Could you be friends with a robot?

What is a robot? Does a robot have to be made of something non-biological? Can a robot have free will? How would you tell if something was a robot or not?

Why do you think the person next to you has a mind? Because they look like you? Because they hold a conversation with you? What are the problems with trying to know if anyone else has a mind like yours?

The Turing Test Alan Turing a famous mathematician, devised a hypothetical test to see if machines really had minds.

Imagine that you are sat in front of a screen, with a computer. Behind the screen are a computer and a human being. You type questions, and receive two sets of typed responses. If you can’t tell which is the computer, should you say the computer has a mind the same as the human?

Millions of pounds have been spent trying to create computers to pass the Turing Test. Have a look here for an example: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7666836.stm So … if a computer could pass the Turing Test, could it become your friend?

Understanding? Emotion? Free will? Intentions? If you said no … try to think about what is ‘missing’ from a robot who can respond like a real human. Understanding? Emotion? Free will? Intentions?

The Chinese Room John Searle gave a reply to the Turing Test. He asked us to imagine a man in a room that has two windows. The man has a basket of Chinese symbols, and an instruction manual.

Chinese symbols are passed to the man through one window, and he matches them to other symbols from his collection using the manual. Then he passes those symbols out of the other window. ヲネ ポ ホ

To someone who speaks Chinese, it looks like questions being passed in, and answers coming back out again. This is similar to passing the Turing Test. But the man inside is just following a set of rules. He doesn’t understand Chinese. Searle’s point is that robots are doing the same thing … following rules, but they don’t understand what they are doing. Could a robot one day understand what it was doing? Which are the hardest kinds of human thinking for a robot to imitate? Could a robot ever have emotions without having a biological body to influence how it felt?

Does a computer have to understand something in order to be thinking? Could a computer ever laugh at a joke for no reason? Be struck by inspiration? Write a poem reflecting their sadness or compose a song when they are in love? If not, why not? Computers get faster all the time, so can you say “never”?

So … You should now make your decision! Could you be friends with a robot that looked and acted exactly like a human? (Perhaps there are robots out there you don’t even know about!) What about marrying such a robot? Is there something else that is needed before you would say a robot can really think? Is there more to being human than thinking?