Artificial Pain May Induce Empathy, Morality, and Ethics in the Conscious Mind of Robots

M. Asada

Philosophies 2019, 4(3), 38

https://doi.org/10.3390/philosophies4030038

Abstract

In this paper, a working hypothesis is proposed that a nervous system for pain sensation is a key component for shaping the conscious minds of robots (artificial systems). In this article, this hypothesis is argued from several viewpoints towards its verification. A developmental process of empathy, morality, and ethics based on the mirror neuron system (MNS) that promotes the emergence of the concept of self (and others) scaffolds the emergence of artificial minds. Firstly, an outline of the ideological background on issues of the mind in a broad sense is shown, followed by the limitation of the current progress of artificial intelligence (AI), focusing on deep learning. Next, artificial pain is introduced, along with its architectures in the early stage of self-inflicted experiences of pain, and later, in the sharing stage of the pain between self and others. Then, cognitive developmental robotics (CDR) is revisited for two important concepts—physical embodiment and social interaction, both of which help to shape conscious minds. Following the working hypothesis, existing studies of CDR are briefly introduced and missing issues are indicated. Finally, the issue of how robots (artificial systems) could be moral agents is addressed.

Discussion

To tackle the issue of consciousness, this study attempted to represent it as a phenomenon of the developmental process of artificial empathy for pain and moral behavior generation. The conceptual model for the former is given by, while the latter is now a story of fantasy. If a robot is regarded as a moral being that is capable of exhibiting moral behavior with others, is it deserving of receiving moral behavior from them? If so, can we agree that such robots have conscious minds? This is an issue of ethics towards robots, and is also related to the legal system. Can we ask such robots to accept a sort of responsibility for any accident they commit? If so, how? These issues arise when we introduce robots who are qualified as a moral being with conscious minds into our society.

Before these issues can be considered, there are so many technical issues to address. Among them, the following should be addressed intensively.

1. Associate the sensory discrimination of pain with the affective and motivational responses to pain (the construction of the pain matrix and memory dynamics).
2. Recall the experience when a painful situation of others is observed.
3. Generate appropriate behavior to reduce the pain.

The info is here.

The Cognitive Science of Technology

D. Stout

Trends in Cognitive Sciences

Available online 4 August 2021

Abstract

Technology is central to human life but hard to define and study. This review synthesizes advances in fields from anthropology to evolutionary biology and neuroscience to propose an interdisciplinary cognitive science of technology. The foundation of this effort is an evolutionarily motivated definition of technology that highlights three key features: material production, social collaboration, and cultural reproduction. This broad scope respects the complexity of the subject but poses a challenge for theoretical unification. Addressing this challenge requires a comparative approach to reduce the diversity of real-world technological cognition to a smaller number of recurring processes and relationships. To this end, a synthetic perceptual-motor hypothesis (PMH) for the evolutionary–developmental–cultural construction of technological cognition is advanced as an initial target for investigation.

Highlights

• Evolutionary theory and paleoanthropological/archaeological evidence motivate a theoretical definition of technology as socially reproduced and elaborated behavior involving the manipulation and modification of objects to enact changes in the physical environment.

• This definition helps to resolve or obviate ongoing controversies in the anthropological, neuroscientific, and psychological literature relevant to technology.

• A review of evidence from across these disciplines reveals that real-world technologies are diverse in detail but unified by the underlying demands and dynamics of material production. This creates opportunities for meaningful synthesis using a comparative method.

• A ‘perceptual‐motor hypothesis’ proposes that technological cognition is constructed on biocultural evolutionary and developmental time scales from ancient primate systems for sensorimotor prediction and control.

The information is here.

Social identity shapes antecedents and functional outcomes of moral emotion expression in online networks

Brady, W. J., & Van Bavel, J. J. 

(2021, April 2). 

https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/dgt6u

Abstract

As social interactions increasingly occur through social media platforms, intergroup affective phenomena such as “outrage firestorms” and “cancel culture” have emerged with notable consequences for society. In this research, we examine how social identity shapes the antecedents and functional outcomes of moral emotion expression online. Across four pre-registered experiments (N = 1,712), we find robust evidence that the inclusion of moral-emotional expressions in political messages has a causal influence on intentions to share the messages on social media. We find that individual differences in the strength of partisan identification is a consistent predictor of sharing messages with moral-emotional expressions, but little evidence that brief manipulations of identity salience increased sharing. Negative moral emotion expression in social media messages also causes the message author to be perceived as more strongly identified among their partisan ingroup, but less open-minded and less worthy of conversation to outgroup members. These experiments highlight the role of social identity in affective phenomena in the digital age, and showcase how moral emotion expressions in online networks can serve ingroup reputation functions while at the same time hinder discourse between political groups.

Conclusion

In the context of contentious political conversations online, moral-emotional language causes political partisans to share the message more often, and that this effect was strongest in strong group identifiers. Expressing negative moral-emotional language in social media messages makes the message author appear more strongly identified with their group, but also makes outgroup members think the author is less open-minded and less worth of conversation. This work sheds light on antecedents and functional outcomes of moral-emotion expression in the digital age, which is becoming increasingly important to study as intergroup affective phenomena such as viral outrage and affective polarization are reaching historic levels.

The Ethics of Sex Robots

Sterri, A. B., & Earp, B. D. (in press).

In C. Véliz (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of 

Digital Ethics. Oxford:  Oxford University Press.

Abstract 

What, if anything, is wrong with having sex with a robot? For the sake of this chapter, the authors  will  assume  that  sexbots  are  ‘mere’  machines  that are  reliably  identifiable  as such, despite  their  human-like  appearance  and  behaviour.  Under  these  stipulations,  sexbots themselves can no more be harmed, morally speaking, than your dishwasher. However, there may still be something wrong about the production, distribution,  and use of such sexbots. In this  chapter,  the  authors  examine  whether  sex  with robots  is  intrinsically  or  instrumentally wrong  and  critically  assess  different  regulatory  responses.  They  defend  a  harm  reduction approach to  sexbot  regulation,  analogous  to  the  approach that has  been  considered  in  other areas, concerning, for example, drugs and sex work.

Conclusion  

Even  if  sexbots  never  become  sentient,  we  have  good  reasons  to  be  concerned with  their production, distribution, and use. Our seemingly  private activities have social meanings that we do not necessarily intend, but  which can be harmful to others. Sex  can both be  beautiful and  valuable—and  ugly  or  profoundly  harmful.  We  therefore  need  strong  ethical  norms  to guide human sexual behaviour, regardless of the existence of sexbots. Interaction with new technologies  could  plausibly  improve  our  sexual  relationships,  or  make things  worse  (see Nyholm et al. forthcoming, for a theoretical overview). In this chapter, we have explored some ways in which a harm reduction framework may have the potential to bring about the alleged benefits of sexbots with a minimum of associated harms. But whatever approach is taken, the goal should be to ensure that our relationships with robots conduce to, rather than detract from, the equitable flourishing of our fellow human beings.

A pdf is here.

A Minimal Turing Test

McCoy, J. P., and Ullman, T.D.

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Volume 79, November 2018, Pages 1-8

Abstract

We introduce the Minimal Turing Test, an experimental paradigm for studying perceptions and meta-perceptions of different social groups or kinds of agents, in which participants must use a single word to convince a judge of their identity. We illustrate the paradigm by having participants act as contestants or judges in a Minimal Turing Test in which contestants must convince a judge they are a human, rather than an artificial intelligence. We embed the production data from such a large-scale Minimal Turing Test in a semantic vector space, and construct an ordering over pairwise evaluations from judges. This allows us to identify the semantic structure in the words that people give, and to obtain quantitative measures of the importance that people place on different attributes. Ratings from independent coders of the production data provide additional evidence for the agency and experience dimensions discovered in previous work on mind perception. We use the theory of Rational Speech Acts as a framework for interpreting the behavior of contestants and judges in the Minimal Turing Test.

The research is here.

A pdf is here.

Supernatural Explanations Across the Globe Are More Common for Natural Than Social Phenomena

Jackson, J. C., et al.

(2021, September 2).

https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/6us9r

Abstract

Supernatural beliefs are common in every human society, and people frequently invoke the supernatural to explain natural (e.g., storms, disease outbreaks) and social (e.g., murder, warfare) events. However, evolutionary and psychological theories of religion raise competing hypotheses about whether supernatural explanations should more commonly focus on natural or social phenomena. Here we test these hypotheses with a global analysis of supernatural explanations in 109 geographically and culturally diverse societies. We find that supernatural explanations are more prevalent for natural phenomena than for social phenomena, an effect that generalizes across regions and subsistence styles and cannot be reduced to the frequency of natural vs. social phenomena or common cultural ancestry. We also find that supernatural explanations of social phenomena only occur in societies that also have supernatural explanations of natural phenomena. This evidence is consistent with theories that ground the origin of supernatural belief in a human tendency to perceive intent and agency in nature.

Discussion

Religious beliefs are prevalent in virtually every human society, and may even predate anatomically modern humans. The widespread prevalence of supernatural explanations suggests that explanation is a core property of religious beliefs, and humans may have long used religious beliefs to explain aspects of their natural and social worlds. However, there has never been a worldwide survey of supernatural explanations, which has been a barrier to understanding the most frequent ways that people use religious belief as a tool for explanation. 

We use a global analysis of societies in the ethnographic record to show that humans are more likely to use supernatural explanations to explain natural phenomena versus social phenomena. Across all world regions and subsistence styles, societies were more likely to attribute natural events like famine and disease to supernatural causes compared to social events such as warfare and murder. This prevalence gap could not be explained by the frequency of phenomena in our analysis (i.e., that disease outbreaks occurred more frequently than warfare).

The research is here.

Demand five precepts to aid social-media watchdogs

Ethan Zucker

Nature 597, 9 (2021)

Originally punished 31 Aug 21

Here is an excerpt:

I propose the following. First, give researchers access to the same targeting tools that platforms offer to advertisers and commercial partners. Second, for publicly viewable content, allow researchers to combine and share data sets by supplying keys to application programming interfaces. Third, explicitly allow users to donate data about their online behaviour for research, and make code used for such studies publicly reviewable for security flaws. Fourth, create safe-haven protections that recognize the public interest. Fifth, mandate regular audits of algorithms that moderate content and serve ads.

In the United States, the FTC could demand this access on behalf of consumers: it has broad powers to compel the release of data. In Europe, making such demands should be even more straightforward. The European Data Governance Act, proposed in November 2020, advances the concept of “data altruism” that allows users to donate their data, and the broader Digital Services Act includes a potential framework to implement protections for research in the public interest.

Technology companies argue that they must restrict data access because of the potential for harm, which also conveniently insulates them from criticism and scrutiny. They cite misuse of data, such as in the Cambridge Analytica scandal (which came to light in 2018 and prompted the FTC orders), in which an academic researcher took data from tens of millions of Facebook users collected through online ‘personality tests’ and gave it to a UK political consultancy that worked on behalf of Donald Trump and the Brexit campaign. Another example of abuse of data is the case of Clearview AI, which used scraping to produce a huge photographic database to allow federal and state law-enforcement agencies to identify individuals.

These incidents have led tech companies to design systems to prevent misuse — but such systems also prevent research necessary for oversight and scrutiny. To ensure that platforms act fairly and benefit society, there must be ways to protect user data and allow independent oversight.

The article is here.

Good deeds and hard knocks: The effect of past suffering on praise for moral behavior

P. Robbins, F. Alvera, & P. Litton

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Volume 97, November 2021

Abstract

Are judgments of praise for moral behavior modulated by knowledge of an agent's past suffering at the hands of others, and if so, in what direction? Drawing on multiple lines of research in experimental social psychology, we identify three hypotheses about the psychology of praise — typecasting, handicapping, and non-historicism — each of which supports a different answer to the question above. Typecasting predicts that information about past suffering will augment perceived patiency and thereby diminish perceived agency, making altruistic actions seem less praiseworthy; handicapping predicts that this information will make altruistic actions seem more effortful, and hence more praiseworthy; and non-historicism predicts that judgments of praise will be insensitive to information about an agent's experiential history. We report the results of two studies suggesting that altruistic behavior tends to attract more praise when the experiential history of the agent involves coping with adversity in childhood rather than enjoying prosperity (Study 1, N = 348, p = .03, d = 0.45; Study 2, N = 400, p = .02, d = 0.39), as well as the results of a third study suggesting that altruistic behavior tends to be evaluated more favorably when the experiential history of the agent includes coping with adversity than in the absence of information about the agent's past experience (N = 226, p = .002). This pattern of results, we argue, is more consistent with handicapping than typecasting or non-historicism.

From the Discussion

One possibility is that a history of suffering is perceived as depleting the psychological resources required for acting morally, making it difficult for someone to shift attention from their own needs to the needs of others. This is suggested by the stereotype of people who have suffered hardships in early life, especially at the hands of caregivers, which includes a tendency to be socially anxious, insecure, and withdrawn — a stereotype which may have some basis in fact (Elliott, Cunningham, Linder, Colangelo, & Gross, 2005). A history of suffering, that is, might seem like an obstacle to developing the kind of social mindedness exemplified by acts of altruism and other forms of prosocial behavior, which are typically motivated by feelings of compassion or empathic concern. This is an open empirical question, worthy of investigation not just in connection with handicapping and typecasting (and historicist accounts of praise more generally) but in its own right.

The research is here.

This research may have implications for psychotherapy.

Oppressive Double Binds

S. Hirji

Ethics, Vol 131, 4.

July 2021

Abstract

I give an account of the structure of “oppressive double binds,” the double binds that exist in virtue of oppression. I explain how these double binds both are a product of and serve to reinforce oppressive structures. The central feature of double binds, I argue, is that an agent’s own prudential good is bound up with their ability to resist oppression; double binds are choice situations where no matter what an agent does, they become a mechanism in their own oppression. A consequence is that double binds constrain an individual’s agency while leaving various dimensions of their autonomy fully intact.

In the concluding remarks

To sum up: I have had three overarching goals of this article. The first has been to vindicate Frye’s point that once we properly understand the structure of double binds, we see how they differ from ordinary restrictions on an individual’s options and how they serve to immobilize and reduce members of certain groups. As Frye insists, understanding this difference between mechanisms of oppression and ordinary restrictions on our options is a crucial part of identifying and challenging oppressive structures. The second goal has been to develop and refine the concept of a double bind so that it can be useful in theorizing about oppression. I have argued that double binds are choice situations in which a member of an oppressed group is forced to choose between cooperating with and resisting some oppressive norm, and because of the way their own prudential good is bound up with their ability to resist oppression, they end up to some degree reinforcing their own oppression no matter what they do. The third goal has been to better understand what I call “imperfect choices”—choices where, no matter what an agent does, they undermine the very interest at stake in their choice. I have argued that “imperfect choices” constrain an individual’s agency while leaving various dimensions of their autonomy fully intact.

The information is here.