in the shell

In innocence we're presented with the idea of a roughly human-like robot with a human soul, but what if Locus Solus had gone with another development route in making realistic human-like dolls. What if they constructed a doll with all the rules that describe the way a real human being behaves. This would be a being indistinguishable from a normal human being except that it lacks conscious experience, qualia of sensory experiences, sapience or sentience. Were it to be poked in the eye for example, it would not feel any pain. It would however behave exactly as if it did feel the pain (e.g. yelps, winces, kicks you in the groin), but it would not actually have the experience of pain as the average human does, it merely performs the appropriate functions as part of a syntactic set of rules.

My main question to you is; so long as the Gynoid performs the same functional roles, with the same causal relations between inputs and outputs, should it be considered as a real mind with sapience, sentience etc.?

Secondly, would this gynoid have a human mind?

Thirdly, is it alive?


//apologies for poor sentence structure or grammar, I've been awake and typing for far too long today to avoid mistakes//

Elmo_Redux wrote: My main question to you is; so long as the Gynoid performs the same functional roles, with the same causal relations between inputs and outputs, should it be considered as a real mind with sapience, sentience etc.?

As far as I'm concerned, yes. Even if the internal mecanism is different, I think that if something can simulate the real thing perfectly, then it should be considered to _be_ the real thing. In the end, most humans are not "implemented" in the same way (as specified by the DNA). As for self awareness, I think there is a functional aspect linked to that (and therefore a perfect simulator would need to simulate it too) i.e. this is not something that happens magically; there are different levels, some animals have different degree of self awareness, etc.

As for the soul, nothing at the present even suggest (in a verifiable way) the existence of such thing. I'm not sure if the intended meaning was lost in translation (japanese speakers anyone?), but I was under the impression that the soul used by Locus Solus was only the (very complex) personality of the original humans, simply because building a rich and distinct personality from scratch was too complex (and costly) compared to simply copying an already existing one.

interesting topic. my theory is that people will actually want something more idealized to cater to fantasy than a doll that is indistinguishable from a real human.

wouldn't it have to have to have free will in order for it to be human, such a doll would be of no commercial value and so the chances of a commercial entity such as Locus Solus would not develop such a being.

Having said that if a being that acted in a completely human way in my opinion be human ( much like project 2501 ) regardless of how they are created.

Interesting. After watching these 2 videos (see links below), I would say that even though robots already look very realistic (see first video) and can mimic human reactions (see the 2nd video, at about the half, when the guy is touching her breast ), it is still only programmed to do it, so it is definitely not human ... but for how long?


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biBHJvGx3s8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yomx7bXMf2U

I agree. I think the second video shows a robot with programmed response very well ... or, rather, a very well-done robot. But it is all "set" programming; Aiko does not have a "mind," and she is not able to "think" for herself. This is one of the problems I have with the "AI" conversationalists used by various companies on the Web (like ALICE)--they may have a complex set of algorithms for interaction, but it's very easy to get them to fail a Turing test.

I still think it's an incredible accomplishment to get all the sensory inputs working (and match them with some type of output), especially the optical readers (able to see colors and interpret equations). At least we may have the "shell" ready for whatever we put in it.

Funny but it seems to me the Sex Doll industry will be the first to sell this stuff. Reminds me of the Lucy Lu-bot Episode of Futurama.

Humans are the only species on the planet that will create our own replacements and then willingly walk into extinction......

Epiphany wrote:Humans are the only species on the planet that will create our own replacements and then willingly walk into extinction......

I don't necessarily agree, as robots could be used to explore (and conquer) the rest of the solar system, especially because they won't suffer the same physiological (bone and muscle loss) and psychological problems as humans would.

But that's a totally different topic, and I don't want to get my fingers snapped by you know who

Hey - you're proposing Blade Runner (*sort of*. Possibly)! Better make the robots completely mindless, or else unhappy human-like "Replicants" may be coming back to Earth looking to get revenge for all their unfair treatment...

I think Epiphany is right, the "shadier" industries in society will probably be among the first to see the commercial benefit in this kind of stuff. It's my hope that if the future ever worked out anything like it's been predicted in numerous cyberpunk stories that we'd have the good sense to make some laws and guidelines on the matter early on, before it gets out of hand. It could get really ugly if people ever gave the things "minds", like in GitS or whatever.

It's quite funny because I've seen a very interesting documentary tonight on CBC (the Canadian equivalent of the BBC) called Mechanical Love and half of it shows how robot pets (a seal called Paro) can be used as therapeutic treatment for elders (reminded a bit SSS actually).

The other half portrays a Japanese engineer working on a 'geminoid', which is basically a copy of himself. The interesting part is how his wife and daughter interact with his 'other' himself. This reminded a lot about the android in the Alien movies

I hope you'll have the chance to watch it

That looks very interesting! I hope they show it on the Discovery Channel or something here.

It would be pretty strange to stare down at the "you" that you're building ... I'd want to create an entirely new person/appearance.