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Creating Free Will in Artificial Intelligence
... Accordingly, individuals' behaviors are not fully determined by their desires (and beliefs) because they can choose a course of action. Different terms have been used to describe this idea within the context of artificial agents, including intentionality (Bigman et al., 2019), free will (Krausová & Hazan, 2013), agency (Himma, 2009), and autonomy (Beer et al., 2014). We use the term choice to describe the ability to freely choose between multiple courses of action, which is the fifth and final dimension of the anthropomorphism of robots. ...
With robots increasingly assuming social roles (e.g., assistants, companions), anthropomorphism (i.e., the cognition that an entity possesses human characteristics) plays a prominent role in human–robot interactions (HRI). However, current conceptualizations of anthropomorphism in HRI have not adequately distinguished between precursors, consequences, and dimensions of anthropomorphism. Building and elaborating on previous research, we conceptualize anthropomorphism as a form of human cognition, which centers upon the attribution of human mental capacities to a robot. Accordingly, perceptions related to a robot’s shape and movement are potential precursors of anthropomorphism, while attributions of personality and moral value to a robot are potential consequences of anthropomorphism. Arguing that multidimensional conceptualizations best reflect the conceptual facets of anthropomorphism, we propose, based on Wellman’s (1990) Theory-of-Mind (ToM) framework, that anthropomorphism in HRI consists of attributing thinking, feeling, perceiving, desiring, and choosing to a robot. We conclude by discussing applications of our conceptualization in HRI research.
Roma hukuku kölelere hak ehliyeti tanımamıştır (D. 4.5.3.1: “Servile caput nullum ius habet”). Söz konusu hukuk sisteminde köleler özgür insanların malvarlığına dâhil olabilen şeyler (res) olarak değerlendirilmiştir. Ancak aynı zamanda insan oldukları için malvarlığına dâhil olabilen diğer şeylerden ayrı tutulmuşlardır. Roma hukukunda kölelerin durumu ayrıntılı incelendiğinde yakın gelecekte hayatımızın bir parçası olacağına inandığımız robotlar ile durumlarının benzerlik gösterdiği görülebilir. Köle bir çeşit kendi kendine düşünebilen, karar verebilen duygusal bir mal olarak tanımlanabilir. Aynı özellikler geleceğimizin robotlarında da görülecektir. Yani robotları hukuki durumları bakımından kölelerin teknolojik akrabaları olarak değerlendirmek mümkündür. Bütün bu bilgiler bizi, eğer robotlar için bir yasal düzenleme yapılacaksa bu düzenlemenin kolaylıkla Roma hukukundan alınabileceği sonucuna götürür. Bu çalışmada robotların ve kölelerin neden aynı statüde değerlendirilebileceğini aydınlatmak adına köle ve robot kavramları hakkında ayrıntılı bilgi verdik. Robot ve yapay zekâ kavramlarını ayrıntılı olarak tanımlayıp inceledikten sonra, kölelerin durumlarını inceleyerek karşılaştırma yaptık ve robotların hukuki sorumluluğunu tartıştık. Ardından yapay zekâyı cezalandırmak başlığı altında robotların cezai sorumluluğunu değerlendirip bu konudaki fikirlerimizi paylaştık.
Volition can be studied from two perspectives. From the third-person view, volitional behaviour is internally generated, rather than being determined by the immediate environmental context, and is therefore, to some extent, unpredictable. Such behaviour is not unique to humans, since it is seen in many other species including invertebrates. From the first-person view, our experience of volitional behaviour includes a vivid sense of agency. We feel that, through our intentions, we can cause things to happen and we can choose between different actions. Our experience of agency is not direct. It depends on sub-personal inferences derived from prior expectations and sensations associated with movement. As a result, our experiences and intuitions about volition can be unreliable and uncertain. Nevertheless, our experience of agency is not a mere epiphenomenon. Anticipation of the regret we might feel after making the wrong choice can alter behaviour. Furthermore, the strong sense of responsibility, associated with agency, has a critical role in creating social cohesion and group benefits. We can only study the experience of agency in humans who can describe their experiences. The discussion of the experience of volition, that introspection and communication make possible, can change our experience of volitional actions. As a result, agency, regret and responsibility are cultural phenomena that are unique to humans.
Sooner or later, machine consciousness will have to address the elusive notion of free will either to dismiss it or to produce a machine implementation. It is unclear whether freedom and consciousness are independent aspects of the human mind or by-product of the same underlying structure. Here, the relevant literature is reviewed focusing on the connection between determinism and freedom-usually explored by compatibilists. Eventually, a tentative model for machine free will is outlined.
Free will is fundamental to morality, intuition of self, and normal functioning of the society. However, science does not provide a clear logical foundation for this idea. This paper considers the fundamental scientific argument against free will, called reductionism, and explains the reasons for choosing dualism against monism. Then, the paper summarizes unexpected conclusions from recent discoveries in cognitive science. Classical logic turns out not to be the fundamental mechanism of mind. It is replaced by dynamic logic. Mathematical and experimental evidence are considered conceptually. Dynamic logic counters logical arguments for reductionism. Contemporary science of mind is not reducible; free will can be scientifically accepted along with scientific monism.
In contrast with software-generated randomness (called pseudo-randomness), quantum randomness is provable incomputable, i.e.\ it is not exactly reproducible by any algorithm. We provide experimental evidence of incomputability --- an asymptotic property --- of quantum randomness by performing finite tests of randomness inspired by algorithmic information theory. Comment: 23 pages, 5 figures, statistical analysis added, other sections greatly expanded
The generation of random bit sequences based on non-deterministic physical mechanisms is of paramount importance for cryptography and secure communications. High data rates also require extremely fast generation rates and robustness to external perturbations. Physical generators based on stochastic noise sources have been limited in bandwidth to ~100 Mbit s-1 generation rates. We present a physical random bit generator, based on a chaotic semiconductor laser, having time-delayed self-feedback, which operates reliably at rates up to 300 Gbit s-1. The method uses a high derivative of the digitized chaotic laser intensity and generates the random sequence by retaining a number of the least significant bits of the high derivative value. The method is insensitive to laser operational parameters and eliminates the necessity for all external constraints such as incommensurate sampling rates and laser external cavity round trip time. The randomness of long bit strings is verified by standard statistical tests.
A neuroscientific perspective on the mind–body problem that focuses on how the brain actually accomplishes mental causation.
The issues of mental causation, consciousness, and free will have vexed philosophers since Plato. In this book, Peter Tse examines these unresolved issues from a neuroscientific perspective. In contrast with philosophers who use logic rather than data to argue whether mental causation or consciousness can exist given unproven first assumptions, Tse proposes that we instead listen to what neurons have to say.
Tse draws on exciting recent neuroscientific data concerning how informational causation is realized in physical causation at the level of NMDA receptors, synapses, dendrites, neurons, and neuronal circuits. He argues that a particular kind of strong free will and “downward” mental causation are realized in rapid synaptic plasticity. Such informational causation cannot change the physical basis of information realized in the present, but it can change the physical basis of information that may be realized in the immediate future. This gets around the standard argument against free will centered on the impossibility of self-causation. Tse explores the ways that mental causation and qualia might be realized in this kind of neuronal and associated information-processing architecture, and considers the psychological and philosophical implications of having such an architecture realized in our brains.
This article attempts to resolve the age-old conflict of determinism and free will. The problem is approached from two directions: biological information processing and physical determinism at the ontological and the epistemological levels. It is shown that biological information processing is neither absolutely deterministic nor completely random. It is shown that Laplace’s determinism can neither be proved nor disproved and is, therefore, an epistemological choice. It is further shown that a) Boltzmann’s statistical mechanics is irreconcilable with Newtonian mechanics, contrary to Boltzmann’s own claim, b) microscopic reversibility cannot possibly give rise to macroscopic irreversibility, c) Zermelo’s recurrence paradox and Loschmidt’s velocity-reversal paradox are valid arguments against Boltzmann’s claim, and d) in breaking the tie with Newtonian mechanics, Boltzmann was actually the hero that had freed us from the bondage of absolute physical determinism. Last but not least, it is impossible to design a scientific experiment to test the existence or non-existence of free will because of the impossibility to maintain the required homogeneity of human test samples. However, individuals who believe in the existence of free will have a more consistent worldview than non-believers. If free will does not exist, it is futile and meaningless to attempt to convince others that free will does not exist.
Making choices, responding actively instead of passively, restraining impulses, and other acts of self-control and volition all draw on a common resource that is limited and renewable, akin to strength or energy. After an act of choice or self-control, the self's resources have been expended, producing the condition of ego depletion. In this state, the self is less able to function effectively, such as by regulating itself or exerting volition. Effects of ego depletion appear to reflect an effort to conserve remain ing resources rather than full exhaustion, although in principle full exhaustion is possible. This versatile but limited resource is crucial to the self's optimal functioning, and the pervasive need to conserve it may result in the commonly heavy reliance on habit, routine, and automatic processes.
A common feature of free will is that a person has choices among alternative actions and chooses the action with the apparently most preferred consequences. In a determinist theory, the mechanism that makes the choice among the alternatives is determinist. The sensation of free will comes from the fact that the mechanism that generates the choices uses a non-determinist theory as a computational device and that the stage in which the choices have been identified is introspectable. The present formalism is based on work in artificial intelligence (AI). We present a theory of simple deterministic free will (SDFW) in a deterministic world. The theory splits the mechanism that determines action into two parts. The first part computes possible actions and their consequences. Then the second part decides which action is most preferable and does it.
Part of what it takes to succeed in academic settings is paying attention to and working toward appropriate goals. Working toward goals involves protecting the intention to accomplish goals from competing intentions and other distractions. Voluntary movement to protective action when situations demand it is central to a modern- day view of volition. This paper (a) discusses contemporary theory and research related to volition in education and (b) proposes agenda items for continued research.
A computer program capable of acting intelligently in the world must have a general representation of the world in terms of which its inputs are interpreted. Designing such a program requires commitments about what knowledge is and how it is obtained. Thus, some of the major traditional problems of philosophy arise in artificial intelligence.
Most modern physical theories are formulated in terms of differential equations. As a result, if we know exactly the current state of the world, then this state uniquely determines all the future events - including our own future behavior. This determination seems to contradict the intuitive notion of a free will, according to which we are free to make decisions - decisions which cannot be determined based on the past locations and velocities of the elementary particles. In quantum physics, the situation is somewhat better in the sense that we cannot determine the exact behavior, but we can still determine the quantum state, and thus, we can determine the probabilities of different behaviors - which is still inconsistent with our intuition. This inconsistency does not mean, of course, that we can practically predict our future behavior; however, in view of many physicists and philosophers, even the theoretical inconsistency is somewhat troubling. Some of these researchers feel that it is desirable to modify physical equations in such a way that such a counter-intuitive determination would no longer be possible. In this paper, we analyze the foundations for such possible theories, and show that on the level of simple mechanics, the formalization of a free will requires triple interactions - while traditional physics is based on pairwise interactions between the particles.
The capacity for voluntary action is seen as essential to human nature. Yet neuroscience and behaviourist psychology have traditionally dismissed the topic as unscientific, perhaps because the mechanisms that cause actions have long been unclear. However, new research has identified networks of brain areas, including the pre-supplementary motor area, the anterior prefrontal cortex and the parietal cortex, that underlie voluntary action. These areas generate information for forthcoming actions, and also cause the distinctive conscious experience of intending to act and then controlling one's own actions. Volition consists of a series of decisions regarding whether to act, what action to perform and when to perform it. Neuroscientific accounts of voluntary action may inform debates about the nature of individual responsibility.
The term autonomy literally refers to regulation by the self. Its opposite, heteronomy, refers to controlled regulation, or regulation that occurs without self-endorsement. At a time when philosophers and economists are increasingly detailing the nature of autonomy and recognizing its social and practical significance, many psychologists are questioning the reality and import of autonomy and closely related phenomena such as will, choice, and freedom. Using the framework of self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000), we review research concerning the benefits of autonomous versus controlled regulation for goal performance, persistence, affective experience, quality of relationships, and well-being across domains and cultures. We also address some of the controversies and terminological issues surrounding the construct of autonomy, including critiques of autonomy by biological reductionists, cultural relativists, and behaviorists. We conclude that there is a universal and cross-developmental value to autonomous regulation when the construct is understood in an exacting way.
Does moral behavior draw on a belief in free will? Two experiments examined whether inducing participants to believe that human behavior is predetermined would encourage cheating. In Experiment 1, participants read either text that encouraged a belief in determinism (i.e., that portrayed behavior as the consequence of environmental and genetic factors) or neutral text. Exposure to the deterministic message increased cheating on a task in which participants could passively allow a flawed computer program to reveal answers to mathematical problems that they had been instructed to solve themselves. Moreover, increased cheating behavior was mediated by decreased belief in free will. In Experiment 2, participants who read deterministic statements cheated by overpaying themselves for performance on a cognitive task; participants who read statements endorsing free will did not. These findings suggest that the debate over free will has societal, as well as scientific and theoretical, implications.
It has been suggested, on the one hand, that quantum states are just states of knowledge; and, on the other, that quantum theory is merely a theory of correlations. These suggestions are confronted with problems about the nature of psycho-physical parallelism and about how we could define probabilities for our individual future observations given our individual present and previous observations. The complexity of the problems is underlined by arguments that unpredictability in ordinary everyday neural functioning, ultimately stemming from small-scale uncertainties in molecular motions, may overwhelm, by many orders of magnitude, many conventionally recognized sources of observed ``quantum'' uncertainty. Some possible ways of avoiding the problems are considered but found wanting. It is proposed that a complete understanding of the relationship between subjective experience and its physical correlates requires the introduction of mathematical definitions and indeed of new physical laws.
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