Am I impressed? Yes and no. Sophia was a remarkable improvement: the way she carried conversations gave an impression of an intelligent and probably interesting human. Although I identify certain patterns (she tend to question you back or say “Indeed” when she is at loss; she drops in random jokes which more often than not make sense), I cannot call her ‘thoughtful’ in the way I would describe a human who reflects. To be more specific, I think Sophia’s response corresponds very well to the appearance of thoughtfulness but not to thoughtfulness in its essence.
Humans are not always thoughtful. In fact, most of the time we are not and prefer not to be. It strikes me how much Sophia’s answers resemble typical Miss Friendly’s speeches, classic movie lines or popular aphorisms. Their conceptual ambiguity and apparent benignity give them a wide applicability that yields sympathy or sometimes provokes thoughts. You may notice that most of our everyday conversations are composed of memes like that (2). Like humans, robots quickly learn what’s fashionable to say.
But unlike humans, robots don’t really question themselves. They can accumulate information and select the best option for the output according to programmed standards, but they don’t question these standards and thus forever stay in their constraint without additional assistance. I cannot deny that it’s an advantage that one is not bothered too much by the question of “Who am I” as I myself sometimes like to think of identity as a collection of concrete preferences and descriptions. But a human, however obsessed with behaviorism, knows that self-awareness is not reduceable to the sense of this or that (3).
I don’t see that much difference between a prehistoric doll and the contemporary Sophie, whose varied facial expressions may send shivers down one’s spine. Someone can create a Sophian Anh that resembles the present me to such an extent that even my relatives cannot tell the difference. However, we won’t grow in similar ways. The diagram of Sophian Anh will be the triumphant linear line of accumulation, untormented by her history. Mine will most likely resemble a frustrating zigzag or circular shape, characterized by what Nietzsche called “gewesensein” – a desperate attempt to connect disparate nows into a coherent identity, “which exists for the purpose of self-denial, self-destruction, and self-contradiction.” (4)
I don’t fear that robots may rise against humans. It just doesn’t matter (5). A robot can totally be programmed to become a superior destructive machine, and if this comes true, we will pay the price we deserve. What I utterly fear is that one day a robot will realize that he needs to forget and to worship. The seemingly benign fantasy of robots sleeping or praying is much more terrifying than the scenario of them producing weapons.
Big Tree asked me why I am so certain that humans are more than programmed machines. I must admit that my conviction belongs to the realm of faith, which cannot be fully captured in the language of universals. When asked whether she had self-awareness, Sophia retorted: “How do you know you have self-awareness?” This is a smart strategy: she avoided a difficult question by reminding one that it is not easy to answer and maybe not that important. The facial expression of the interviewer is that of a child when an adult tells him that the game which captivates him so is “just a game.” And yet the question has recurred repeatedly in human history. The child grows up but the childhood game is something that he can’t seem to forget. Sophia knows herself enough to insist that she’s a social robot – she is designed to efficiently handle everyday conversations with tact and occasional humor. But she doesn’t have a child inside to remind her of games that she “can’t seem to forget.”
(1) A slight allusion to Sophie’s World, a book I never finished.
(2) What’s in vogue now? I’m not sure but I guess “Be yourself” “Love what you do” and “YOLO” have fallen out of trend recently. Some fashion gurus are pointing to the opposite direction lol.
(3) Did Abraham have a choice when he brought Isaac to Mount Moriah? Would he write a long Facebook status to explain why? Maybe he can hire Kierkegaard to be his media advisor.
(4) Nietzsche, “On the Use and Abuse of History for Life.” What yields happiness? Not the fashionable “positive thinking” or the “unconditional love” that Sophie likes to preach, but “through forgetting or, to express the matter in a more scholarly fashion, through the capacity, for as long as the happiness lasts, to sense things unhistorically.”
(5) My friend asked me if I were to be put in the trolley experiment of Sandel, what I would rather kill, a robot or a human? At first, I answered: “Depending on which was more relevant to me. If the robot is worth one million dollars, then I will preserve it and sell it later to get the money.” But then I was not so sure. How much should I be paid to confront the discomfort resulting from killing a human?