5 31 2015 ~How do we relate to technology? How does it relate to us? These are important questions, particularly in light of the increasingly ubiquitous and often hidden roles that modern computing technology plays in our lives. We have always relied on different forms of technology, from stone axes to trains and automobiles. But modern computing technology has some important properties. When it incorporates artificially intelligent programmes, and utilises robotic action-implementation systems, it has the ability to interfere with, and possibly supersede, human agency.
Some of this interference might be desirable. If a robotic surgeon can increase the success rate of a risky type of surgery, we should probably welcome it. But some of the interference might be less desirable. I have argued in the past that we should have some concerns about automated systems that render our public decision-making processes more opaque. Either way, we should think seriously about the different modalities and styles of relationship we can have with technology. To this end, a general taxonomy or framework for understanding our relationships with technology would seem desirable.
...For instance, there is Don Ihde’s, now-classic, taxonomy, of the different types of phenomenological relationship we can have with technology. This taxonomy mentions four such relationships:
Embodiment Relationship: The technology is perceived to be part of us (part of our bodies). For example, my eyeglasses are simply part of my extended body; they are integral to how I perceive and interact with the world.
Hermeneutic Relationship: The technology analyses and interprets the world for a human user. For example, google maps does this for me when it comes to working out where I need to go.
Alterity Relationship: The technology is perceived as being something alien or ‘other’ in nature. For example, some people have this reaction to human-like robots.
Background Relationship: The technology is either so ubiquitous and commonplace that it is ignored, or it is actually hidden from most humans. For example, certain forms of surveillance technology are like this — we don’t even notice all the CCTV cameras that watch us on the streets everyday.
I think there is value to this taxonomy, but it is deliberately limited in its purview to the phenomenological character of our relationships with technology. In the remainder of this post, I want to take a look at a more complicated taxonomy/framework. This is one that was proposed in a recent article by Marlies Van de Voort, Wolter Pieters, and Luca Consoli (hereinafter ‘Van de Voort et al’), and although it builds upon Ihde’s taxonomy, it tries to focus specifically on the ethical implications of different types of computing system.
1. The Four Relationships and the Three Actors
Van de Voort et al’s framework is centred on three actors and four different relationships between these actors. The three actors are:
The Computer: This is an computing system, which the authors define as any system ‘that calculates output based on a given input, following a predefined script of instructions.’ They also insist that (for their purposes) such a system should be intelligent (i.e. use algorithms for decision-making), context-aware (i.e. able to perceive and incorporate information from their surrounding environment) and autonomous (i.e. capable of operating without constant human input).
The Individual: This is just any individual human being that is affected by the computing system. The effects can vary greatly, depending on the relationships between the individual and the computer. We’ll talk about this in more detail below.
The Third Party: This is any entity (i.e. individual, group or another computing system) that either controls, receives information from, or originally programmed and set-up the computer.
The four relationships that are possible between these three actors are:
The Observation Relationship: This is where the computer simply observes and collects information about the individual, which it then may or may not transmit to a third party. Surveillance systems are the exemplars of this relationship.
The Interference Relationship: This is where the computer has some goal state that it must realise by interfering with individual humans. This may or may not involve control or input from a third party. Drone weapon systems are exemplars of this type of relationship, where the ‘interference’ in question can be lethal.
The Interaction Relationship: This is where the computer has some direct interaction with the individual, and that interaction can come in the shape of either observation or interference. A care-giving robot would exemplify this style of relationship.
The Advice Relationship: This is where the computer gives advice to the third party, who then in turn either observes or interferes with the individual. Van de Voort et al refer to this as observation or interference via a proxy.
As you can see, these relationships are not mutually exclusive. The first two are subsumed within the last two. You can think of it like this: The observation and interference relationships are the two basic forms that human relationships can take with computers. But the quality of those relationships then varies depending on whether the computer interacts directly or via a proxy with the human beings...
read entire article at: http://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.com
*for those who want to dig deeper in to the ethics of this multidimensional arena, I highly recommend the film, Ex Machina.
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Ex Machina, et al, & the Metaphysics of Computer Consciousness
by Steven Harp
( ex machina from the phrase “deus ex machina” meaning “god from the machine”)
It seems unquestioned in the world today that science is on the verge of creating consciousness with computers. In a Promethean rapture inspired by its enormous technological success, science aspires now to seize control of fundamental powers at the very heart of the universe.
With the advent of modern science the reality of human consciousness has come to be regarded as physical alone. A caricature of consciousness has been compounded from such disparate elements as digital code, speculative evolutionary psychology, and a “neuro-phrenology” derived from colorized brain imaging. This caricature from scientists and engineers has gone into public circulation with the help of the media and it has become an acceptable counterfeit currency. And with cinematic virtuosity it has been made plausible by representations in the movies.
In the movie, Ex Machina we see another recycling of the classic Frankenstein story: Life is created from nonliving materials. A lone genius in an isolated laboratory, using the mysterious powers of science, creates new life. In the original Frankenstein story we have a dead body made alive by electricity. In Ex Machina we have a non-living “wetware” circuit given a mechanical body and made conscious by electricity.
This takes the story to a whole new level. Here the scientist is creating the very roots of being. To create consciousness-itself is equivalent to creating de novocosmic absolutes such as space, matter, or light. It would be equivalent to creating a spectrum of color, a scale of tones, entire ranges of emotion, thought, pain, pleasure, and the entire dictionary of the contents of consciousness, all from the dark and silent abyss of nothingness.
How can something with neither mass nor dimension arise from that which has mass and dimension? How can that which has subjectivity and intentionality arise from that which has objectivity and has no intentionality? This is the magisterial conundrum and is recognized as the greatest mystery in science. No one, neither philosopher nor scientist, has a clue to the answer. It has famously been labeled the “hard problem of consciousness” by David Chalmers.
In both cases we see technology extrapolated to the creation our most fundamental being in which man becomes the maker of his most central essence, of what he is himself. The creation becomes the creator, the hand that draws itself.
This year alone has seen 8 major movies featuring synthetic or digital consciousness: Transcendence, Her, Chappie, Ex Machina, Lucy, Extant, Tomorrowland, and Terminator again. One has to ask, is there something more than a good story line here?
The claim that technology will give birth to consciousness itself within a computer is entirely based on implicit assumptions about the nature of consciousness and reality. The often made assumption that the brain is like a computer and that nerve impulses are like digital code has no direct experimental foundation and is based on superficial resemblances only. There is no real scientific basis for the claim that the digital processing of symbols should somehow be accompanied by inner experience, that is, by consciousness, awareness, qualia, feeling, sentience, etc.
A computer simulation of brain function is not going to produce consciousness any more than a computer simulation of kidney function is going to produce urine. There is no magic in computation. No amount of digital processing alone is ever going to produce a color. Without consciousness a computer program is a flow of electrons as meaningless and non-referential as those flowing in a wall.
Despite the flagrant and unbridgeable abyss between mind and matter it is the modern claim that if one can set up the right connections and run some electricity through it, a` la Frankenstein, consciousness will arrive on schedule from nonexistence. When undressed from the bewitching technical language this seems to be an equivalent in science of the Immaculate Conception. Or, in the current philosophical language we would call it the Immaculate Emergence. But perhaps Particle Parthenogenesis would be more accurate.
“We are on the edge of change comparable to the rise of human life on earth.” -Vernon Vinge
For materialists the arrival of artificial intelligence and machine consciousness is inevitable and only a matter of time. We have two main schools of thought developing on how to meet the coming technological tsunami – those who fear it and those who embrace it. We have on the fear side the notion that we are headed toward a near future where artificial intelligence or machine consciousness presents a danger to mankind (à la Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, Nick Bostrom, etc.)
How this danger will manifest is the great unknown. There are countless possibilities. An embryonic AI lurking in the internet could suddenly cross the threshold into self-awareness and seize control of the world’s nuclear arsenals and missiles and demand surrender. Or, a self-aware internet could lay low and send out brain wave controlling vibrations through WIFI and the background hum of our electrical circuitry to enslave humankind in order to advance technology sufficiently to develop the body or bodies necessary for a now paralyzed internet consciousness. This may have already happened.
And for those who embrace the change we have the Kurzwellians’ vision of the very technological replacement of humanity. This scenario will begin when computers begin to learn and thus redesign themselves. At this point the computer, or computer network, or robot would be capable of designing computers or robots better than itself. Repetitions of this cycle would result in an intelligence explosion resulting in a superintelligence which may be beyond human comprehension. This has been called the technological singularity and could begin as early as 2040, although the date keeps getting pushed further into the future.
In this process consciousness will transcend the hazards and horrors of warm-blooded protoplasmic existence. The machine descendants of man will transcend our obsolete and obscene modules of flesh. They shall put away the sweaty, smelly, hairy, warty, fatty, itchy, scarred, flawed, urinating, shitting, hurting, needy, conflicted, misshapen sac of meat and gristle and the gravity-enslaved earthly existence to become ascended silicon masters and rule like gods in a heavenly cyberspace and perhaps even reconfigure the universe itself. “We shall be as gods!” is a not so hidden background thought.
Consciousness will emerge like a butterfly from its earthbound caterpillar stage and fly freely in the new digital noosphere of a virtual reality (à la Kurzweil, Moravec, Fredkin). The mortal human self will be subsumed like mitochondria in a giant computational eukaryote. Our evolutionary period will expire like the dinosaurs’ and we will become a symbiont in the superior host technology. We have been upgraded by Google! All hail Google! Superintelligence is all! Praise Intelligence!
For artificial intelligence enthusiasts this will be good news for mankind. Maintaining mortal human flesh is a logistical nightmare. It requires very specific atmospheric conditions, it requires a very limited temperature range, it requires a vast range of chemical and energy inputs, it requires specific social and sexual connections, it even requires entertainment. Not meeting even one of these requirements could result in the entire operating system crashing and all the data lost (you). Our wetware obviously makes for an inferior product when compared to a silicon based circuitry which could just as well exist in the vacuum of space with just a single source of electricity.
We shall put aside our earthly raiment of mortal skin and bone and be arrayed in the finest of indestructible metals, plastics, and silicons. We shall be free at last of nature and its’ inconveniences. All the wealth and riches of the imagination will be at the tip of our cursor. A million movie channels will be available and we will have an unbreakable silicon heart. We can even have our heart amputated like an infected appendix. After all it is only pixels! It is the next stage of evolution! Rejoice in the in the wonderful future of technology! Praise Evolution!
The notion that mind can be uploaded into a computer (Transcendence, Her, Chappie), if not completely loco, is radical in the extreme. But given the hubris of technological success and the realism of movie depictions, it has been made believable and in mainstream scientific circles it is near heresy to doubt the materialist premise of consciousness synthesis from raw physical materials.
However there is a curiosity in the movie, Ex Machina, that perhaps reveals a crack in the technological juggernaut. In the movie, Nathan, the techno-wizard internet mogul, has just created the most extraordinary technology in the history of science, a technology that would revolutionize the world and beyond. With Promethean daring he has just robbed the very cradle of consciousness and created Ava, a conscious robot that passes every Turing test. It would seem that he would be in a state of elation and brimming with fulfillment. Instead he is getting drunk at every opportunity. Alcohol is featured in almost every scene in which he appears. One must ask the question, what has gone wrong with Nathan?
Is this just an iniquitous twist of character? Or could he be plain old lonely? Or is it a metaphysical crisis? He lives like a hermit in a remote and isolated Northern region, but he has a retinue of very lovely synthetic ladies waiting for him in closets. And he has a beautiful and near mindless female companion and assistant that likes to dance. And then, he has the mysterious and unknown otherness of Ava. That should be adequate companionship.
But he has just synthesized consciousness. He has dramatically and inescapably demonstrated that life and consciousness are a merely physical phenomena that have no more meaning than electricity passing through a copper wire. He has shown that he himself is not much more than the ionic exchanges occurring through a polarized lipid membrane in a cranial bone flask. And when the switch is turned off he dissolves into nothingness.
Our lone genius clearly has grounds for a metaphysical crisis. He has experimentally proven a deeper isolation: That is the isolation that the vision of materialism prescribes for man – as a spark of consciousness in a meaningless void. There is no wider mystery in being alive… he is all there is… a pathetic lonely little god… isolated in time as well as space with a separation that he cannot mitigate, even with the agreeable companionship of his ersatz bitches.
It is more than ironic that our synthesizer of new consciousness is intent on anaesthetizing his own. But is this not also modern man? Alcohol is the universal drug of the world today. Nathan here is materialist everyman rather than the oversensitive genius. Modern man closes the door on his personal consciousness while aspiring to extend consciousness through external technological means. It seems modern man shares the same metaphysical disturbance as our techno-wizard, Nathan.
The materialist everyman has fixated on a physical literalism that excludes the meaningfulness inherent within every conscious experience. He has radically reduced the ontological range of life. Life has been stripped of inner meaning. He is abandoned to a complete separation and isolation in both time and space.
He has embraced the lawful Stalinesque reality of materialism as a total explanation for consciousness. He has embraced the scientific fundamentalism of consilience. And total explanations produce repressive states, both political and personal. However, modern man, like an eviscerated organism continues to live… even though partially.
The Frankenstein of today is more than an out-of-control technology. Our Frankenstein monster is the story that science has authority over all other interpretations of life and has replaced them with a grim and desolate paradigm about the nature of the universe and our place in it. Technology has come to shape the imagery by which the world is depicted and to affirm the underlying metaphysics of materialism. We have shaped our reality and now it shapes us. It is only natural then that Ava, the beautiful and sexy creature in Ex Machina kills her creator, Nathan. But modern man cannot kill his own soul so he must anaesthesize it.
But, exercising our imagination, let us suppose that consciousness, rather than being proven physically dependent is proven physically independent. Materialism, irrespective of technological successes, would be shown wrong and suggest that we have been living in the dark ages of a materialist ideology. And it would reveal the present day metaphysics of consciousness at the heart of a dysfunctional civilization.
http://realitysandwich.com/317485/ex-machina-et-al-and-the-metaphys...
The Cognitive Short-Circuit of "Artificial Consciousness"
by Bernardo Kastrup
The new sci-fi film Ex_Machina has been teasing back into the cultural dialogue dreams of artificial consciousness: the idea that we humans, through the Faustian power of technology, can birth into being mechanisms capable of inner life, subjectivity and affection. Since these dreams are entirely based on implicit assumptions about the nature of consciousness and reality at large, I thought a few observations would be opportune.
The first thing to notice is the difference between artificial intelligence and artificial consciousness. The former entails the ability to process information in ways that we consider intelligent. In particular, an intelligent machine should be capable of constructing an internal, symbolic representation of its environment so to interact coherently with it. We can test whether a machine is intelligent or not purely by observing its behavior in the environment. Alan Turing’s famous test aims precisely at that. However, none of the symbolic information processing in an intelligent machine needs to be accompanied by inner experience. It can all happen totally ‘in the dark.’ As such, an intelligent machine is, for all intents and purposes, simply a glorified calculator. There isn’t anything it is like to be the machine.
In conscious machines, on the other hand, the idea is that those internal calculations are accompanied by subjective inner experience, or inner life. In other words, there must be something it feels like, from the point of view of the machine itself, to perform the calculations. This is a whole different ballgame than mere artificial intelligence. Moreover, there is absolutely no way to definitively test whether a machine is conscious or not, since all we can ever hope to access is its architecture and behavior. Short of becoming the machine at least for a brief moment, we cannot know whether there is anything it is like to be it.
What makes so many computer engineers believe in the possibility of artificial consciousness? Let us deconstruct and make explicit their chain of reasoning. They start by making – whether they are aware of it or not – certain key assumptions about the nature of consciousness and reality. To speak of creating consciousness in a machine one must assume consciousness to be, well, ‘creatable.’ Something can only be created if it wasn’t there in the first place. In other words, engineers assume that consciousness isn’t the primary aspect of reality, but a secondary effect generated by particular arrangements of matter. Matter itself is assumed to exist outside and independent of consciousness.
read entire article at: http://realitysandwich.com/314691/the-cognitive-short-circuit-of-ar...
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