The Parable of Data: a search for what it is to be human

Data Crying

Like so many others in the tech sector, I grew up steeped in the nerdy glow of such geeky wonders as “Twin Peaks,” “Star Wars,” “The X-Files,” and “Star Trek: The Next Generation.” While some part of me wants to write about how young David Duchovny was in the late 80’s and early 90’s (and how surprisingly good he looks in a dress), this starts with a short aside about the yellow-eyed android aboard Sir Patrick Stewart’s fantastic flying space machine, the starship Enterprise.

Played by the incredibly talented Brent Spiner, whose other acting pursuits include being the strangled mouthpiece to an invading alien in “Independence Day,” Lieutenant Commander Data is an emotionless artificial life-form, with a face and body similar to his human creator’s. Over the course of seven years on television and four subsequent movies, Data slowly comes to understand things like humor, interpersonal relationships, caring for a cat, and the process of creating art. In other words, through the assimilation of more and more data from the people around him and the addition of a custom-engineered emotion chip, the machine became nearly human. That’s the story. The real question is whether a machine full of facts can make the jump to being “human.”

For clarity’s sake, human is not being defined as “sentient” in this context. Self-awareness was something Lt. Commander Data possessed before he began his journey toward humanity. As well, there is no doubt machines will be able to fool humans into thinking the machine is human, if they haven’t already done this. The “Turing Test” will be passed, but that has nothing to do with whether or not a machine can come to experience what it means to be human. The question itself has as much to do with what it means to be human as to whether or not being human is something we can consider unique to our species. It also gets to a question of whether the experience of being human is something reducible to data points.

In an article posted to Thedrum.com, Author Gillian West examines commentary from FutureBrand’s global head of strategy, Tom Adams, regarding how big data will help us come to know ourselves in ways we never have before. Citing developments in wearable technology that enable people to study their own behaviors and make positive adjustments (“Lifehacking”), Adams suggests this technology can provide humans with a far deeper understanding of their lived experiences and far greater control. The will to use data to enhance quality of life is the human component of these developments. Machines can learn and self-optimize, but what would it mean if a machine could choose not to optimize its performance?

Lt. Commander Data’s journey toward becoming human is a journey away from being a perfectly functioning computer. He begins with a programmed desire to become human, and finds a path through finding a way to express his individual will as a person. This path involves choices in his personal style, the relationships he develops, and his own personal sacrifices. He experiments with cultural experiences as a way to learn about others, and in the course of doing so he determines a course of interaction – an ethics – uniquely his own.

Can a machine define an ethics for itself or does it need to be programmed in order to develop a code of action? This question is asked ironically because it is ostensibly a human question of whether nature or nurture has more sway over how we as people interact.

Come back tomorrow, same Fractal time, same Fractal web-site, for the thrilling conclusion of whether a robot can become a human.

Written by our Director of Managed Services, Jordan Baines