Philosophical Musings (2) universal language which is either physical or, at least, has strong physical correlates. The function of bridging the gap between an idiosyncratic language (his or her own) and a more universal one was relegated to a group of special individuals called artists. Theirs is the job to experience (mostly emotions), to mould it into a the grammar, syntax and vocabulary of a universal language in order to communicate the echo of their idiosyncratic language. They are forever mediating between us and their experience. Rightly so, the quality of an artist is measured by his ability to loyally represent his unique language to us. The smaller the distance between the original experience (the emotion of the artist) and its external representation - the more prominent the artist. We declare artistic success when the universally communicable representation succeeds at recreating the original emotion (felt by the artist) with us. It is very much like those science fiction contraptions which allow for the decomposition of the astronaut's body in one spot - and its recreation, atom for atom in another (teleportation). Even if the artist fails to do so but succeeds in calling forth any kind of emotional response in his viewers/readers/listeners, he is deemed successful. Every artist has a reference group, his audience. They could be alive or dead (for instance, he could measure himself against past artists). They could be few or many, but they must exist for art, in its fullest sense, to exist. Modern theories of art speak about the audience as an integral and defining part of the artistic creation and even of the artefact itself. But this, precisely, is the source of the dilemma of the artist: Who is to determine who is a good, qualitative artist and who is not? Put differently, who is to measure the distance between the original experience and its representation? After all, if the original experience is an element of an idiosyncratic, non-communicable, language - we have no access to any information regarding it and, therefore, we are in no position to judge it. Only the artist has access to it and only he can decide how far is his representation from his original experience. Art criticism is impossible. Granted, his reference group (his audience, however limited, whether among the living, or among the dead) has access to that meta language, that universal dictionary available to all humans. But this is already a long way towards the representation (the work of art). No one in the audience has access to the original experience and their capacity to pass judgement is, therefore, in great doubt. On the other hand, only the reference group, only the audience can aptly judge the representation for what it is. The artist is too emotionally involved. True, the cold, objective facts concerning the work of art are available to both artist and reference group - but the audience is in a privileged status, its bias is less pronounced. Normally, the reference group will use the meta language embedded in us as humans, some empathy, some vague comparisons of emotions to try and grasp the emotional foundation laid by the artist. But this is very much like substituting verbal intercourse for the real thing. Talking about emotions - let alone making assumptions about what the artist may have felt that we also, maybe, share - is a far cry from what really transpired in the artist's mind. We are faced with a dichotomy : The epistemological elements in the artistic process belong exclusively and incommunicably to the artist The ontological aspects of the artistic process belong largely to the group of reference but they have no access to the epistemological domain And the work of art can be judged only by comparing the epistemological to the ontological. Nor the artist, neither his group of reference can do it. This mission is nigh impossible. Thus, an artist must make a decision early on in his career: Should he remain loyal and close to his emotional experiences and studies and forgo the warmth and comfort of being reassured and directed from the outside, through the reactions of the reference group, or should he consider the views, criticism and advice of the reference group in his artistic creation - and, most probably, have to compromise the quality and the intensity of his original emotion in order to be more communicative. (I wish to thank my brother, Sharon Vaknin, a gifted painter and illustrator, for raising these issues) The Fourth Law of Robotics By: Dr. Sam Vaknin Sigmund Freud said that we have an uncanny reaction to the inanimate. This is probably because we know that - despite pretensions and layers of philosophizing - we are nothing but recursive, self aware, introspective, conscious machines. Special machines, no doubt, but machines althesame. The series of James bond movies constitutes a decades-spanning gallery of human paranoia. Villains change: communists, neo-nazis, media moguls. But one kind of villain is a fixture in this psychodrama, in this parade of human phobias: the machine. James Bond always finds himself confronted with hideous, vicious, malicious machines and automata. It was precisely to counter this wave of unease, even terror, irrational but all-pervasive, that Isaac Asimov, the late Sci-fi writer (and scientist) invented the Three Laws of Robotics: A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws Many have noticed the lack of consistency and the virtual inapplicability of these laws put together. First, they are not the derivative of any coherent worldview and background. To be properly implemented and to avoid a potentially dangerous interpretation of them - the robots in which they are embedded must be also equipped with a reasonably full model of the physical and of the human spheres of existence. Devoid of such a context, these laws soon lead to intractable paradoxes (experiences as a nervous breakdown by one of Asimov's robots). Conflicts are ruinous in automata based on recursive functions (Turing machines) as all robots must be. Godel pointed at one such self destructive paradox in the "Principia Mathematica" ostensibly comprehensive and self consistent logical system. It was enough to discredit the whole magnificent edifice constructed by Russel and Whitehead over a decade. Some will argue against this and say that robots need not be automata in the classical, Church-Turing, sense. That they could act according to heuristic, probabilistic rules of decision making. There are many other types of functions (non-recursive) that can be incorporated in a robot. True, but then, how can one guarantee full predictability of behaviour? How can one be certain that the robots will fully and always implement the three laws? Only recursive systems are predictable in principle (their complexity makes even this sometimes not feasible). This article will deal with some commonsense, basic problems immediately discernible upon close inspection of the Laws. The next article in this series will analyse the Laws from a few vantage points: philosophy, artificial intelligence and some systems theories. An immediate question springs to mind : HOW will a robot identify a human being? Surely, in an age of perfect androids, constructed of organic materials, no superficial, outer scanning will suffice. Structure and composition will not be sufficient factors of differentiation. There are two possibilities to settle this very practical issue: one is to endow the robot with the ability to conduct a Converse Turing Test, the other is to somehow "barcode" all the robots by implanting some signalling device inside them. Both present additional difficulties. In the second case, the robot will never be able to positively identify a human being. He will surely identify robots. This is ignoring, for discussion's sake, defects in manufacturing or loss of the implanted identification tag - if the robot will get rid of the tag, presumably this will fall under the "defect in manufacturing" category. But the robot will be forced to make a binary selection: one type of physical entities will be classified as robots - all the others will be grouped into "non-robots". Will non-robots include monkeys and parrots ? Yes, unless the manufacturers equip the robots with digital or optical or molecular equivalent of the human image in varying positions (standing, sitting, lying down). But this is a cumbersome solution and not a very effective one: there will always be the odd position which the robot will find hard to locate in its library. A human disk thrower or swimmer may easily be passed over as "non-human" by a robot. So will certain types of amputated invalids. The first solution is even more seriously flawed. It is possible to design a test which the robot will apply to distinguish a robot from a human. But it will have to be non-intrusive and devoid of communication or with very limited communication. The alternative is a prolonged teletype session behind a curtain, after which the robot will issue its verdict: the respondent is a human or a robot. This is ridiculous. Moreover, the application of such a test will make the robot human in most of the important respects. A human knows other humans for what they are because he is human. A robot will have to be human to recognize another, it takes one to know one, the saying (rightly) goes. Let us assume that by some miraculous way the problem will be overcome and robots will unfailingly identify humans. The next question pertains to the notion of "injury" (still in the First Law). Is it limited only to a physical injury (the disturbance of the physical continuity of human tissues or of the normal functioning of the human body)? Should it encompass the no less serious mental, verbal and social injuries (after all, they are all known to have physical side effects which are, at times, no less severe than direct physical "injuries"). Is an insult an injury? What about being grossly impolite, or psychologically abusing or tormenting someone? Or offending religious sensitivities, being politically incorrect ? The bulk of human (and, therefore, inhuman) actions actually offend a human being, has the potential to do so or seem to be doing so. Take surgery, driving a car, or investing all your money in the stock exchange - they might end in coma, accident, or a stock exchange crash respectively. Should a robot refuse to obey human instructions which embody a potential to injure said instruction-givers? Take a mountain climber - should a robot refuse to hand him his equipment lest he falls off the mountain in an unsuccessful bid to reach the peak? Should a robot abstain from obeying human commands pertaining to crossing busy roads or driving sports cars? Which level of risk should trigger the refusal program? In which stage of a collaboration should it be activated? Should a robot refuse to bring a stool to a person who intends to commit suicide by hanging himself (that's an easy one), should he ignore an instruction to push someone jump off a cliff (definitely), climb the cliff (less assuredly so), get to the cliff (maybe so), get to his car in order to drive to the cliff in case he is an invalid - where does the responsibility and obeisance buck stop? Whatever the answer, one thing is clear: such a robot must be equipped with more than a rudimentary sense of judgement, with the ability to appraise and analyse complex situations, to predict the future and to base his decisions on very fuzzy algorithms (no programmer can foresee all possible circumstances). To me, this sounds much more dangerous than any recursive automaton which will NOT include the famous Three Laws. Moreover, what, exactly, constitutes "inaction"? How can we set apart inaction from failed action or, worse, from an action which failed by design, intentionally? If a human is in danger and the robot tried to save him and failed - how will we be able to determine to what extent it exerted itself and did everything that it could do? How much of the responsibility for the inaction or partial action or failed action should be attributed to the manufacturer - and how much imputed to the robot itself? When a robot decides finally to ignore its own programming - how will we be informed of this momentous event? Outside appearances should hardly be expected to help us distinguish a rebellious robot from a lackadaisical one. The situation gets much more complicated when we consider conflict states. Imagine that a robot has to hurt one human in order to prevent him from hurting another. The Laws are absolutely inadequate in this case. The robot should either establish an empirical hierarchy of injuries - or an empirical hierarchy of humans. Should we, as humans, rely on robots or on their manufacturers (however wise and intelligent) to make this selection for us? Should abide by their judgement - which injury is more serious than the other and warrants their intervention? A summary of the Asimov Laws would give us the following "truth table": A robot must obey human orders with the following two exceptions: That obeying them will cause injury to a human through an action or That obeying them will let a human be injured A robot must protect its own existence with three exceptions: That such protection will be injurious to a human That such protection entails inaction in the face of potential injury to a human That such protection will bring about insubordination (not obeying human instructions). Here is an exercise: create a truth table based on these conditions. There is no better way to demonstrate the problematic nature of Asimov's idealized yet highly impractical world. The Impeachment of the President of the USA By: Dr. Sam Vaknin In the hallways of the Smithsonian, two moralists are debating the impeachment of the President of the United States of America, Mr. William Jefferson Clinton. One is clearly Anti-Clinton (AC) the other, a Democrat (DC), is not so much for him as he is for the rational and pragmatic application of moral principles. AC (expectedly): "The President should be impeached". DC (no less expectedly) ; "But, surely, even you are not trying to imply that he has committed high crimes and misdemeanours, as the Constitution demands as grounds for the impeachment of a sitting President !" AC : "But I do. Perjury is such a high crime because it undermines the very fabric of trust between fellow citizens and between the citizen and the system of justice, the courts." DC : "A person is innocent until proven guilty. No sound proof of perjurious conduct on behalf of the President has been provided as yet. Perjurious statements have to be deliberate and material. Even if the President deliberately lied under oath - his lies were not material to a case, which was later dismissed on the grounds of a lack of legal merit. Legal hairsplitting and jousting are an integral part of the defence in most court cases, civil and criminal. It is a legitimate - and legal - component of any legal battle, especially one involving interpretations, ambiguous terminology and the substantiation of intentions. The President should not be denied the procedural and substantive rights available to all the other citizens of his country. Nor should he be subjected to a pre-judgment of his presumed guilt." AC : "This, precisely, is why an impeachment trial by the Senate is called for. It is only there that the President can credibly and rigorously establish his innocence. All I am saying is that IF the President is found by the Senate to have committed perjury - he should be impeached. Wherever legal hairsplitting and jousting is permissible as a legal tactic - it should and will be made available to the President. As to the pre-judgment by the Press - I agree with you, there is no place for it but, then, in this the President has been treated no differently than others. The pertinent fact is that perjury is a high misdemeanour, in the least, that is, an impeachable offence." DC : "It was clearly not the intention of the Fathers of our Constitution to include perjury in the list of impeachable offences. Treason is more like it. Moreover, to say that the President will receive a fair trial from the hands of his peers in the Senate - is to lie. The Senate and its committees is a political body, heavily tilted, currently, against the President. No justice can be had where politics rears its ugly head. Bias and prejudice will rule this mock trial." AC : "Man is a political animal, said the Greek philosophers of antiquity. Where can you find an assembly of people free of politics ? What is this discourse that we are having if not a political one ? Is not the Supreme Court of the land a politically appointed entity ? The Senate is no better and no worse, it is but a mirror, a reflection of the combined will of the people. Moreover, in pursuing the procedures of impeachment - the Senate will have proved its non-political mettle in this case. The nation, in all opinion polls, wants this matter dropped. If it is not - it is a proof of foresight and civil courage, of leadership and refusal to succumb to passing fads." DC : "And what about my first argument - that perjury, even once proven, was not considered by the authors of the Constitution to have been an impeachable offence ?" AC : "The rules of the land - even the Constitution - are nothing but an agreement between those who subscribe to it and for as long as they do. It is a social contract, a pact. Men - even the authors of the Constitution - being mortal, relegated the right to amend it and to interpret it to future generations. The Constitution is a vessel, each generation fills it as it sees fit. It is up to us to say what current meaning this document harbours. We are not to be constrained by the original intentions of the authors. These intentions are meaningless as circumstances change. It is what we read into the Constitution that forms its specific contents. With changing mores and values and with the passage of events - each generation generates its own version of this otherwise immortal set of principles." DC : "I find it hard to accept that there is no limit to this creative deconstruction. Surely it is limited by common sense, confined to logic, subordinate to universal human principles. One can stretch the meanings of words only thus far. It takes a lot of legal hairsplitting to bring perjury - not proven yet - under one roof with treason." AC : "Let us ignore the legal issues and leave them to their professionals. Let us talk about what really bothers us all, including you, I hope and trust. This President has lied. He may have lied under oath, but he definitely lied on television and in the spacious rooms of the White House. He lied to his family, to his aides, to the nation, to Congress ." DC : "For what purpose do you enumerate them ?" AC : "Because it is one thing to lie to your family and another thing to lie to Congress. A lie told to the nation, is of a different magnitude altogether. To lie to your closest aides and soi dissant confidantes - again is a separate matter ." DC : "So you agree that there are lies and there are lies ? That lying is not a monolithic offence ? That some lies are worse than others, some are permissible, some even ethically mandatory ?" AC : "No, I do not. To lie is to do a morally objectionable thing, no matter what the circumstances. It is better to shut up. Why didn't the President invoke the Fifth Amendment, the right not to incriminate himself by his own lips ?" DC : "Because as much information is contained in abstaining to do something as in doing it and because if he did so, he would have provoked riotous rumours. Rumours are always worse than the truth. Rumours are always worse than the most defiled lie. It is better to lie than to provoke rumours." AC : "Unless your lies are so clearly lies that you provoke rumours regarding what is true, thus inflicting a double blow upon the public peace that you were mandated to and undertook to preserve ." DC : "Again, you make distinctions between types of lies - this time, by their efficacy. I am not sure this is progress. Let me give you examples of the three cases : where one would do morally well to tell the truth, where one would achieve morally commendable outcomes only by lying and the case where lying is as morally permissible as telling the truth. Imagine a young sick adult. Her life is at peril but can be saved if she were to agree to
Copyright © 1999 Sam Vaknin |