Ask a person whatever the feelings are. In all likelihood, you will hear that they have to do with affection and love relationships. Ask a neuroscientist the same question, and he’ll answer anything but. “Feelings are interactive perceptions,” says Antonio Damasio, 78, a sort of guru in the field of neuroscience.
“Feelings contribute to the management of life – says Damasio, who was born and completed his studies in Lisbon -. They inform each mind of the state of life within the organism to which it belongs. Feelings offer that mind an incentive to act according to the positive or negative signals of their messages ”.
A chapter of Feel and know, the latest essay by Damasio recently published in Italy by the Adelphi publishing house, talks about “machines that hear” and “conscious machines”. Machines that, in reality, do not exist. Damasio complains precisely this: the pioneers of artificial intelligence have focused only on the efficiency and speed of action that characterizes human beings, leaving out “the whole side of feelings” intended, in fact, mainly as information.
“Feelings – Damasio explains to us – are actually information. In the case of love, they inform us of how much we want another person, or how much we care for them. The feelings we developed for the first time, in the course of our evolution, they were about life management and they were perfectly real and useful. And of course they were also informative, because they told us what was right and wrong with the way we govern our lives. “
The interview
What does the crooked fly have to do with the future of artificial intelligence
by Pier Luigi Pisa
In short, machines equipped with artificial intelligence are efficient. But without the feelings their ‘evolutionary’ course is stopped at the primitive life forms of billions of years ago. Only the appearance of feelings, and therefore of a conscience, has allowed man to implement mechanisms associated with prosperity and the formation of cultures.
So what do these machines lack to experience ‘real’ feelings, comparable to those of human beings?
“The problem here is about experience, what a particular organism ‘feels’ personally. What a machine can do is one thing: AI is ready to deliver. The difficulty lies in generating inner feelings, that is, in generating experiences. In short, in making sure that a car feels in its own meat he’s doing something. “
Feelings can be positive or negative. Artificial intelligence and the machines of the future worry us: their dark side disturbs us. Can we imagine and develop a reassuring machine that has only positive feelings? Or can this machine, devoid of negative feelings, never be considered complete from the point of view of experiences and, therefore, of awareness?
“We must be careful. Acting positively is one thing, feeling or experiencing positivity is another. We have never had such creatures in nature. Evolutionary necessity has always given us positive and negative sides. But I can certainly imagine machines that would only act positively. Their conscious experiences would only be positive. “
We believe that fear, joy and anger – just to name a few – are ’emotions’ that machines are unlikely to experience. Even films set in the future often portray robots unable to fully experience the emotions of humans. Think of Spielberg’s AI film. Yet, if we were to rely on the theories that you, and other experts, have formulated very effectively on the construction of consciousness, the recipe should be simpler than you think: it would be enough to equip the machines with sensors to really perceive the world. external and the other by itself. And at that point, the road to experience and consciousness would be downhill. Am I oversimplifying it?
“I think she is overlooking the fact that the ‘substrate’ [le molecole e le reazioni chimiche, ndr] it probably matters. In other words, we can mimic the design of our affective organisms, but we cannot build machines that replicate all the fine details at the molecular level, on which I believe feelings depend. “
Are the machines we are talking about, capable of feeling, too difficult to create or are they just around the corner?
“I’m not that close, those cars. They are not only difficult to create but perhaps impossible to create. The feelings you or I experience are only possible in living organisms made of our own type of organic molecules. This is what science tells me to date. I could be wrong of course, but all I see possible are “imitations” of feelings. And that’s not enough at the moment. “
Humanoids are becoming more and more realistic. Some robots don’t have an iota of conscience, but they have such human traits and expressions that they leave you speechless. But we all know that humanoids like these are little more than puppets in human hands. Is this why, in your opinion, are we human beings unable to feel affection or love for these machines? Is it possible that the only emotion they can arouse in us is amazement? When one day these machines are sophisticated, complex, capable of gaining a consciousness like in Hbo’s cult series Westworld, then and only then will our feelings towards them be different?
“In answering your question, we need to separate our perception of the robot from the potential perception of the robot itself. We can be perfectly deceived by appearance, as we are constantly in the theater and in cinemas. We can believe in a reality that does not exist. But there is no “perception” comparable to that of man, from the point of view of the robot, because there is no such machine, from the biological point of view “.
The case
Can artificial intelligence be conscious?
by Andrea Daniele Signorelli
