This blog post may be a little pessimistic as a forewarning. I’m going to focus on Rodney Brooks and, more importantly, his view on life. Thinking of life as a combination of simple processes is not a horrible disservice to mankind. True it may be a gross oversimplification but it is tangible. We relate the consciousness of others to our own. Let’s say that I love the taste of steak. If someone doesn’t like the taste, then they are insane to me. I define my own reality and it can be grossly different to the reality of someone sitting inches from me. Rodney Brooks has put the theory of evolution into context of his reality. People, to him, may be just a series of simple responses to certain stimuli. If our hand touches a hot stove, we remove it as long as our nervous system is functioning. At a past time, our list of possible responses may have been smaller than it is now. Or maybe they were the same in quantity but are now different. It’s very interesting, and I suppose a little undermining to what makes us “human.”
But what makes us human? Our intellect would be my guess. We feel that we are the smartest creatures on Earth. Fast, Cheap, and Out of Control is all about us being smarter than the Earth. The lion tamer is all about appearing stronger than the lions. The mole rat guy takes the mole rats out of their natural environment and studies them. The topiary gardner shapes plants into shapes of animals and limits their growth to maintain shape. And then we come to Rodney Brooks. He tries to imitate human movement and eventually intellect. Brooks does not try to perfect his robots, saying that he designs them to be able to fall. Brooks studies human/animal behavior and bases his creation on them. Because he programs robots from what he observes, it is natural for him to think of humans as a series of simple processes. One could think of humans as an incomprehensible complex machine and I’m not offended to think of myself in that way. Some people believe God created life and everything around it. It is egotistical for humans to create themselves and play God, but isn’t that what makes us human also; striving to pass on our life experiences and name? Who is to say that at some point we will not be able to replicate ourselves 100% along with free will and all.
One could argue that you can’t program free will. I say no one would want to program free will. We don’t even have free will. We have social inhibitions and intellectual restraints. To program those sets of rules into a robot, could they not function like a regular member of society? And if we have defined things that are real as things that act as they should, would these robots who act like members of society should not appear as real and sane?
If we eventually find a way to program robots with free will, how would they act? We don’t act that way. Would that make them more “human” than us? Scary stuff.
CUT to shot of a man balancing a large object on his forehead. (NOTE: mood music may be a little overwhelming but none the less effective)