Advances in artificial intelligence and computing technology are happening at breakneck speed. Yet even the best A. I. today still falls short. Whether it's a frustratingly unhelpful chat bot, the uncanny valley of immersive virtual reality, or the nonsensical answers of ChatGPT.
Are these glitches a short-term problem? Or is there something about human experiences that make them impossible to program?
In today’s episode, a computer scientist and an experimental philosopher discuss just that. In this Forum event from 2013, you’ll hear from Rosalind Picard (MIT) and Joshua Knobe (Yale). In a conversation moderated by neuroscientist Nii Addy (Yale), Roz and Joshua attempt to define what it means to be human, discuss how agency and experience shape our view of others, and how we ought to fight against dehumanization.
Thank you to the forum planning team at Yale for making this event possible.
Some people accord personhood a higher status, right? A human is more than just the flesh and bones, and personhood is something we show respect for.
Even if we say, to some degree, that this robot is correctly described as having emotions, it still lacks a "special sauce."
I do think someday people may say that their robot loves them back — much like their dog does. Can they do that today? Not yet. But will they be able to fool people into thinking that? Will it be true love the way we feel it? It will be substantially different, I think.
