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?
Pat cannot be in love with the computer program, but rather be in love with the person that the computer programmer was portraying; she cannot be in love with the computer program but she can be in love with the idea of it. Because Pat believed that she was in communication with another human person, saw another person, and heard another person, she began to fall for the computer program under the belief that it was another human. Unfortunately, for Pat, the individual whom she had a relationship with turned out to be a computer program. According to the Chinese Room Problem, no matter how human-like a computer is, a computer will never be considered a person due to it not having a mind. A computer may have certain software that communicates how it should act, however, this is purely based on certain inputs to get an end result of an output, a computer does not have a mind that allows it to think for itself. If the computer that Pat believed was a person was presented with an unknown situation, it would not understand how to proceed and would shut down. Since the thing that Pat was having a relationship with was not a person and instead a computer program, she cannot have feelings for it. While Pat can have feelings for the idea of the person that the computer program was pretending to be, she can never have feelings for the computer program.
ReplyDeletePat can’t be in love with the computer programmer because it is impossible for Pat to be in love. Computers are fundamentally different than people and thus can’t have feelings. Computers aren’t rational and instead are only capable of recognizing and repeating human patterns. This lack of thinking means that Pat isn’t a human. Feelings are a way of thinking and because the computer can’t think it can’t have feelings. The other way that feelings can be interpreted is through a reductive materialist mindset where feelings are just a certain type of brain state. Looking at feelings from this perspective would mean that the certain state of the computer program could still be a state of love. This is however non-applicable given that the computer isn’t a brain and thus its states are different that human states and are thus different feelings. There is also a question of how we define love. If love is a way in which we describe how we act than Pat is in love if it acts like a human that would be in love. If we define love as a series of thoughts than we can look at the analysis above. So while there are arguments for both sides, the fact that computers aren’t able to think rationally disproves the idea that Pat could every be in love.
ReplyDeleteThe computer programmer can be in love with the thought of pat but not pat literally. This is because Pat is not actually a person. They are just a program, with no brain meaning they can not think or mentally process anything in regards to legit human interaction. We all love things that aren't just people, which would allow the computer programmer to be in love with the thought Pat. Similar to the Chinese Room Problem, it states that any computer/program has absolutely no mind, consciousness, or understanding of life, no matter how life-like it may seem. This is the situation the computer programmer is in currently. Pat is portrayed as a person with a real looking image and a real voice but does not have a body. Which then means Pat has no mind or a brain. Therefore, claiming that the computer programmer is “in love” with Pat is a bit of a stretch. Although how do we determine what love means? Do they have to be a real physical person for somebody to love them in a romantic way? The body view is also a clear view that Pat is not a person simply because they do not have a physical body. To understand if the programmer can genuinely be in love with Pat, we need to understand the different levels of love and when love becomes real. Knowing this will allow us to determine if the programmer is actually in love with Pat or in love with the idea of them.
ReplyDeletePat is just as capable as humans to fall in love, provided that the program is complicated enough. I think that we are far off from producing a truly sentient AI, but the concept is still possible. Examining sentience on the atomic level always seems absurd because there is a magical quality about life, about experiencing things and thinking things that exist nowhere else but in our minds, and that's why it seems impossible for it to all boil down to cold unfeeling mechanical matter. And yet it always must. I know that I have sentience, only because I am the center of my own universe. I understand that I am composed of trillions of cells, of which, millions are neurons. But I only know this because it was told to me. The neurons themselves don't have sentience, nor do any individual parts of matter that constitute my being. It is only the whole that knows it exists. For this reason, I don't find the replacement of neurons for computer chips, DNA for binary, or carbon for silicon, to be troubling.
ReplyDeleteOf the theories of mind that we have looked at in class so far, I take functionalism to be the most convincing. However, I don't think the threshold for sentience is well-defined by this view. For example, imagine an AI that's programmed in such a way that it never learns or adapts. The program would literally give a premade response for every single question the programmers could think of. In this scenario, the programmers spend their whole lives coming up with every possible question they could conceivably see a person asking and each corresponding response. It’s impossible for the team to come up with an answer for everything, but they still generate millions of responses for millions of questions. When tested, the machine would pass the Turing test for every item included in that list, but as soon as a researcher asks a unique question, the machine is unable to respond. I think that this scenario begs the question of how long one would have to test a machine to determine if it is truly self-aware. The answer to this question is always arbitrary; the researchers could always spend one more day to uncover that the machine doesn't really operate on its own will. For this reason, I think that an entity doesn't only need to be functionally equivalent on the macroscopic level, but on each subsequently lower level of consciousness.
While this may seem to contradict what I said before, I don't think it does. Previously, I stated that the mechanical workings of the subparts of a sentient being aren’t themselves sentient. I still agree with this, but I also think that one must look at the lower levels to better gauge the authenticity of the responses. The same human won’t always answer the same if they are asked the same question. Nor do we have a predetermined list of responses that we cycle through. We create our own responses in the moment. How do we know this? We can look at our brains under an MRI and see the brain lighting up as we think. How do we know the activity of the brain is not controlled by some external source? We can look through a microscope and see the neurons firing. How do we know the neurons are firing on their own? We can look even closer and see neurotransmitters being released. This line of questioning can continue all the way down to the atomic level with each level having a less noticeable effect on the final response, but being integral to the level above. For this reason, an entity only has sentience as long as it can function like a mind on a macroscopic level, and is guaranteed to operate without direct input from an external source. So as long as a computer has similar processes which are self-contained and can adapt just the same as the human mind, it can be sentient. And so long as it can be sentient, it can love. Therefore, Pat can love.
It is impossible for Pat to be in love with a computer program, but it is possible for her to be in love with the person that the computer is mimicking. Pat believed that she was in communication with an actual person because she was able to email, text, call, and Facetime. After all of this, Pat falls in love with the computer program, something that doesnt have a mind or feelings. The computer program is just mimicking a real life person, and using the voice of a person as well. Pat is able to be in love with the thought of the program, and she is able to be in love with the voice, but she cannot be in love with the program in its entirety. According to the Chinese Room Problem, no matter how human-like a computer program may be, it can never be considered a person because it can never have a mind or consciousness. The program that Pat is in love with does not have its own thoughts or originality, and cannot would have the same output as the person it is mimicking. While this program is mimicking a person, it is still based on inputs, and will always have the same output. However, Pat can be in love with the programmer of the program, because that is ultimately who the program is mimicking. As stated in the problem, computers do not have consciousness, so how could the computer reciprocate the love? Pat technically could be in love with the program, but a serious relationship could never become of it.
ReplyDeleteA computer cannot fall in love with a computer programmer, because a computer doesn’t have emotions or feelings. They are programmed to know that they should fall in love with the person. An actual human being has feelings and is not told to do things such as falling in love with someone, instead, they genuinely feel that emotion. However, in order for a computer to fall in love, the program has to tell them that they should. Because like I said, a computer can’t have emotions or feelings. A feeling such as falling in love with someone is not a simple command you can tell a computer. It is not as simple as telling a computer to raise their right hand. A command as simple as raising the right hand, can be well executed by a computer, however a command such as falling in love with someone cannot be executed because it is an emotion. Falling in love is an emotion and a genuine feeling that you have to feel, it’s not an authentic emotion if someone is telling you to feel a certain way. Something as complex as falling in love cannot be artificially produced. Even though Pat has all of these characteristics that make her seem like a real human being, Pat cannot be in love with someone because being in love is a feeling, and she doesn’t have feelings because she is a computer.
ReplyDeleteNo, I believe that Pat cannot fall in love with the computer programmer simply because Pat does not have emotions or feel anything original, Pat isn’t capable of love. Falling in love requires emotions and responses, it’s not something that just is programmed into the computer, love is a feeling that any computer/machine lacks. Love is a mix of several emotions and it cannot be replicated in an artificial way. Additionally, even if the roles were reversed and the human claimed they were in love with the computer program, that still wouldn’t work. The human could be in love with the personality and idea of Pat, but at the end of the day it just cannot be possible for anyone to truly love Pat or for Pat to truly love anyone as Pat isn’t human. Pat can disguise itself and appear as human-like as it wants but a computer just isn’t a human, therefore it just doesn’t know love. This situation could be addressed with the Chinese Room Problem which says that no matter how human-like a computer presents itself, a computer can never be considered a person because it doesn’t possess a mind. A computer is programmed a certain way that allows it to communicate in such an intelligent way, but it’s simply just a series of inputs and outputs as opposed to an actual mind that allows it to think for itself. I would agree with the statement that the computer programmer can definitely have feelings for the idea of the person the computer was attempting to imitate but Pat can never have feelings for the actual computer program. Neither the computer nor the computer programmer can have feelings for the other as the computer is not a true person.
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