The Paradigm Shift Towards AI With Soul

In the modern world, automated systems and artificial intelligence have become essential in our daily lives. However, their pervasive use raises ethical dilemmas for technologists and developers. Two key challenges are how to ensure that robots align with our values and how to prevent them from going rogue. Dr. Eve Poole, an author and academic, suggests that an overlooked solution lies in infusing robots with more humanity, including traits like empathy and compassion.

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Reshaping the Future: Integrating Humanity into Autonomous Machines

In a new book called Robot Souls, published in August, writer and academic Dr. Eve Poole OBE explores the idea that the solution to society’s conundrum about how to make sure AI is ethical lies in human nature.

She argues that in its bid for perfection, humans stripped out the ‘junk code’ including emotions, free will, and a sense of purpose.

She said: “It is this ‘junk’ which is at the heart of humanity. Our junk code consists of human emotions, our propensity for mistakes, our inclination to tell stories, our uncanny sixth sense, our capacity to cope with uncertainty, an unshakeable sense of our own free will, and our ability to see meaning in the world around us".

“This junk code is in fact vital to human flourishing, because behind all of these flaky and whimsical properties lies a coordinated attempt to keep our species safe. Together they act as a range of ameliorators with a common theme: they keep us in the community so that there is safety in numbers.”

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Robot Souls: Embracing Humanity in AI

With AI increasingly taking up more decision-making roles in our daily lives, along with rising concerns about bias and discrimination in AI, Dr. Poole argues the answer might be in the stuff we tried to strip out of autonomous machines in the first place.

She said: “If we can decipher that code, the part that makes us all want to survive and thrive together as a species, we can share it with the machines. Giving them to all intents and purposes a ‘soul’.”

In the new book, Poole suggests a series of next steps to make this a reality, including agreeing on a rigorous regulation process and an immediate ban on autonomous weapons along with a licensing regime with rules that reserve any final decision over the life and death of a human to a fellow human.

She argues we should also agree on the criteria for legal personhood and a road map for Al toward it.

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Redefining the Boundaries of Artificial Intelligence

“Because humans are flawed we disregarded a lot of characteristics when we built AI,” Poole explains. “It was assumed that robots with features like emotions and intuition, that made mistakes and looked for meaning and purpose, would not work as well.

“But on considering why all these irrational properties are there, it seems that they emerge from the source code of the soul. Because it is actually this ‘junk’ code that makes us human and promotes the kind of reciprocal altruism that keeps humanity alive and thriving.”

Robot Souls looks at developments in AI and reviews the emergence of ideas of consciousness and the soul.

It places our ‘junk code’ in this context and argues that it is time to foreground that code and to use it to look again at how we are programming AI.



Source-Eurekalert