Matthew Parris has narrated this article for you to listen to.
‘Et remarquant que cette vérité, je pense, donc je suis, était si ferme et si assurée, que toutes les plus extravagantes suppositions des Sceptiques n’étaient pas capables de l’ébranler, je jugeai que je pouvais la recevoir sans scrupule pour le premier principe de la Philosophie que je cherchais.’
Pardon my French – and I translate below. But so elemental was what René Descartes wrote (afterwards rendered in Latin ‘Cogito ergo sum’) that his phrasing should confront us first in his own language. Though in 1637 Descartes will have known nothing of robots, still less of artificial intelligence, he settled by this remark a debate that we think remains open, and which has recently resurfaced in media commentary. Can robots achieve consciousness? Might algorithms have feelings?
Last week my Times colleague, the science editor Tom Whipple, explored such questions in an article sub-headlined: ‘What if robots start to feel sad? What if that’s our fault? Academics say mankind must prepare for the possibility that AI machines may become sentient beings.’
Tom quotes Robert Long, executive director of the research organisation Eleos AI: ‘Evolution was not trying to build conscious creatures, it was trying to make creatures that would survive and reproduce. In the course of navigating the world and thinking about the world, that resulted in consciousness.’ What, he asks, if AI reaches the same destination?
A powerful argument. But it dodges a question almost every commentator is dodging: the biggest question. How will we know? Before we preach compassion towards machines, how will we know they can suffer? Before we learn to love or hate them, how will we know they can return our feelings?
Descartes’s answer is implicitly clear: we cannot know.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in