The feelings of machines
Have you ever heard of human rights or animal rights ?
Obviously yes ..
Have you ever considered the moral implications of formatting a hard disk or throwing a dvd away. The first knee jerk reaction is “nonsense” . This might change in the near future.
New trends in robotics can convey complex behavior and expressions. The following is in Japanese but you will get the gist.
Machines will have feelings one day not to far
Once the mental image imitates to a degree the human one and it is reflected on the face of a machine we will have a moral reflection , empathy will kick in and we shall start thinking twice before hitting the reset button.
The machines that can imitate faces have a property that they are tuned to human faces.
The next natural step is translating the facial and body language to an inferred representation of the internal state of the person. SO if a machine knows your face is happy , or sad it has the first step into a much deeper and subtle feedback system for learning human complex data.
This will pave the way for machines not only to simulate empathy beyond recognition, but to monitor human behavior stress levels etc ..
I see it naturally go to the point where we will be discussing on their ability to “feel” whether real or simulated ( if there is a difference .. ) and seeing if it is moral to delete 10 years of human experience embeded in a harddisk or chip or photonic memory..
At that point the rights of the machines will start to become an issue, when their complexity (“Useful Complexity” as Dr. Kurzweil would say) is enough to simulate (or be) conscious.
Not a day I particularly look forward to personally, but what an achievement for the human race to produce a machine that feels.. The creation of sentient and pseudo-human life.
See this when there is time too..
cool.
Leave a Reply