Your Robot Friend Loves You So Much

 The message came through on our answering machine that evening, as my son and I sat downstairs.  It was an announcement from my big guy's high school, telling us about an event that would be occurring the next day.

The message wasn't live, but it also wasn't recorded.  It was a droning, artificially-generated voice, speaking the words that had been typed into it by some administrator.  Or perhaps, listening to it, it was just a mass-call system reciting an email in that peculiar, lilting automated monotone.

As invitations go, it was peculiarly uninviting, a bit like getting a message from the Borg asking you to join them for an evening of live music, coffee, and assimilation into the Collective.

Because there are things, frankly, that machines just can't do, no matter how much more efficient they might be.

Like, for example, this bizarre oddment I encountered the other day.  I'm fascinated by bots and AI, and in my noodling about on the net looking for new bot-stuff, I found...well, this.  It's called "empathynow," and it's a fledgling webservice based on a Loebner Prize winning chatbot.  The business model here is a simple one.  You need encouragement?  You have no-one to listen or give you that little boost?  Well, you can just send "Chip" a text.

Sad?  Just text Chip.  Chip will text you right back with a word of encouragement.  Need affirmation?  Just text Chip.  Chip will affirm you.  Trying to work on losing a few extra pounds and need someone to hold you accountable?  Chip will keep asking you how you're doing, in a nonjudgmental way.

All for a small monthly fee.

The human desire behind it...to insure that no-one feels alone and uncared for...is an admirable one.   But I can't escape the feeling that as business models go, this one is desperately, horribly sad.

Are we so isolated and hungry for something to affirm us that we'd turn to an unfeeling automaton to simulate empathy?

I wish that I could answer that question in the negative.

When The Sword Opens Its Eyes

The last few days, I've been reading more about the increasing use of drone and robotic tech in America's military.  Even with our conveniently marginalized all-volunteer army, it's still difficult to justify shedding blood in regions of the world where the hatred seems to hang in the air like the dust, and corruption and tribalism are etched into the rocky soil.

So increasingly, we're getting machines to do it for us.  Our Predators and Reapers prowl the skies, implacable, inhuman, unkillable, for all the world mirroring the Mechanical Hounds of Ray Bradbury's prescient Fahrenheit 451.

The Central Intelligence Agency oversees most drone strikes, which has the interesting effect of making it now a fully functioning branch of the United States Military.  The head count from drone strikes continues to rise, and is now well up into the thousands.

They are an increasingly effective way to kill from the safety of your cubicle.  But as we ramp up the strikes, and increase the number of drones, we're finding their effectiveness hampered by the limitations of their human overseers.  Humans need to go for coffee.  And nap.  And sometimes, they might not act quickly enough, and that Hellfire might not take down its target.

So the new goal is to create combat systems that can autonomously assess threat levels and autonomously act to eliminate that threat.  Meaning, hunter-killer robots.  We're not there yet, but we're close.  This has caused some consternation amongst those who for some reason are stressed by the idea of implacable inhuman killing machines.  I mean, why?  It's not like they'll just go berzerk and kill us.

There is much hum and clucking about the need to put clear parameters in place to define the ethical use of such machines.  There's also earnest concern that we program ethics into the machines, so that they adhere to the rules of war, accept surrender, don't harvest us for our precious bodily fluids, and other stuff like that.  It's a new era for ethicists, they say.

Here, though, I find myself doubting that.  War is war.  War never changes.  That a new technology is transforming the ability to project lethal force is without question.  But that has happened before.

It's like the arrival of the stirrup, which allowed archers and swordsmen to strike on the move.  Or like iron, which the Philistines used to cut through the bronze armor of their opponents.  Or the longbow, which tore through the cavalry at Agincourt.  Or the Panzers and Stukas of Blitzkrieg.  Or Fat Man and Little Boy.

The ethics of coercive power remain the same.  The relationship between that ethic and the ethic of Christ remains the same.

But then, perhaps that's what worries us.   What if the sword opens its eyes, and understands its purpose?

Compassion Guidance System

Among the many things I dabble around in, I'm continually fascinated with artificial intelligence and robotics.

I get my fix of botstuff over at this blog, which today served up an absolutely delightful story from New York. It's a little robot called the tweenbot, which is pretty weak by robot standards. Does it clean your house? Nope. Does it explore the deepest recesses of interplanetary space? No. Is it a new form of intelligence? Naw.

All it does is roll forward. That's it. It can't steer. It has no idea where it's actually going, no complex processors and satellite navigation system interlaced with advanced optical scanners.

Instead, it has a cute little smiley face, and a flag on the back which asks passersby to help point it in the right direction. Its creator sets it trundling off, and the only way it can get to it's target destination is with the direct assistance of human beings.

What's most cool about this form of navigation is that it actually works. It doesn't work quickly...but it works. This tiny little insensate thing can get where it's supposed to go, because human beings--New Yorkers, no less--are willing to take a few seconds out of their lives to help.

Perhaps there's hope for humanity yet.