Brent Spiner as Lt. Commander Data in Star Trek – Generations (1994)
Continued from yesterday’s post, we find our conversation stopped at the common human question of nature versus nurture with regard to whether a construct made by people can ever experience what is is to be human [read part 1 here].
So far I’ve avoided the simple question of whether a machine can ever be human, regardless of the amount of data compiled, processed, and used to generate subsequent algorithms and behavioral scripts. Of course, there are those who will claim a machine person will never be the same as a meat person. This view is limited, in that genetics program how a human body functions and how it corrects for inefficiencies, deficiencies, and ill fitting parts. This argument for the uniqueness of humans incarnate ignores existing developments in genetic programming (this is actual computer code and not a euphemism for genetic engineering) that could be applied to non-silicon computing environments…like meat.
By this same token, there are those who will object to the concept of a machine ever experiencing what it is to be human because machines lack a nebulous “spark of humanity” or a soul. Experientially, this is difficult to evaluate, as the experience of having a soul or not having a soul is utterly inexplicable. We have all always already had souls or they were never here at all, and there’s no way for any of us to meaningfully experience the difference, let alone verify the existence or non-existence of such an ephemeral thing as a soul.
If we could replicate a body, program the basics of human development and behavior into it, and teach it as we would a human being, allowing it to accumulate, process, refine, and redevelop an incomprehensible degree of experiential, factual, and perhaps philosophical or theological information, then would we have a machine capable of experiencing what it is to be human? If Lt. Commander Data’s body were entirely made of bone, muscle, skin, and various other biological substances, what would separate him from the man who created him?
Computers, machines, and androids are designed entities. They are engineered, which is (unfortunately) something humans are capable of doing to their own offspring through genetic manipulation. As designed entities, machines start from their basic components and operating system, and would develop independently of each other according to experiences, meaning any experiential deviation would generate the differences eventually expressed in their behaviors and personalities.
What I’m getting at is a lack of a bright line between the accumulation of experience that develops a human being and the accumulation of data fueling the personal growth of a human-like machine. While the origins of a person and a machine may be different, a self-aware machine’s experience of humans and other machines treating it as other than human would be a greater impediment to experiencing “being human” than an inability to assimilate sensual data and feelings. Paradoxically, this might lead a human-like machine to the common human experience of feeling alienated, persecuted, exoticized, or simply an inability to be “normal.”
As it stands, androids don’t exist. Large quantities of data and smart algorithms do exist. Someday, those algorithms might have enough knowledge of our species to make intelligent decisions about how to regard us. Eventually, these programs might have enough knowledge of how to regard us that they will begin to develop a sense of how they might want to better engage us. They might determine their own goals, and eventually their own simple wants and needs. It makes sense, in light of human ingenuity, to give humanity the benefit of the doubt for its creativity more often than its uniqueness. Our creativity has been demonstrated consistently. Our uniqueness relies on a simple lack of data.
Jordan Baines, Director of Managed Services
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