Laws of Robotics
Kant's Laws of Robotics versus Asimov's - whose robots would we prefer to live with...?
“Thus robots/AI would not have any of the rights their owners might care to legislate on their behalf, but they would be no less categorically bound. To this extent, Kant’s laws of robotics might outdo Asimov’s...” - Babette Babich
Asimov’s Laws of Robotics have been accepted in our imaginations as the default binding principles for sentient robots... if we ever get such things. For all the fuss made over ChatGPT, the most sophisticated chatbot ever to hoodwink humans, there is still no sign that sentient robots are even possible with our kinds of computing techniques - much less plausible. The flat refusal to accept this ranks right up with the certainty that we will ‘colonise other planets’, which is to say, that the future we want to imagine is our species tearing through the universe discovering new pristine ecologies to barbarise.
Writing in the 1940s, Asimov came from a generation of science fiction writers who were drunk on the possibilities that new technologies might bring over the next century. His ‘three laws’ of robotics are fictionally from 2058, specifying that robots must not cause or permit harm to humans, must obey the orders of humans, and must protect themselves but never at the expense of a human. In other words, Asimov’s robots are envisioned as perfect mechanical slaves, a theme that Iain M. Banks uncritically embraced as the foundation for his Culture novels.
Yet when we began working on ‘self-driving cars’, the high ideals of digital slavery that motivated the sci-fi authors of the twentieth century went out the windscreen. Immediately the moral question became: should your robot car aim to kill you or the person you are crashing into? So much for Asimov’s Laws. Rather than perfect slaves, the robots we were imagining in the early twenty first century were programmed to choose between negligent homicide and manslaughter. Astonishingly, having these automated vehicles capped to a speed of under thirty miles an hour, such that they need kill nobody, was not even on the table for consideration. The discussion was rather how these wonderful machines we still cannot quite make would be capable of travelling at faster, deadlier speeds.
Babette Babich recently wrote what may be the finest paper about AI I’ve ever encountered. I feel certain almost nobody wants to hear what she says, alas, since it is the truth. Artificial intelligence is an illusion of our own making, and like most such self-deceptions, we don’t need to suspend our disbelief because we cannot help but invest - in both senses - in our fantasies. As a Nietzsche scholar (perhaps the last of her kind, given the necessity of reading both Latin and Greek to do him justice...), this theme of the lies we create in our own image is deeply familiar. Her paper brings out reflections on AI from Nietzsche, despite his never encountering any machinery more complex than a typewriter or a steam locomotive.
From this discussion emerges a novel suggestion for the ethics of our imaginary sentient robots: if they are capable of rational thought, just as we (on a good day) take ourselves to be, they can be subject to the same moral law as us. Hence the epigram above, in which she proposes that Immanuel Kant, having envisioned a categorical imperative binding for all rational beings - from angels to aliens - would provide more than a sufficient basis for ‘robot ethics’. As she says, this would far exceed Asimov’s suggestion to make perfect slaves, and offer instead a world of mutual respect and communal autonomy between all sentient beings, human or otherwise. Of course, we have rejected the worlds implied by such lofty ideals... but it is never too late to recover them.
When it comes to robots, we insist upon seeking ourselves but as a shiny new model - C3PO feels like what we should expect, not a laptop, internet router, or automated car crash. ChatGPT, precisely because it creates an illusion of intelligence by digesting our own texts and reflecting them back at us, fosters the ludicrous idea that sentient robots are just three minutes into the future. The truth, so impossible to accept, is that beings that cannot even live in peace with each other have no business designing other kinds of being. If there is a law of robotics worth adopting, this is surely the strongest candidate.
The Babette Babich paper discussed in this piece was given to me as a pre-print under a slightly a different title, but was published yesterday as “Nietzsche and AI: On ChatGPT and the Psychology of Illusion” at The Philosophical Salon. The epigram above, sadly, does not appear in the final version.
PERSONAL COMMENT #LORcmnt_1: New Tools
Although the AI entities we are now creating are neither sentient nor intelligent, they are nonetheless breakthrough technology that will probably influence the future course of human civilization in fundamental ways. In my opinion, from here on out, these information processing entities will become an intrinsic part of our lives at every level; from the intimately personal, to planet-level discussions/decisions.
The significance of these new tools for human cultural development can be gauged by all the fuss they are presently causing. Although I have only a vague understanding of how Large Language Models and Generative AI mechanisms work, as an 84-year-old intellectual scribbler with declining cognitive abilities, I personally welcome ChatGPT [1]. Prior to adding ChatGPT to my intellectual toolbox I made use of use of several of it’s weaker forerunners. Google search provides a rudimentary window into a lot of humankind’s knowledge base. Word’s assistance on grammar and spelling is a personal boon.
I’m a previously livelihood-constrained, but always less-than-brilliant, polymath, so I generate a never-ending stream of questions about everything. ChatGPT almost always provides generally valid, sophomoric answers, and also references that I can use to obtain a more complete and accurate understanding.
During the few years I have left of functional mental acuity I expect that ChatGPT’s successors will appear and offer improved services. Currently, personalization occurs only within a particular chat. More personalization that could access my personal knowledge base would be helpful; as would an ability for even rudimentary but logically sound reasoning. Whether or not these capabilities materialize depends largely on our market-driven economy rather than technology.
Note
[1] Given the nature of the American economy there are several other products that offer similar services. I have not explored them. As with most creative processes, proliferating tools with minor differences can be an impediment.
SEE DIFFERENTLY LORdiff_1: Beings Creating Other Beings
“beings that cannot even live in peace with each other have no business designing other kinds of beings.”
COMMENT
I’ll pass on commenting on this statement as an instance of rule ethics.
By any reasonable stretch of the word, the current crop of public AIs are not beings. They are not sentient. They are not alive. They are human constructed mechanisms that can be used for a variety of purposes. Like the sticks chimpanzees use to obtain food, they are just the latest manifestation of the imperative for advanced life-form to utilize tools to facilitate specific ends.