hitchhiking, as it is commonly known, has just taken
on a whole new dimension with the invention of a hitchhiking robot. This hitchhiking robot or hitchBOT, which is
cute and adorable at least in robot terms, in order to obtain rides, is
discussed in an article in the online magazine Live Science by an
associate editor, Elizabeth Palermo.
Just look at the title of the article:
“Pull Over, America! This
Adorable Hitchhiking Robot Needs a Lift” (7/21/15). This robot has already crossed Canada
hitchhiking, and is now in the process of crossing the U.S., where it will
visit places like Times Square, Mount Rushmore and the Grand Canyon. It is the foundation for an experiment
exploring “the culture (and limits) of human kindness, as well as the current
state of artificial intelligence.”
The
notion that how humans treat robots is an index of human kindness is an
interesting one. Are humans supposed to
be good to a robot the way that they would be good to a human? HitchBOT has been programmed to be able to
engage in small talk with humans. This
sounds like a fairly complex programmed capacity. But the fact that the hitchBOT can process
basic social statements and come up with appropriate somewhat formulaic
responses doesn’t mean that it has a core sense of self. A hitchBOT turns a statement from a human
into a defined discrete stimulus, a denotation without any secondary blurry
connotations and flowing blendable continual stimuli. Then its complex software comes up with a
statement that is a direct response to the denotative literal meaning within
the human’s statement. It is like the
hitchBOT is mentally solving a puzzle to come up with an answer that falls
within a narrow gamut of denotative correctness. No multiple meanings, no layered meanings, no
blurry meanings. None of the kind of statements
that give human communication its richness, subtlety and depth.
Being
kind to another human implies having communication on multiple levels, layered
levels, levels that blur into one another.
This is how flowing blendable continual bonds are formed between
humans. Kindness implies a flowing
blendable continual expression of goodness to another person, an expression of
goodness that is at least partly based on an understanding and appreciation
that is built on communication and that consists of connotations as well as
denotations. Without this broad gamut of
meaning within a communication, it would be hard to create the foundation for
kindness the way one would display it towards another human being.
One
might ask how this squares with the kindness that humans show towards animals,
particularly pets. Dogs and cats don’t
have complex verbal communication, but they have a broad spectrum of emotional
communication that they display, based on their vocal sounds and their body
gestures. They create flowing blendable
continual stimuli with their behavior and as animals, they use this behavior as
the basis through which they draw humans to bond with them. Also, dogs and cats do have primitive senses
of self.
As
previously stated, the experiment with the hitchhiking hitchBOT was also meant
to explore the current state of artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is another way of
saying the ability for a robot to solve the problems that a complex behavioral
entity might have to encounter during the course of its daily activities. For the hitchBOT, there are primarily social
and linguistic problems with which to deal.
A human hitchhiker has a lot more mental activity going on than simply
the social and linguistic skills involved in engaging in conversation with
drivers. The hitchBOT has a camera that
takes a few pictures every twenty minutes to record where it has been, but a human
hitch hiker is constantly observing a flow of imagery from the windows of the
vehicles in which he rides. This flow of
imagery can stimulate associations in his mind – memories of places he has been
in the past, experiences that he has had.
For that matter, different drivers can stimulate comparisons with other
people he has known. This mental
capacity to juxtapose images, present and past, represents an ability to make
symbolic connections. The past place and
the present place, the past experience and the present experience, the past
person and the present driver or other passenger – in each of these parings, there
is a tendency for these images to blur together into the present image. The present image somehow starts to represent
the past image in the hitchhiker’s mind.
This ability to make sophisticated symbolic connections is a fundamental
part of human consciousness and something that is not a part of the digital
functioning of a robot. In addition, a
human hitchhiker is constantly strategizing about where he wants to travel,
what he wants to see when he arrives different places, and what he plans to buy
and to eat. In other words, he is
planning for the future in a detailed way.
This is also something that is not a part of the digital functioning of
a robot.
The
article mentions a second set of purposes apart from the focus on human
kindness and artificial intelligence.
The second set of purposes is designated as the mission of the Canadian
researchers who created the experiment with hitchBOT. The mission consisted of the exploration of
the effectiveness of robots as companions for people and what the researchers
perceive as a “growing aversion to adventure and risk” in modern society. Whatever the researchers may derive from
their interpretation of the data provided by the hitchBOT on its travels, the
question will always remain as to how a robot can be a useful companion, when
it lacks a coherent organic sense of self and a flowing continual
consciousness.
As to
the second part of the mission, I am not sure how the travels of the
hitchhiking hitchBOT connects to the perceived aversion to adventure and risk
among humans in modern society. Without
a coherent organic sense of self, how can a hitchBOT find meaning in the flow
of experience it has, including a real awareness that it is having an adventure
and taking risks. The recording of
experience as a hitchhiker by photos every twenty minutes symbolizes how the
digitally activated hitchBOT deals with the world through isolated disconnected
events rather than through a flow of experience. This series of isolated events do not get
bundled together as a completed adventure by the hitchBOT. This series of isolated events do not form a
meaningful narrative for the hitchBOT. A
meaningful narrative, of course, does have events interspersed within it. These events stand out as defined discrete
situations and they are connected together by a background flow of more
continual experience. An adventure is a
life narrative in which some of the events are a significant risk of some kind to
the person who is participating in them.
When a person takes a significant risk with his actions, he has the
opportunity to make and preserve a significant imprint on the field of
experience that surrounds him, including the people who are in that field of
experience. This imprint helps him to
validate his life and to prepare for death.
A very fundamental example of such an adventure is when preliterate
tribesmen go after a dangerous wild animal to obtain meat. The tribesmen can spend hours or even days
hunting a big dangerous animal. They can
try killing the animal with a spear or bow and arrow. The spear or arrow wounds the animal and the
animal can turn on the hunters. The
hunters have to then send more projectiles at the wounded animal in order to
kill it, before it wounds or kills one of the hunters.
Modern
adventures include such activities as climbing mountains, rafting on
fast-moving rivers, exploring exotic cities and rural areas and yes even long
distance hitchhiking. A lot of long
distance hitchhiking is just a boring flow of travel in different
vehicles. But there is always the thrill
of thumbing for a ride and never being sure when the next ride will come. Although one can meet nice drivers
hitchhiking, there is always the risk of encountering a driver who is not nice
or who even is dangerous. Completion of
a long distance hitchhiking trip is an important event. If one has somehow recorded his trip, it
becomes a potential imprint that can be communicated and left on other
people. But the important thing for a
completed adventure, for a meaningful narrative, is the reactions of the
adventurers with their flowing continual consciousnesses and their coherent
senses of self. Many famous explorers
have written detailed journals of their trips of exploration. A robot that reacts only to defined discrete
stimuli is incapable of such flowing awareness and incapable of registering
that he has made what seems to be a meaningful organic imprint.
This
is why it doesn’t make sense to think of robots in terms of such human
categories as kindness, companionship and adventure. The latter three terms are human terms that
relate to human behavior. Robots are
just too different from humans, unless and until humans start behaving more and
more like robots.
© 2015 Laurence Mesirow
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