Tuesday, March 8, 2011

Heathen Computers

Human senses have been digitally duplicated in modern electronics. Cameras approximate sight; microphones approximate hearing, even touch is being refined. Scientific breakthroughs continue to expand not only the speed and capacity of computers, but also the very types of data that are available to them to analyze. We appear to be hurtling towards an inevitable technological singularity. But, there is one sense that computers cannot duplicate. Computers will never have a conscience. The complexity and variety of human legal and religious systems is evidence that we can't definitively quantify right from wrong. What we can't define we can't program, therefore computers have no morals. Honestly it doesn't really matter that computers are heathens. We just need to remember that fact when they start recommending modest proposals to us.
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4 comments:

  1. MercedesMarch 10, 2011 at 8:47 AM

    What about machine learning? Couldn't a machine 'learn' which morals are right and then act on them?

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  2. GarretMarch 10, 2011 at 9:11 AM

    Machine learning requires some set of empirical data as a base case. From that base case, and experience, the machine can begin drawing conclusions about other versions of similar problems. This data is typically provided either by way of some sensor, or a pre-constructed database. I believe that there is no sensor that can empirically gather data about moral behavior, and that any data-base constructed would inherit the fallibility of it's constructor, namely a human, or group of humans.

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  3. FaithMarch 10, 2011 at 9:18 AM

    I think you're right. Of course there are basics of what is right and wrong, but our ability to weigh things, evaluating degrees of rightness or wrongness in singular situations, is a skill that would be, and I think should be, impossible for us to duplicate in code. Being a religious person, I think it may even border on human pride and arrogance to think that we could give machines the same potential and skills that God allows us to have.

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