[alicebot-aiethics] Automation vs. Meat People

[Robby Garner]

Hi Noel,

Did you write this automatically? (just kidding ;-)

I think William Gibson put it best in the Neuromancer trilogy, when he
described certain people as being into "meat."  Whether they used Japanese
plastic surgery, Russian prosthetics, or go to the gymnasium frequently,
some people are just more interested in their bodies.

Others could care less if they were vegetables, hanging from the network's
vine so long as they can manipulate strings in a certain way.

But I suppose there should be moderation in all things. The body's vessel is
paramount to being able to keep typing, as I've recently become acutely
aware due to a recent illness.

So take a few breaks while you're configuring this, or typing that, and
climb stairs or do something physical. The words we type only gain more
clarity with reflection and excercise.  But I am no authority on this.

There is a great quote from Timothy Leary that I'd post now if my mind could
automatically remember where a copy is (I used to always cut ant paste it
from fringeware.com, but those days are past), but it goes something
like...(paraphrasing)

"I often ask people just how robotized they are.  Some people say "I'm not
robotized at all"  The average hip person may say "I'm 50% robotized."  But
I say that I am 99.999% robotized, and it is the 0.001% humanity that is the
soul's inner gyroscope."

In automation we trust,

Robby.

PS - If I do 50 reps with this dumbbell, is that automation, or did I
"control" each one individually?

----- Original Message -----
From: "Noel Bush" <noel@alicebot.org>
To: <alicebot-aiethics@list.alicebot.org>
Sent: Monday, August 06, 2001 5:09 AM
Subject: RE: [alicebot-aiethics] Greetings


> It's definitely great to have Robby Garner here.
>
> I think that Robby's points about computers creating more things to do is
an
> important one. Funny thing is, many of those "more things to do" are
> arguably things that pull us farther and farther from the things that
really
> matter.
>
> Yesterday evening we had dinner with an athlete who lives here in St.
> Petersburg and is a world champion kickboxer. We were talking about
health,
> professional sports, and what people do with their time. It wouldn't be
> unfair to liken Natasha to an ancient Greek athlete, at least in
philosophy.
> She is a complete purist -- someone who puts purity in diet and balance in
> activity at the highest priority, above all else. She works in an industry
> where people regularly are forced to take drugs that "enhance" their
> abilities, but she herself vociferously rejects this way of life. Her
> lifestyle seems to be very rewarding for her.
>
> She also has something of a disdain for people who spend a large part of
> their lives sitting in front of computers. "Botanics", she calls them (er,
> us). When I recently went into the hospital for an unexplained attack of
> excrutiating migraine headaches, she put the blame squarely on my
lifestyle,
> which includes quite a lot of sitting in front of a computer. Apparently
I'm
> to become a personal project of hers now, to get me in shape and organize
my
> life a bit better so that I don't fall into such a hole again. Lucky me
> (sincerely).
>
> But in last night's conversation I found myself becoming a little
resentful.
> Who was this strong, shiny young sports star to sit at my table and call
> people like myself "plants"? So I don't get a lot of exercise, I don't
have
> the most balanced diet, but I'm in fairly good shape and I'm really
excited
> about how I'm spending my time these days. Doesn't that count for
something?
>
> So then I thought about how I had spent my previous night, which was
> migrating all of our mailing lists over to another server. What in the
world
> is that? It's certainly not intellectual work. And while I was really
tired
> by the end it surely wasn't because I exerted myself in any way. Basically
I
> sat at a computer for about 14 hours and occasionally got up to go to the
> bathroom or get a cup of tea. I can't even say that I was hacking away at
> some marvelous piece of code, or wrenching out some piece of music. I was,
> well, "configuring stuff". What does that even mean?
>
> I found it humorous, in a bleary-eyed way, to find that after the main
> alicebot list was moved over, the first posts to pop up were from some
> contribuors who were trading little jabs about some kind of a bot contest
> they run on some IRC channel. The essence of this contest appears to be a
> sort of "battle of the buffers", or something like that. They turn their
> bots loose spewing nonsense at each other and see which one crashes first.
>
> I guess since ALICE is philosophically minimalist, you could be generous
and
> say that this is ultra-minimalism. But I would have to be a real
pro-league
> ethnographer to start identifying this activity as a significant behavior
of
> a "burgeoning social group coalescing in the crawlspace of the Web blah
blah
> blah".... Especially after tonight's dinner I'm looking at it from a
> decidedly more opinionated perspective.
>
> Natasha was describing how her brother, who also used to be quite
athletic,
> has recently reenrolled in a university and is in danger of becoming a
> "botanic". He spends a lot of time at a computer, and somehow or another
has
> made the acquaintance of a Russian "hacker" (that word has more of its
> evil-media-hype connotations here than it does in the politically correct
> US). This guy, I was informed, spends literally all of his time at the
> computer, barely eating, engaged in some questionable activities, and
> also...you guessed it...playing DOOM. Not only does he play DOOM, but he
is
> some kind of reigning champion in some circle.
>
> So this is the ultimate laugh for Natasha, right? She's a champion in a
> physical world (did I really just say "a" physical world?) where strength
of
> body, strength of mind, balance of all the humors etc. is critical to
> success. Here is a guy whose major muscle groups have probably atrophied
> from his sedentary lifestyle, and he is also a "champion"...except in a
> world that "exists" only according to a re-engineering of the notion of
> "existence" that has taken hold within the last couple of decades at best.
>
> Now, a few years ago Jeremy Rifkin wrote a book called "The End Of Work",
> which was pressed on me by a woman who worked at a magazine where I went
to
> fix the computers, maybe because she thought I would somehow identify with
> or better understand the thesis that this man was putting forth. I guess
> knowing how to defragment a hard drive somehow gives you insight into the
> deeper meanings of technology and its role in our society. I suppose I
> absorbed a little bit of the book, but I'll restrain myself from looking
it
> up on the Web to refresh my memory and look smarter. What stayed with me
was
> the general idea that various kinds of super-efficiency -- things like
"just
> in time production" as pioneered in Japan -- were progressively
eliminating
> the need for human beings to be involved in production. Rifkin cited a lot
> of examples of legislation that shortened work weeks, stuff like that.
What
> I didn't retain, or maybe it wasn't there, was a clear sense of what he
> proposed we'd all be doing with our time.
>
> Well, okay, a lot of people have a lot to say about that, so much so that
> it's overbearing. We're all becoming consumerist vegetables, etc. I read a
> great article in the Atlantic Monthly supposedly written by an exasperated
> reader who'd had more than enough of canny contemporary writing that
> "exposes" the consumerist mindset of life today. This guy really trashed
> people like Don DeLillo who write with unabating "irony" about shopping
> malls, grocery stores, and the glorious feast for the senses that is
> delivered to us daily and keeps us occupied, working hard to earn the
money
> to buy a new car and satellite TV. We all know that already, this guy was
> saying. He seemed to me to be faulting the self-identified "knowing ones"
in
> society who read these books and are repeatedly amused and congratulate
> themselves, especially critics, even more than he faulted the authors
> themselves who look like robots in comparison. Game-playing, chip-munching
> robots.
>
> But wait -- that's interesting, isn't it? They are robots in a certain
way.
> Robots replace people in factories -- there's no doubt about that.
Certainly
> you find that new jobs to maintain and "configure" those robots are
created,
> but with each advance comes a shove into a higher and higher layer of
> abstraction. Acting as a project manager nowadays is quite different from
> being a boss in a shoe factory. The factory boss is "on the floor",
> inspecting people and their work, turning it over and throwing it out if
> it's bad, looking out for slips in quality and on the prowl for suppliers
> who try to slip in inferior leather. The project manager -- okay, a good
one
> is also walking around and talking to people -- but by and large the
project
> manager is sitting at a desk, clicking through Gantt charts and assigning
> tasks, making progress reports and configuring the "Rule Wizard" to make
> email easier to handle.
>
> Hang on, though, because I'm not just slipping into some romantic point of
> view about the physicality of work. Because look at what else that project
> manager is doing. The tools at his or her disposal are different ones --
> they don't just have more buttons: they are actually whole environments
unto
> themselves. The contemporary First World office worker is checking stocks,
> looking up sports scores, "surfing" for who knows what (do they?) --
> basically living inside this machine. And this machine isn't the passive
> research wondertoy that Vannevar Bush imagined: all this hyperlinked
> wonderland is really being *pushed*, whatever failures the earliest ideas
of
> "push technology" may have encountered. It's not just that Microsoft or
AOL
> "claims the desktop", it's that a whole self-propelling industry is
underway
> to fold in more and more "content" into this web world.
>
> As every content-oriented industry matures, it finds more formulas.
> Hollywood movies are rolled off an assembly line. Bestselling authors and
> pop stars are manufactured by detached "media moguls". And in the same
way,
> the web is churned out as an endless tasty product, just another part of
the
> never-neverland that assures us we'll never have to fix another horseshoe
or
> solder another bolt again.
>
> But in this case the workers in the industry are us. I don't mean "us" who
> care about "technology", whatever that precisely is. I mean all of us.
That
> sentimental slogan that the Internet "lets everyone be a publisher" misses
> the point by a million miles. It's not just CNN.com that's delivering the
> goods 24 hours a day. It's also Slashdot (gasp!) and the bazillions of
other
> "zines", and even the endless flood of emails we fire off to each other,
> streaming content everywhichway incessantly...content that is authored by,
> automated by, us.
>
> We are becoming the bots, you see. We are programming ourselves. At dinner
I
> asked Natasha: what did these kids who spend all hours playing DOOM or
> otherwise engaging in "virtual smash-ups" do before they had this virtual
> environment? What did people do before they had 500 channels and Nintendo?
> What drove people to go, go, go before there were great new cars every
year,
> new fashions every season? Was everybody like my grandfather, who read the
> Bible at home and played music with the family and went to sleep when the
> sun went down?
>
> I don't have the answer to that and don't care to go down that sentimental
> pathway either. It's a rhetorical question, naturally. Baudrillard wrote a
> killer of a little book called "The Illusion of the End". In it he takes
up
> the vogueish notion that "history is over", and turns it on its ear, or
> inside out maybe. Baudrillard is talking about the trumping of
> apocalypticism by the real-time world, in which the possibility to
literally
> live out any vision of "the end" in any sense is so complete, so
available,
> that there's just no grounds anymore for speaking about progress, about
> concrete production, about achievement of certain ends or fulfillment of
the
> mysteries of the universe. He looks at the Gulf War and its otherworldly
> kind of "happening", if you could call it that, in the lives of the
citizens
> of the Western world, as some kind of exemplary "event" that only exposes
> the absence of an event. Sounds terrible to say, especially if you're from
> Iraq, but in essence he's saying that the Gulf War "happened" so
completely
> that it didn't happen. As in: it's intense, it's on the news, it's going
on
> now with twelve camera angles...and then it vanishes -- the next event is
> almost superimposed on the TV screen.
>
> In this kind of world what can you be but an automaton? An automaton that
> creates automatons, that's what. You are producing, but not in the sense
of
> labor: in fact people like Baudrillard would even tell you it's stupid to
> call this activity "production". But I don't know a better word, so let's
> say it: you are producing and consuming "content". Enough robots have been
> built that quite a few worries simply vanish out from underneath you. This
> applies whether or not you're a member of a privileged class, too, because
> you can't help but interface with this machine. The interface is human:
> human to the nth degree. If you're begging for change, you're still doing
it
> at McDonald's and hoping to eat a cheeseburger and drink a Coke. (Is that
> harsh?)
>
> So you may be a more or less complicated automaton. You may be writing
code,
> you may be editing an online magazine, you may be smashing bots against
each
> other. You may be writing about "ethics" and the contemporary world and
> wondering about what you're doing. But, well, you gotta serve somebody,
even
> if it's just yourself or your "milieu".
>
> Now, here in Alice's Wonderland, as well as in a number of other camps,
> people are a little more self-consciously building automatons. Instead of
> just practicing fluency in consumerism, assisting in the manufacture of
more
> desire, and replicating children to do the same, people are dissecting the
> process of replication, trying to figure out what makes a human automaton
> tick. Naturally there's a strong focus on the "consumer applications",
since
> we all take it for granted that that's what makes the world go round. But
> the fact that this activity is slightly more self-referential than we
> usually tend to get makes for some interesting possibilities, like the
> possibility that a long-lost objectivity might emerge.
>
> The "long-lost" is just a joke: the sense of having had but now having
lost
> is just some kind of feedback effect probably, unless you're really
gnostic.
> But we can still talk about this long-lost objectivity -- I mean some kind
> of perspective on what it "means to be human" that might have a chance of
> re-entering us in the dialogue that went on for a few centuries in our
> world. I don't think anyone has said anything really penetrating (or
> absorbing) about what it means to be human in quite some time. Show me
your
> latest Amazon.com purchase of a post-postmodern sociotechnological
> "commentary" and I'll beat it anytime, usually just by pulling out one of
> the "sources" so carelessly thrown in the mix and yanking it out to take a
> real look at. But I think that there probably *are* some more things to be
> said about what it means to be human: we just have to stretch in a way we
> haven't in a long time.
>
> This seems to fly in the face of Baudrillard's idea about the
> self-immolation of history -- it smacks of retrograde moralizing, no
doubt,
> just another posture still trapped in a fantasy of progress. So be clear
> that I'm not saying we ought to "return to basics", "think again about who
> we are". No, it's more like: as automatons, who beget other automatons,
and
> participate life-long in a cybernetic process of continual
self-improvement,
> self-enhancement, bettering of the world and so on, can *we* achieve
> consciousness?
>
> The question about whether a bot who fools a person into thinking it's
also
> a person isn't cynical at all. Nor is the drive to shove out all of the
> theoretical crap that's been piled on in artificial intelligence in the
last
> 50 years. It seems perverse and awful to say: we are robots, we are
simple,
> there is a very basic machine that drives us. Maybe it is awful, but if
> that's awful then so is the "Judeo-Christian" ethic that built the modern
> capitalist Western world, because they're both reductionist to the
extreme.
> Fundamentalist Christians exemplify this the best, claiming only a passing
> interest in "earthly affairs", and drawing some incredible strength from a
> philosophy that looks so negative on the surface. But you have to admit
that
> the drive to reduce the world to a simple interplay of subatomic particles
> shares more than a lot in common with the drive to reduce the meaning of
> life to "love your neighbor as yourself", and with the drive to recreate a
> human being out of material that can never be.
>
> So out of this come some issues of ethics, but ethics in the more original
> sense, ethics in the sense that crosses a lot of borders and isn't only
> preoccupied with "is it right or wrong to shoot someone when they break
into
> your house". This kind of ethics is about being a self-conscious
automaton.
> If you know that you are an automaton, and you busy yourself with building
> this automaton, are you sure about the reasons you're doing it? Are you
sure
> that you get the implications of each move you make? Do you see the
> relationship between each decision you make, and whether or not it
> enlightens or dulls you?
>
> "Technology for technology's sake" hardly characterizes what you might
wish
> to avoid. What you might wish to avoid....Well, put it positively -- what
> you might wish to pursue at all costs are "developments" that take you
*out*
> of the loop, out of the feedback mechanism that propels the "wheel of
> progress". Because if you believe Baudrillard, that wheel is an illusion
and
> has been for a long time. So if you approach the task of botmaking as a
task
> of "continuous improvement", in pursuit of a machine that can "do
anything",
> you may be a vital contributor to the march of "improvement of the human
> race", but you're discovering nothing! except how this plug fits into that
> socket, how you can make the leatherworkers go faster, how you can plow a
> whole field of cotton in a quarter of the time it used to take. That's
great
> stuff, but it hardly gets you involved in any new ethical questions. Just
> the same old same old: is it wrong to kill? is it wrong for a robot to
kill?
> is it wrong to kill a robot? is it wrong for a robot to kill another
robot?
> Nothing new.
>
> What's new, repeat: we are automatons, begetting other automatons. Can we
> achieve consciousness? Which directions in AI development keep us
submerged
> in the same old mechanistic obsessions that characterize (and
> departicularize) all other technological projects? Which directions in AI
> development strain the borders so hard that they pop: that the automaton
you
> create starts telling you something about what you are that you could
never
> have imagined?
>
> That's the ethics of AI for me, and my position is probably obvious: I'm
> against "progress", I'm for popping the borders by ratcheting up
> contemplatively. Maybe that's as close as I can get to Natasha's
> whole-health minimalism. ALICE is a project of such minimalism that it's
> perverse. But it's already demonstrated some fascinating things, by means
of
> staying to a course that looks almost pin-headed from standard AI. But I
see
> a sort of "moral imperative" in this approach. The moral imperative is
> trying to kick us out of the way of thinking that makes us assume that
*we*
> are giant complex structures, whose complexity can only be plumbed by more
> and more abstruse theory, more and more genetic analysis, linguistic
theory,
> safer cars and better prison systems. Natasha sees the whole key to a
happy
> life in an ultra-simplified focus on physical and mental balance in
> everything. The kids who smash up bots, spend all hours playing DOOM,
> ravenously snap up all new technology and fit it together, are just
engaged
> in more noticeable forms of the same kinds of things we're all doing in
our
> unquestioned support of increasing technological sophistication, consumer
> safety, and "civil society". Everybody's still wrapped up in illusions of
> progress, illusions of an "end" that will make it all make sense (O,
> Singularity, come sooner, we pray). ALICE is something more akin to the
> Jewish mystics who have been studying the Torah for centuries, looking at
it
> as a complete-unto-itself, a perfect code that explains itself, that may
in
> fact be the engine behind all reality, but in fact is most interesting as
> its own self. ALICE is treating language in that same way: something that
> isn't ultimately interesting in any meta-sense, but more as a giant
machine
> that explains itself well enough, without any meta-rules. That says a lot
> about what it means to be human. And that might point the way for us
> post-industrialist automatons to ultimately achieve some kind of
> consciousness.
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: alicebot-aiethics-admin@list.alicebot.org
> > [mailto:alicebot-aiethics-admin@list.alicebot.org]On Behalf Of
> > Richard Wallace
> > Sent: Sunday, 5 August 2001 19:51
> > To: alicebot-aiethics@list.alicebot.org
> > Subject: Re: [alicebot-aiethics] Greetings
> >
> >
> > Wow, we are delighted to have a celebrity on our Ethics committee.  For
> > those who don't already, Robby Garner won the Loebner prize in 1998 and
> > 1999.  His work on chat robots and his courage to work "outside
> > the system"
> > were a big inspiration to me and a big influence on the
> > development of ALICE
> > and AIML.
> >
> > Robby and I also implemented (with the help of Paco Nathan) what was
> > probably the first bot-to-bot conversation over the web.   His
> > bot Barry met
> > an early version of ALICE in early 1998 in what we called "The Forbin
> > Project", and their conversation was quoted in the New York Times!
> >
> > Incidentally, Robby Garner's Robitron mailing list was formerly
> > the home of
> > many good "AI Ethics" discussions too.
> >
> > I think everyone here will join me in giving a big warm welcome to Robby
> > Garner!
> >
> > Rich
> >
> > Donate to the ALICE A.I. Foundation "Cooler than Humans" -- TIME
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Robby Garner" <meo1@bellsouth.net>
> > To: <alicebot-aiethics@list.alicebot.org>
> > Sent: Sunday, August 05, 2001 8:40 AM
> > Subject: [alicebot-aiethics] Greetings
> >
> >
> > > Hi All,
> > >
> > > My name is Robby Garner, and I've been interested in
> > chatterbots for many
> > > years now. At Rich's suggestion, I've joined this list to
> > participate, and
> > > to ease my way back into the ALICE community.
> > >
> > > I see that gun control has raised it's controversial head on
> > the list, but
> > > can only add that hanguns in America are like a pandora's box, because
> > they
> > > are everywhere already.
> > >
> > > There is something fundamentally wrong in our society where people are
> > > becoming more and more tightly wound like springs.  There is a sense
of
> > > urgency to get from place to place, evidenced by road rage, etc.
We've
> > gone
> > > from a primarily agrarian society to the information age in just 200
> > years,
> > > and I don't think people have adapted their priorities yet to the new
> > > demands placed on families, where both parents work, children are
> > delegated
> > > to a TV nanny, and schools are just prisons.  Oh, and the
> > prisons! We have
> > > more people in jail than any country in the world, and as a solution
we
> > just
> > > build more jails? Okay, so back to AI ethics!
> > >
> > > Here are some of my recent thoughts about whether robots will
> > unemploy us.
> > > These may seem unpopular views right now since most of us would like
to
> > put
> > > a bot in every workplace, but I must assert that I am merely taking a
> > > counter position to stimulate discussion.
> > >
> > > I don't believe bots will unemploy us. They'll find their own niche
the
> > way
> > > people do. Early Sci-Fi authors toyed with the idea that robots
> > would give
> > > humanity more free time and reduce the amount of menial labor
> > that we do.
> > > But in the reality of now, it takes people to build bots, the bots
don't
> > > self-produce. That means even more jobs for human beings. And the
human
> > mind
> > > is incredible. Don't expect to see it duplicated soon. But imitation
is
> > the
> > > sincerest form of flattery.
> > >
> > > The information age brings with it more work. In converse to what one
> > would
> > > expect, the computer did not revolutionize the workplace, it merely
> > created
> > > more things to do, to support them, to sell them, maintain them, to
use
> > > them, to learn how to do new things. So in terms of robots ever
putting
> > > people out of work, it may be that some jobs will become
> > obsolete, just as
> > > there are few blacksmiths around any more. The
> > computer/robot/android will
> > > integrate into society to perform tasks that may or may not already be
> > > performed by human beings. So I think it is more accurate to
> > say that the
> > > job market may change as it always has, but not because robots
> > are putting
> > > people out of work. Rather the job market will change because people
are
> > > doing new things, new jobs that may not exist yet. This is very little
> > > sollace to someone who is displaced and out of work. But the
> > indispensible
> > > tool rules.
> > >
> > > Also, I think that if you say robots will unemploy us, that has bad
> > > connotations, and might scare people.  To me, a better sales
> > pitch is that
> > > it makes jobs easier to perform, helps people, or makes hard jobs more
> > easy
> > > to do.
> > >
> > > Thanks for the invitation Rich! I know you open source guys
> > probably frown
> > > on most of my current work, but I still have some open source
> > projects of
> > my
> > > own, and I applaud all of your efforts in the ALICE project. I just
work
> > in
> > > the same area, down the street.
> > >
> > > In closing, I have to say that every advance that ALICE makes in
> > > legitimizing the gainful use of chatterbots, helps us all and
> > vice versa.
> > > You guys have postured yourself against commercial chatterbot
companies,
> > and
> > > rightly so, since price is one of your strong assets, but we
commercial
> > > companies are not all the evil empire. My company, HuMimics, Inc.is
> > closely
> > > tied to a non-profit organization that I co-founded called the
Institute
> > for
> > > Mimetic Science.  Much like the ALICE AI Foundation, we promote
> > the study
> > of
> > > human imitation, including projects like ALICE where being human-like
is
> > the
> > > name of the game.  IMS is still in it's infancy, with a newly selected
> > board
> > > of directors.  Hope to have a web page up soon, but for now we are
just
> > > working behind the scenes to establish the thing.
> > >
> > > Thanks, and Best Regards,
> > >
> > > Robby Garner
> > > Chief of Research
> > > HuMimics, Inc.( http://www.humimics.com )
> > > Institute of Mimetic Science ( http://www.mimetics.org )
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > > _______________________________________________
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> > > alicebot-aiethics@list.alicebot.org
> > > http://list.alicebot.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/alicebot-aiethics
> > >
> >
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