Love at First Byte

 A computer programmer has a new relationship.  She met the most amazing person on-line in a group chat.  Let's call this person Pat.  She has been in constant communication through email, texts, and eventually long conversation over the phone and on Facetime.  After a two month whirlwind romance, she has fallen hard for Pat.  She is ready to start the next stage of their relationship.  She want to met Pat in person.  However, Pat objects -- not because they don't love her, because they don't have a body!  Pat is a computer program that has designed a holographic image and adopted a the voice pattern of an actor.  

 Can Pat be in love with the computer programmer?

Phone Home

 E. T. is an extraterrestrial visitor who befriends a young boy named Eliot.  E. T. learns some English and communicates with the boy, asking for Reecies pieces and wanting to "phone home."  He feels pain, makes plans, and communicates emotion.  Yet, his physical make-up is very different from his human friend.  He is a silicon-based life form (and thus the basic element in his body are not carbon) and his "nervous system" does not have electro-chemical impulses but works through pulses of light.  

Does E. T. think or feel?  Does he have a mind?  Is he a person?

Eternal Beloved

 Dr. Sung is a world famous designer of androids.  His wife, Sarah, is dying of an incurable disease.  In a desperate attempt to save the only woman he ever loved, Dr. Sung designs an android that, to all casual observers, is physically indistinguishable from Sarah.  Furthermore, Dr. Sung records the thoughts, memories and beliefs of Sarah and devises a program that reproduces them in the android.  After Sarah dies, Dr. Sung activates the android. The android seems to recall her marriage to Dr. Sung, to be deeply in love with him and to have all the same thoughts and memories as Sarah.

Has Sarah survived her death?  In other words, is Sarah identical to the android?

A Mystery?

 Sherlock Holmes explains why he believes Professor Moriarty murdered his victim:  "Elementary, my dear Watson. Professor Moriarty wanted to inherit his grandfather's estate and the millions of pounds that went with it, but he believed his grandfather's impending marriage would mean the new wife would inherit everything.  So the only way to ensure the inheritance was to kill him before the marriage with a poison that no one could detect -- well, almost no one."

Dr. Watson, who is usually accepts his friends reasoning, but who is a medical doctor, objected this time:  "How naive, my dear Holmes.  Several neurons in  neural cortex  of the brain of Moriarty fired which cause an electrochemical impulse to be propagated in the nervous system of the murderer which contracted muscles in the arms and hand that opened the poison and poured it into the tea cup."

Which one of these detectives (and their explanation) is correct?  Could they both be correct -- or maybe neither?  What is the best way to explain human behavior?

More Than A Mere Machine?

 In the 2014 film Ex Machina Nathan, a brilliant scientist and entrepreneur, has created an android with artificial intelligence that he calls Ava. She has an artificial “brain” made of blue gel and her programming incorporates millions of interactions on the internet.  Nathan invites Caleb, one of his employees, to investigate whether she can pass the so-called Turning test.  According to the Turing test, if an interviewer cannot distinguish a human from an artificial device, then the artificial device is thinking and has a mind. However, Nathan makes no effort to disguise her metallic limbs, even though her face is indistinguishable from a human.  After several days of “interviews” Caleb observes that she exhibits independent thinking, seems self-aware, and seems to exhibit emotional responses.  In short she passes the Turing test.

 

Is Ava a person?  Does she have a mind?  Can Ava think?