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is something I don’t think anyone can truthfully
answer.
Certainly HAL proclaims his emotional state
at the end: “I’m afraid. I’m afraid.” Yes, HAL is
“programmed that way”—but what does that
mean? It could mean that HAL’s verbal capacity
is enhanced with lots of canned expressions
of emotional response that get grafted into
his discourse at pragmatically appropriate
opportunities. (Of course,manyofourownavowals
of emotion are like that—insincere moments of
socially lubricating ceremony.) Or it could mean
that HAL’s underlying computational architecture
has been provided, as Cog’s will be, with virtual
emotional states—powerful attention-shifters,
galvanizers, prioritizers, and the like—realized
not in neuromodulator and hormone molecules
floating in a bodily fluid but in global variables
modulating dozens of concurrent processes
that dissipate according to some timetable (or
something much more complex).
In the latter, more interesting, case, “I don’t
think anyone can truthfully answer” the question
of whether HAL has emotions. He has something
very much like emotions—enough like emotions,
one may imagine, to mimic the pathologies of
human emotional breakdown. Whether that is
enough to call them real emotions, well, who’s to
say? In any case, there are good reasons for HAL
to possess such states, since their role in enabling
real-time practical thinking has recently been
dramatically revealed by Damasio’s experiments
involving human beings with brain damage.
Having such states would make HAL profoundly
different from Deep Blue, by the way. Deep Blue,
basking in the strictly limited search space of
chess, can handle its real-time decision making
without any emotional crutches.
Time
magazine’s
story (February 26) on the Kasparov match
quotes grandmaster Yasser Seirawan as saying,
“The machine has no fear”; the story goes on to
note that expert commentators characterized
some of Deep Blue’s moves (e.g., the icily calm
pawn capture described earlier) as taking “crazy
chances” and “insane.” In the tight world of
chess, it appears, the very imperturbability that
cripples the brain-damaged human decision
makers Damasio describes can be a blessing—but
only if you have the brute-force analytic speed of
a Deep Blue.
... To be continued in AIQS News 75
Daniel C. Dennett is University Professor
and Co-director, Center for Cognitive
Studies, at Tufts University in Medford,
Massachusetts, USA.
He is the author of many books, including
DARWIN’S
DANGEROUS
IDEA
and
CONSCIOUSNESS EXPLAINED, and over 400
scholarly articles in philosophy, cognitive
science, and evolutionary theory.
His latest book is INTUITION PUMPS AND
OTHER TOOLS FOR THINKING.
Discovery in its mission to Jupiter.