Treatise on Emotion
Mar. 18th, 2005 11:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sinclair_furieI've read a lot of science fiction. And thus inevitably, I've read a lot of stories dealing with robots and computers. It's the crazy speculative streak of science fiction I love, the way it can propose wacky things which some how seem to make more sense than reality as we know it.
One of these things is the capacity of robots and computers to feel emotion. There are a lot of views on this, as many as there are authors, but they range from granting it to only the very human robots, to granting it to ordinary robots, and even to computers.
And of course, flatly claiming that lines of 1's and 0's can never feel emotion.
So let's start in the order they appeared in my life. [most links are to amazon.com, refering to the book from which the idea came]
Robert Heinlein gives emotion to computers. In The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Mycroft Holmes becomes a sentient computer. In fact, Heinlein treats the matter of sentience and emotion as inevitable; you give a computer enough connections and have it do enough stuff at once, and with attention and love (Heinlein is big on love) it will become sentient. And like Minerva, want to become a human being.
Isaac Asimov is far more famous for his work with robots. (Yeah, remember that Will Smith movie? :P) He had these incredible humaniform robots, the three laws of robots... and robots who cared and fought for humanity. And in his later novels, that felt something akin to emotion (Daneel and Elijah, Dors and Hari Seldon).
Arthur C. Clarke immortalized the insane computer with HAL, though he later explained that it was more due to "faulty" programming and an obsessive desire to complete the mission. But ACC has many interesting and varied things to say.
So that's the big three.
Then we have some other authors, such as Frederick Pohl who claim that human consciousness can be stored as data and Dan Simmons who posit a true love story between an AI turned man and a woman. And then there's the entire cyberpunk genre, with Gibson and his people turning into virtual entities that exist in cyberspace, Morgan and his "stacks" (a person's "soul" is stored digitally in their spine) and Stephenson and his... well, weird stuff. Not sure what his view on the whole issue is, probably something hilarious.
As some of you may remember, I've discovered a love for the series Battlestar Galactica, which has humaniod (well, human, really) robots. The thing about these robots is that in becoming so like humans they have crossed a critical point and feel some sort of emotion. They may not understand it, but they are emotive beings.
I find all of this to be a fascinating line of inquiry. Personally, I believe we are capable of creating beings that can convince themselves that they're feeling emotions. And deep down inside, I have a suspicion that our feelings and our memories are just emergent properties of complicated 1's and 0's.
So my answer to "Can machines feel?" is not yet, but maybe someday. When we're much better at what we do.
Look out for a story posted under an LJ cut inspired by this...
One of these things is the capacity of robots and computers to feel emotion. There are a lot of views on this, as many as there are authors, but they range from granting it to only the very human robots, to granting it to ordinary robots, and even to computers.
And of course, flatly claiming that lines of 1's and 0's can never feel emotion.
So let's start in the order they appeared in my life. [most links are to amazon.com, refering to the book from which the idea came]
Robert Heinlein gives emotion to computers. In The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, Mycroft Holmes becomes a sentient computer. In fact, Heinlein treats the matter of sentience and emotion as inevitable; you give a computer enough connections and have it do enough stuff at once, and with attention and love (Heinlein is big on love) it will become sentient. And like Minerva, want to become a human being.
Isaac Asimov is far more famous for his work with robots. (Yeah, remember that Will Smith movie? :P) He had these incredible humaniform robots, the three laws of robots... and robots who cared and fought for humanity. And in his later novels, that felt something akin to emotion (Daneel and Elijah, Dors and Hari Seldon).
Arthur C. Clarke immortalized the insane computer with HAL, though he later explained that it was more due to "faulty" programming and an obsessive desire to complete the mission. But ACC has many interesting and varied things to say.
So that's the big three.
Then we have some other authors, such as Frederick Pohl who claim that human consciousness can be stored as data and Dan Simmons who posit a true love story between an AI turned man and a woman. And then there's the entire cyberpunk genre, with Gibson and his people turning into virtual entities that exist in cyberspace, Morgan and his "stacks" (a person's "soul" is stored digitally in their spine) and Stephenson and his... well, weird stuff. Not sure what his view on the whole issue is, probably something hilarious.
As some of you may remember, I've discovered a love for the series Battlestar Galactica, which has humaniod (well, human, really) robots. The thing about these robots is that in becoming so like humans they have crossed a critical point and feel some sort of emotion. They may not understand it, but they are emotive beings.
I find all of this to be a fascinating line of inquiry. Personally, I believe we are capable of creating beings that can convince themselves that they're feeling emotions. And deep down inside, I have a suspicion that our feelings and our memories are just emergent properties of complicated 1's and 0's.
So my answer to "Can machines feel?" is not yet, but maybe someday. When we're much better at what we do.
Look out for a story posted under an LJ cut inspired by this...
