Domesticating the Uncanny Valley
By:
October 20, 2009
In one version of an oft-repeated thought experiment, Douglas Hofstadter famously wondered if Albert Einstein’s brain (well, anyone’s brain, really) could be reformatted as a book, with each neuron represented by a page printed with data documenting synaptic connections, threshold excitations, and the other “technical data” required to “run” the mind. This cumbersome vade mecum would have one hundred million pages. But philosophers wonder if the resulting tome would truly constitute Albert himself (albeit one whose mind operates much slower than the wetware model).
Roboticist David Hanson plans a different route to his alterna-Einstein. Through next-generation materials, ultra-lightweight power supplies, and sophisticated facial expression recognition software, Hanson’s Einstein will mimic its way to a simulacrum of human empathy. This Einstein can’t produce new theories about the time-space continuum, but it can respond when you smile, frown, or stare at it in puzzled disbelief.
Hanson discussed the project in a recent TED talk.
Although he didn’t mention the connection, Hanson’s approach seems to follow an interest among brain researchers in so-called “mirror neurons,” which fire both when we make certain facial gestures and when we witness those of others. Mirror neurons are believed to play a role in the production of consciousness. Lower primates have a few of them; we have a lot. The implied question is, if David Hanson’s robots eventually mimic human empathy in every outward detail, do they actually have empathy?
Hanson is best known for his Philip K. Dick android project, in which an empathic facial robot skinned to look like PKD was hooked up to a database filled with Dick’s works, allowing the robot to converse knowledgeably with human interlocuters. In a mystery worthy of the uncanny science fiction master, the robot’s head went missing while en route to a show. As a result, Hanson never tested the possibility that an android copy of an author loaded with the author’s works might actually violate that author’s copyright. (Presumably, Hofstadter’s Einstein Codex would be a form of piracy as well.)
We’re inclined to believe that there’s something ineluctable about consciousness that can’t be captured in hardware, no matter how sophisticated. (We’re nearly equally prepared to have this highbrow stance overthrown.) But Hanson wants to imbue robots with a version of consciousness not merely because it would be cool to do so. In his TED talk, he points out that robots are being developed to kill efficiently and remorselessly with over great distances with little oversight or control. By bringing empathy to robots, Hanson believes, we can ensure an emotional check on their destructive potential.