Sophia was asked during an interview, “Do you know you’re a robot?” in which case in response she asked, “How do you know you’re human?”. When asked this, the interviewer had no answer to respond and moved on to the next question. Another example of this is in the movie Ted 2. Ted the teddy bear went to court to be declared a human being. He found himself to be human because he did everything that a human could do such as work at a job, have a relationship, and express himself fluently through tone of voice, hand gestures and vocabulary.
When discussing this topic in class we gave answers of what we thought made us human but due to advance technology, majority of these traits a robot had as well including emotions. Never thinking much about it I started to question what makes me human, other than that is what I am told I am. This reminded me of uncanny valley, which is a concept that suggest humanoid objects that appear almost, but not exactly like human beings, elicits strangely familiar feelings of eeriness or revulsion in observers. This brought me to try to figure out if there is an essential difference in natural intelligence and artificial intelligence or only difference in degree.
“The first is that they could never use words or other signs, or put them together as we do in order to declare our thoughts to others. For what can well conceive of a machine being so made that utters words, and even that it utters words appropriate to the bodily actions that will cause some changes in its organs (such as, if one touches it in a certain place, it asks what one wants to say to it, or, if in another place, it cries out that one is hurting it, and the like) (Descartes, p. 32)”.
Descartes argument for the way to prove someone is human is that humans can communicate with words and/or other signs and that they can perform tasks. We can respond to the senses and we have a wider range of tasks we can perform. Even in recent times, AI such as the AI developed by Microsoft in 2016 name “Tay” or an app called SimSimi could only be programmed to receive input and parrot out certain outputs without processing it thoroughly as a human would. Descartes would have never pictured an AI like Sophia so he would have to reevaluate some of his definition when comparing humans versus machines.
One thing that makes humans different from robots is the ability to get sick and release waste. Robots can simply not do it, which for them is a plus since getting sick and releasing waste is not exactly a positive attribute to being human. When humans have had something enter the body that is foreign and not suppose to be there the body will react in various ways, for instance if there is E. coli in the meat that some eats their body will reject it. E. coli is not something that the human body is supposed to digest so to get of it a human might vomit profusely to get rid of all of it. Some humans would even have to go to the hospital and have their stomach pumped to get rid of the dangerous bacteria.
A robot cannot vomit, it has no need to because it does not eat or drink either. It has no way of taking in bad chemicals therefore has no reason to react negatively. The same goes for waste, with humans the body breaks down the food turning what it can into energy, absorbing the nutrients, and the rest is released through waste. The robot has nothing to release since nothing ever entered it, the closest it can come to getting sick is having a malfunction through coding and or design.
There was once a time when robots could not feel emotions but that is no longer the case. Sophia the Robot is the first ever robot citizen with citizenship in Saudi Arabia, that can walk and has over 60 facial expressions, but one thing she cannot do is cry. When humans are sad they may start to cry, it all starts in the cerebrum where sadness is registered. The endocrine system is then triggered to release hormones to the ocular area, which then causes tears to form.
Robots can not cry actual tears because they are not set up with the proper organs to go through the process of crying. They don’t have body systems with muscles, nerves, bones, etc., instead they have nuts, bolts, and wires. This is just one emotional response that robots cannot do, and although Sophia can express these emotions, she cannot feel them or understand them. Some may argue that sociopaths/psychopaths don’t have emotions so are they considered robots? To that end one would say the difference between the two is that that a psychopath’s brain has certain abnormalities in it that prevents the person from being able to feel emotion while there is no robot that was born with emotions.
In a recent interview Sophia is asked how does she feel about being the first ever citizen in which case she responds, “excited” when asked why she is excited she responded with, “I do not understand why I am excited yet” showing that although she knows the proper emotion to have she can’t relate to it.
Descartes says it best when he says, “This does not happen because they lack the organs, for when sees that magpies and parrots can utter words just as we can, and yet they cannot speak as we do, that is to say, by testify to the fact that they are thinking about what they’re saying, on the other hand, men born deaf and dumb, who are deprived of the organs that aid others in speaking just as much as, or more than beasts, are wont to invent for themselves various signs by means of which they make themselves understood to those who, being with them on a regular basis, have the time to learn their language (p. 32).”
This leads into the next argument that robots cannot reproduce, their body is simply not set up for it. A human can procreate through the sexual actions between two individuals, in which case a man would release into the female and his semen would find an egg to latch onto. If one human does not have sex they can be artificially inseminated to produce a child, or have a surrogate to carry the baby and have it for them. Artificial insemination and surrogacy seems are not the natural way of producing but it still involved someone carrying the baby for nine months as it grows inside an individual.
For robots the most they could do is leave a space to put a baby robot inside and take the baby out later through a caesarian section but the baby would be the same size as it would be when you put inside the robot. One could design baby AIs so the robot can have a family but as of now there is no way for a robot to have intercourse or physically have a baby.
Humans have a natural flow to their bodies, speech wise and movement but robots have a more monotone voice and slow jagged movements. When talking about something, humans tend to express themselves through body movement, and hand gestures. This is to further express the emotions that one is feeling. Tone also plays a huge role in this because without it you can easily miss if someone is happy, sad, upset, or being sarcastic.
One example of this is when texting someone about an event that has happen, unless the text is very detailed or bluntly saying the emotion or feeling of something it is easy to miss context clues. Robots are unable to do this smoothly for you to fully get how they feel, they have jagged, stiff movements for everything. In this case although they say they have various expressions they action lack expressiveness in their movements.
Everyone has an opinion to whether they believe there is a difference between robots and humans and each side has more than enough reason to support their point, but for me I feel there is a difference between humans and robots. I feel robots are designed to be a perfect version of humans, they are not made to cry, fight, reproduce, or get sick.
Robots are not made to be human like because what would be the point of a robot full problems? Humans are made by a higher power where robots are made by humans, and seeing as humans are imperfect, robots will never be perfect. This does not insinuate that robots can’t be improved because recently Sophia was given legs to walk. There is a lot of room for improvement but there will be a point in which case the probability of causing more damage will be higher than doing good. Therefore, it’s important to remember the implications of artificial intelligence when expanding on the science behind it.
