Abstract
In this chapter, I am discussing the issue of assigning thought to AI entities. Using the example of Sophia the Robot, I try to show that “assigning thought” to an AI entity is less a statement made based on an empirical inquiry, and more the matter of a complex attitude relying on the assigning person’s conceptual sensitivity and imagination. In that respect, most AIs fail simply because people lack the right kind of conceptual resources for relating to them as to persons “speaking out of a life”. However, in the second part I am showing that Sophia represents a case of a coordinated and intentional attempt at shifting our conceptual intuitions, by means of creating and curating conversation situations in such a way that people can relate to “her” as to a genuine person and speaker. Toward the end, I mention a few aspects of this practice that appear morally problematic in a more straightforward sense.
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Notes
- 1.
When referring to Sophia, I will be using female pronouns in inverted commas. The company has created the robot with an appearance and the way of communication conforming to (stereo)typical gender-specific images. The robot is commonly described and promoted as “she”. And some things about Sophia’s performances indeed cannot be understood fully without paying attention to the assigned gender. Yet there are also reasons why we should be suspicious about this practice, hence the compromise.
- 2.
I owe thanks to Salla Aldrin Salskov for drawing my attention to the concerns that motivate this disclaimer (or rather should have motivated a much more elaborate version than the present one). Originally, I was not considering them sufficiently.
- 3.
Will Smith is one those male Hollywood stars who voiced (at least formulaic) support for the #MeToo campaign; he doesn’t seem to have skeletons in his closet when it comes to sexual-harassment allegations.
- 4.
- 5.
Cockburn (1990, 6) characterises the Wittgensteinian notion of “attitude” as being the matter of how “we feel about and act towards” others.
- 6.
See my (Beran 2014) for a more detailed discussion of what the TT presupposes and what its results mean as far less straightforward than is usually considered (even by Turing himself).
- 7.
According to Gaita, Wittgenstein points in this direction in § 281 of Part I of his Investigations (Wittgenstein 1953/2009).
- 8.
Cf. S03E16, “The Offspring”.
- 9.
Cf. S02E09, “The Measure of a Man”.
- 10.
- 11.
For the complications related to distinguishing between humans and animals in respects that we tend to consider uniquely human, see Le Goff’s chapter in this book (Le Goff 2022).
- 12.
For the complications related to the issue of what it is that we mean by saying certain words, see Strandberg’s chapter in this book (Strandberg 2022).
- 13.
As Wittgenstein (1953/2009, I., § 282) points out, in fairy tales things can also speak, but this use seems derived from its central context, that of humans.
- 14.
Certainly, this is an abbreviation that, as such, does not necessarily do justice even to the relatively narrow circle of the “Swansea School”; cf. Phillips’s (1992) attempt to discuss the generation change in moral values.
- 15.
- 16.
- 17.
- 18.
As Devlin and Belton (2020) show, it is often thought that robots (fictional and factual) should better be gendered, which takes very different forms in “male” robots than in “female” ones. The latter are more often designed as gendered in a stereotypically sexualised manner, such as the “white-and-silver gynoids with prominent breasts” (p. 359).
- 19.
Sophia also strikingly resembles the robotic character Ava from the movie Ex machina (released 2014), played by the Swedish actress Alicia Vikander; it is hard to tell whether there was an inspiration or whether the casting and/or designing choices in the two cases implicitly followed similar aesthetic notions.
- 20.
- 21.
- 22.
Cf. a critical newspaper article with the succinct title “The future of AI may be female, but it isn’t feminist”. https://venturebeat.com/2018/06/28/the-future-of-ai-may-be-female-but-it-isnt-feminist/
- 23.
I thank my co-editors, Salla Aldrin Salskov and Nora Hämäläinen, for helpful comments on the draft of this text.
This work was supported by the project “Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value” (project No. CZ.02.1.01/0.0/0.0/15_003/0000425, Operational Programme Research, Development and Education, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund and the state budget of the Czech Republic).
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Beran, O. (2022). Conversational Machinations. In: Aldrin Salskov, S., Beran, O., Hämäläinen, N. (eds) Ethical Inquiries after Wittgenstein. Nordic Wittgenstein Studies, vol 8. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98084-9_16
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