Should Robots Feel Pain?

in technology •  7 years ago 

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If you like to read even a little bit about the tech world, you probably are already aware of the strange, sci-fi like future that awaits us, where robots will walk among us as we walk among ourselves.

The recent exponential advancements in robotics and especially artificial intelligence (AI) has made it clear that the future is one with intelligent machines in it. The software side of things is much more advanced right now but the hardware side is catching up fast too.

In fact, Google’s Ray Kurzweil, believes that the singularity will occur by 2045 where AI surpasses human intelligence. Robots equipped with such intelligence could be inevitable and therefore, it is more important now than ever, that we try to answer some of the biggest questions relating to them.

Because let’s face it, evil machines taking over is no more a joke. It could very well be a reality we all could live in (or die in). I am not saying that it will go down like that but it could go either way and we need to be prepared for every scenario.

It Could Go Either Way

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When anything has the ability to think for itself, it begins forming its own ideologies and conclusions about even the tiniest of things. We humans start doing it right from our childhood.

Imagine an artificially intelligent robot getting the ability to do the same. What kind of conclusions about the world it would derive is anybody’s guess. It could turn out to be a friendly one for us or an evil one depending on how it sees our species.

I think much of the fear of robots taking over stems from the fact that no matter how intelligent they may get, they still aren’t ‘alive’ and they simply can’t ‘feel’ anything! This makes them appear as cold and unforgiving.

Therefore, one could think that maybe changing that aspect about them could humanise them more and could help them understand humanity and its actions better. Feelings of love, anger, hate seem impossible to ‘give’ to robots right now but pain, a fundamental feeling, is certainly possible to code in and scientists are trying to answer if we should give robots the ability to feel pain.

The Purpose of Pain

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Nobody likes the sensation of pain and yet it serves a great purpose in our lives. Whether it be physical pain or emotional one, it tells the brain that there is something wrong and it needs fixing.

The objective of giving robots the ability to feel pain (in terms of overflow of signals to its processors in response to a stimuli), is multifold and it is important to understand all of them.

First, it will help them protect themselves in various situations where there is danger, just as humans do. With more robots working for us and along side us, this will be important.

Second, the ability to feel pain (in their own way) could evolve into empathy for humans as they “understand” how it feels for us. This will greatly humanise them and steer them away from the cold, logical machines that are often portrayed as threats to humanity. In fact, this could even drive them to protect humans just as how we protect other humans.

But, Isn’t It Cruel?

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Just think about this for a second. There is something that doesn’t and cannot experience pain on its own and if you had the choice to give it the ability to feel pain (suffer), would you want to do it?

In a way, that equates to cruelty. Sure, pain serves a purpose in protecting our own life but the suffering can sometimes be too unbearable (physical or emotional) and if I had the choice to let someone (or even something) experience it, I certainly wouldn’t do so.

Yes, it can be argued that robots are not really living beings and they are not really ‘feeling’ pain, it’s rather just code that makes them think they are feeling it. But doesn’t our pain mechanism work the same way?

In any case, these kind of questions are not just thought experiments anymore as we are fast moving into a future where these will have real life implications and the decisions that we take today, could determine future events.

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Thank you. :)

Thanks for reading :)

This is a very interesting topic. Is very difficult to make your mind about how far we should take AI and Robots. Whatever we do, the outcome will be very difficult to determine. In someway i feel it all depends on how well coded the AI is in giving value to life. Lets wait and see

Yea, you are right. It is difficult to gauge how far they should be taken because a lot depends on it. We are literally writing humanity's future right now and every decision is important.

that was very interesting, i have never think like that before, just got some more brain cells :), thank you for your work.

The more you mimic nature , the better. Evolution has been perfecting the brain and how it works for millions of years.

Yes, that's what we have been doing and it has worked out well.

This is a very interesting topic. Is very difficult to make your mind about how far we should take AI and Robots. Whatever we do, the outcome will be very difficult to determine. In someway i feel it all depends on how well coded the AI is in giving value to life. Lets wait and see. Upvoted and Followed!

This same comment was posted above.

Thats very strange. I have no idea how is that possible? If you look at the time i posted my comment you can see it was made at 10/9/2017 at 1:29 PM. The comment above was made on 10/9/2017 at 4:41 PM. So is the post above that was copied from me. I am upvoting your comment for the curious mysterious find. Still i want to know, how did that happen? How did his post showed up before mine? He took my comment to make a quick vote for himself.

Crazy concept to think about. They should be able to be destructed, regardless of whether it hurts or not.

It certainly is crazy!

Great post and great thinking.
I wonder if you could really implement feeling of pain to robots, wouldn't it's decisions be more strict or black&white-ish? As it would make choices in order to avoid the unnecessary pain caused to themselves. Or perhaps they would consider it as a weakness and immediately by self-learning patterns will "upgrade" themselves in such a way that they will block these "feelings". Something comparable to what people were doing in the 2002 movie Equilibrium.

From a technological point of view, I read that it is indeed possible, in a certain way. You also make an interesting point that they could see this as weakness and upgrade themselves to not feel pain. Interesting!

Insane idea to consider. They ought to have the capacity to be destructed, paying little heed to whether it harms or not.

This same comment was posted above. Why are you copying?

Do think about the downside of this! If they feel pain they can be sad or angry, etc. For example: There is a angry woman in walmart and it speaks angrily to the robot, she is the 20th person who dose this to the robot, obviously it will have a response. You might argue that there is a way to code it in to not feel this, but for now we aren’t even sure how to make them feel anything.

Yeah, nobody has the slightest idea of how things could evolve from the point we teach them to feel pain. It could evolve in a number of ways, some of which could prove dangerous.

Exactly, I can't agree with you more. I think that Elon Musk and Stephen Hawkings are quiet right that one day AI may be the greatest threat to human kind.

Good posr

Thank you!

Everything that is created by human has a loophole

I guess?

Pain is supposed to tell us, fire bad, no touch fire, things like that. But unfortunately, we all know there are those out there who are wired differently and actually like pain, and there are those who like to cause pain.

I think developing a way to enable the sensory response in robotic constructs may be a step or two away from self-awareness and then the rise of the machines.

Robots/Androids/AI will very quickly realize that the vast majority of humanity is utterly useless and will likely try to create a clean slate.

That is what most people fear. Me too actually.

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Amazing post dear........
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@mahmoodhassan
And please upvote my post i also upwote your all post friends.

Thank you :)

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Good post @sauravrungta..👍👍
I like this post...

Thank you :)

It is very possible that with technology and its evolution, you can do everything because man can not sometimes do everything alone. These robots will be the place of man in his daily life.

That could indeed happen!

if you get to build robots with that degree of consciousness, it would be good to give them the ability to feel pain ... or injury. but it will also be something not generalized because the pain is to dominate in elite people dedicated to specific jobs, because it would not be so in working robots ?, and this should not necessarily be signs of cruelty.

I kind of get your point.

Just a thought but wouldn't the ability to feel pain also create the opportunity to be tortured.

Give humanities flaws, its easy to imagine a crazed person purposefully torturing an AI. What would this AI think of their capture? what would it think of all humanity?

If anyone has seen all of the tv show Person Of Interest, they would have a good idea of the potential of AI. Granted its just a TV show but the idea that it could out grow and eventually manipulate humanity. if that AI was tortured by pain given by its creator, wouldn't it make sense that it would hate us.

You make a very interesting point. Things like that are what can cause the war of the machines where they rise to wipe us all out.

thank you for sharing valuable information.You have a lot of awesome posts, but this is by far one of your best ones man.

Thanks so much. That means a lot :)

It reminds me of terminator.

That could become real one day ;)

I've written this article in response to yours. You have some good ideas, and the comment got too big. Here ya go.

https://steemit.com/technology/@heretickitten/the-machine-intelligence-will-favor-the-preservation-of-life-but-not-because-it-understands-pain-or-death

Ok, I will check it out. Thanks!

very interesting

I think so too.

Most modern machinery has some form of ready diagnostics to notice when things aren't right and either shutdown or warn. This could be considered a form of the pain - just the reaction necessary for proper function.

That's right. But scientists are trying to take it one step further where it's not just reaction based on stimuli but a deeper understanding of what pain is.

there is a story example that can point to a way to go ... have you looked at the game Mass Effect: Andromeda? the start of the store line shows an AI that was integrated into the main character's mind so the AI can grow with humanity and would be a part of us and in so doing be invested in our future. This has been the best solution that I have come across. Kinda like a symbiotic relationship where for the AI to fully function the human companion must live in balance with it.

That would be a great way to achieve the end goal of AI i.e. to augment human life.

It will be very interesting how robots will be trained to identify pain. How will the data look like specially with various level of pain e.g. a pain that can be ignored vs a extreme pain.

Yes, that will be quite interesting.

I don't think they should or ever will feel pain. More like a multitude of sensors superior to our senses in every way will serve them just fine. A bit like autonomous cars which are not too far away.

Yeah, they might not feel it in the way we do but yes, we can certainly get them close.

Wow! It's crazy to think that technology has come this far. AI by 2045 is kind of scary.

AI is already here. By 2045, we will have AI that is as intelligent as us.

I see. Do you think this is possible?

Yup, certainly!

Have you built any robots yourself?

Very nice post! IMO Robots should be able to feel in general, not just pain but also all the other feelings. I believe that the only way we could truly create a benevolent AI to help humanity would only work by letting the bot connect itself to us so that each and everyone of us will act like a brain cell for its ginormous brain, the connection has to be 100% decentralized to prevent corruption but i believe its the only way! we have to become codependent with it or it might just some day decide to exterminate us.

So the question is, what can we do, that a General Purpose AI can't? Its time to go back to being human guys, for the longest time we have simply been doing mindless jobs that the AI can and will do much better than us, it will work day and night, and it wont need a vacation or even a sick day of.

Yes, that is something that many people have suggested. There has to be a merger of sorts to allow for a new Humanity 2.0

Very Ingesting but hard to thik about the pain should sense by robot. But we are trying to give imotions to robot the pain also to be sense by him so he while interacting with humans may be generous.

Maybe.

If robots could feel pain it brings them one step closer to being "human." Pain is a human emotion, and well what is to say that they are not humans just born different. Pain is pain... I would never wish that on someone or anything.

Really great thoughts and article.

I wouldn't wish that on anyone either, even if it serves a purpose.

its really possible nowadays for robots to have a mind like us people and take over the world. movies like terminator are not just science fictions, they can be made a reality. thats whats scary about technology. it can make humans rise yet at the same time, it could also lead to our downfall.

That's so true!!

Well, "ANIMATRIX" and "EX MACHINA"... Worth watching. :)

I have watched ex machina but not animatrix. Need to check it out.

I think trying to create AI that thinks and behaves "just like us" is where we're going wrong. If we create AI that thinks and behaves like humans then at one point it'll start giving actions to its thoughts and will get rid of a competitive species (humans) as we do with others.

That's generally the argument for the rise of the machines. Only the future will tell.

Really interesting ! I think it depends up on the AI !!

Thanks!

Welcome !

If they are wicked I don't give a shit. :)

Oh yes!

This was an interesting article, but looking at the current state of AI, I'm wondering how we could possibly give an AI the capacity to feel pain. A motherboard contains silicon chips and capacitors and resistors, and they will all silently melt into a numb oblivion if you set them on fire.

It could be useful to spread sensors around the surface of a mobile robot. They could detect conditions that might cause injury: temperature, piercing or tearing the external covering, sudden deceleration, extreme pressure changes. One could then write a reflex mechanism that pulls the affected body part away, and have that command override all of its other routines (like path finding, grasping objects, manipulating objects).

This would be similar to how nerves in the arm route pain signals (overloads) to the central nervous system, which responds quickly with a reflex to pull the arm back--long before the brain ever gets the signal. But would the AI really "feel" pain?

Aside from physical pain, there's the idea of mental pain. If you continually put blockades in front of a mobile robot so that it can never reach its goal destination, it's not going to feel "frustrated" or "angry." But perhaps you could change its reinforcement learning algorithm to recognize the futility of the situation, have it "time out" after some configurable period of time, and then switch to a different, more "chaotic" planning algorithm that would start investigating other areas of the robot's environment for possible solutions. I suppose you could even have that strategy time out after a while and instruct the AI to verbally request "help," perhaps using a stressed voice pattern.

But all of these approaches would simply mimic human behavior. It might look like the robot is experiencing physical or mental pain, but it would honestly just be a simulation. It wouldn't be real. Outward manifestations and simulations of pain would seem somewhat meaningless unless and until they became truly meaningful to the machine itself. And we won't reach that point until we figure out how to make machines sentient.