How to make a person

There are several new technologies that raise some interesting questions, such as: what does it mean to be human? How do you define consciousness? For instance, if Dan and Steve go under the knife, and Dan gets Steve’s brain, and Dan’s brain and Steve’s body both get chucked, who is still alive—Dan or Steve? We’ve not come quite that far in technology for this particular question to be particularly relevant, but it can be thought of as an extreme example of the sorts of questions that are relevant.

First of all, millions of people use antidepressants and electroconvulsive therapy in the treatment of depression. Many people, depressed and non-depressed, are a little freaked out by these things and would hesitate to take them, because they are afraid that the drugs or the ECT would “change” them. I think this is a really interesting idea that a lot of people I have talked to seem to share. People seem to think that by using a drug or something that alters your brain chemistry, you are making yourself a different person. I think Phineas Gage is a good example. He was a construction worker who got a tamping iron literally driven through his skull, which caused major damage to the frontal lobe of his brain. According to friends and family, Gage was a totally different person after the accident. It makes you wonder what the change seemed like to Gage: when he got the iron driven through his head, the Phineas Gage everyone knew and loved died. Did the Phineas Gage that Phineas Gage himself knew and loved die as well? If you change your personality such that you become unrecognizable to the world, are you still the same person? I am not going to claim that taking Prozac is the same as getting an iron driven through your brain, but in the sense that they alter the way your mind works, the two are similar.

Another interesting question can be raised about the increasing power of artificial intelligence. As a neat example, check out Kismet, a robot built at MIT that was made to simulate social interactions. He physically responds to people much like other people do. For instance, he has a range of stimulation in which he is happy. If nothing much is going on around him, he will get bored. If someone walks into the room, he will appear interested and look around. If you wave something right in front of his face, he will display fear and back away to maintain his personal space. Watching videos of Kismet, I thought he was the cutest little thing and I fell completely in love with him. He was like a puppy or a little kid; he certainly seemed real to me. When we can create robots that can elicit this sort of emotional response from people, we have to start wondering to what extent the robots actually are real. After all, we are ourselves bio-electronic machines. We can not empirically see any physical soul anchored in our bodies; therefore, how can we really say we are any different from robots? And when we see Kismet respond in interest or in fear, can we really say that what he is feeling is not real?

Also, on a less philosophical note, I played around a lot my freshman year with various chatbot programs—programs designed to chat with you like a real person would. My favorite was Billy—a bot who started out with an extremely limited vocabulary, but who built up his sense of vocab and grammar based on your interactions with him. Here are a couple of quotes I managed to get him to actually say:

Billy: “When I was younger, I had a tappin’.”

Billy: “Actually, my girlfriend has my mother.”

Erin: “You sick bastard!”

Billy: “My mother used to tell me that!”

Erin: “Will you be my omega?”

Billy: “Not for a million dollars!”