Abstract
Given the contemporary ambivalent standpoints toward the future of artificial intelligence, recently denoted as the phenomenon of Singularitarianism, Gregory Bateson’s core theories of ecology of mind, schismogenesis, and double bind, are hereby revisited, taken out of their respective sociological, anthropological, and psychotherapeutic contexts and recontextualized in the field of Roboethics as to a twofold aim: (a) the proposal of a rigid ethical standpoint toward both artificial and non-artificial agents, and (b) an explanatory analysis of the reasons bringing about such a polarized outcome of contradictory views in regard to the future of robots. Firstly, the paper applies the Batesonian ecology of mind for constructing a unified roboethical framework which endorses a flat ontology embracing multiple forms of agency, borrowing elements from Floridi’s information ethics, classic virtue ethics, Felix Guattari’s ecosophy, Braidotti’s posthumanism, and the Japanese animist doctrine of Rinri. The proposed framework wishes to act as a pragmatic solution to the endless dispute regarding the nature of consciousness or the natural/artificial dichotomy and as a further argumentation against the recognition of future artificial agency as a potential existential threat. Secondly, schismogenic analysis is employed to describe the emergence of the hostile human–robot cultural contact, tracing its origins in the early scientific discourse of man–machine symbiosis up to the contemporary countermeasures against superintelligent agents. Thirdly, Bateson’s double bind theory is utilized as an analytic methodological tool of humanity’s collective agency, leading to the hypothesis of collective schizophrenic symptomatology, due to the constancy and intensity of confronting messages emitted by either proponents or opponents of artificial intelligence. The double bind’s treatment is the mirroring “therapeutic double bind,” and the article concludes in proposing the conceptual pragmatic imperative necessary for such a condition to follow: humanity’s conscience of habitualizing danger and familiarization with its possible future extinction, as the result of a progressive blurrification between natural and artificial agency, succeeded by a totally non-organic intelligent form of agency.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
In the same play, Čapek also baptized robots by fire, as the meaning of the Czech verb rabota denotes nothing else than forced labor (ibid..).
Equally provocative as Hawking's statements, 2015 film “CHAPPiE”'s plot unfolds in 2016, paying a tacit reference to Čapek through its title.
References
Astakhov V (2008) Mind uploading and resurrection of human consciousness: place for science? NeuroQuantology 6(3):245–261
Bateson G (1972) Steps to an ecology of mind: collected essays in anthropology, psychiatry, evolution, and epistemology. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Bateson G (1979) Mind and nature: a necessary unity. Dutton, New York
Bostrom N (2014) Superintelligence: paths, dangers, strategies. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Braidotti R (2013) The posthuman. Polity Press, Cambridge, Malden
Bringsjord S, Taylor J (2011) The Divine-Command Approach to Robot Ethics. In: Lin P, Abney K, Bekey GA (eds) Robot ethics: the ethical and social implications of robotics. MIT press, Cambridge, pp 85–108
Campbell M, Hoane AJ, Hsu FH (2002) Deep blue. Artif Intell 134(1):57–83
Capurro R, Nagenborg M (2009) Ethics and robotics. IOS Press, Amsterdam
Capurro R, Hausmanninger T, Weber K, Weil F, Cerqui D, Weber J, Apel M (2006) Ethics in robotics. International review of information ethics, 6(12/2006). Retrieved 05 Feb 2015 http://www.i-r-i-e.net/inhalt/006/006_full.pdf
Cellan-Jones R (2014) Stephen hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind. BBC News. Retrieved 12 May 2015 from http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30290540
CHAPPiE (2015) British board of film classification. Retrieved 06 Sept 2015 from http://www.bbfc.co.uk/releases/chappie-film
Costandi M (2015). Fragment of rat brain simulated in supercomputer: blue brain project announces results of a Decade’s work. Nature: International Weekly Journal of Science, (October 08, 2015). Retrieved 25 Oct 2015 from http://www.nature.com/news/fragment-of-rat-brain-simulated-in-supercomputer-1.18536
De Waard M, Inja M, Visser A (2013) Analysis of flat terrain for the atlas robot. In: 3rd joint conference of AI robotics and 5th RoboCup Iran Open International Symposium (RIOS), pp 1–6
Deutsch D (1998) The fabric of reality. Penguin, London
Floridi L (1999) Information ethics: on the philosophical foundation of computer ethics. Ethics Inf Technol 1(1):33–52
Floridi L (2010) Information: a very short introduction. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Floridi L (2011) The informational nature of personal identity. Mind Mach 21(4):549–566
Floridi L (2014) The fourth revolution: how the infosphere is reshaping human reality. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Floridi L (2015) Singularitarians, AItheists, and Why the Problem with Artificial Intelligence is Humanity At Large. Am Philos Assoc Newsl 14(2):8–11
Flusser V (2014) Gestures. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis
Flusser V (2015) Into immaterial culture. Metaflux Publishing, São Paulo
Flusser V (2016) The surprising phenomenon of human communication. Metaflux Publishing, São Paulo
Frey CB, Osborne MA (2013) The future of employment: how susceptible are jobs to computerisation. Retrieved 02 Feb 2016 from http://arche.depotoi.re/autoblogs/wwwinternetactunet_8a3fe3331e0ad7327e18d9fe6ec3f0ad04dcea58/media/3722fa7d.The_Future_of_Employment.pdf
Goertzel B, Bugaj SV (2009) AGI preschool: a framework for evaluating early-stage human-like AGIs. In: Goertzel B, Hitzler, B, Hutter, M (eds) Proceedings of the second international conference on artificial general intelligence (AGI-09), pp 31–36
Goertzel B, De Garis H, Pennachin C, Geisweiller N, Araujo S, Pitt J, Huang D (2010) OpenCogBot: achieving generally intelligent virtual agent control and humanoid robotics via cognitive synergy. In: Proceedings of ICAI, vol 10
Guattari F (2000) The three ecologies. The Athlone Press, London
Hawking S, Russell S, Tegmark M, Wilczek F (2014) Stephen hawking: ‘transcendence looks at the implications of artificial intelligence—but are we taking AI seriously enough?’. The Independent. Retrieved 12 May 2015 from http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/stephen-hawking-transcendence-looks-at-the-implications-of-artificial-intelligence-but-are-we-taking-9313474.html
Heidegger M (1977) The question concerning technology and other essays. Harper and Row, New York
Hogan M, Whitmore G (2015) The top 20 artificial intelligence films in pictures. The Guardian. Retrieved 06 Sept 2015 from http://www.theguardian.com/culture/gallery/2015/jan/08/the-top-20-artificial-intelligence-films-in-pictures
James W (2004) Pragmatism: a new name for some old ways of thinking. Retrieved from Project Gutenberg: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/5116/5116-h/5116-h.htm
Joyce LD, Johnson KE, Pierce WS, DeVries WC, Semb BK, Copeland JG, Cabrol C (1985) Summary of the world experience with clinical use of total artificial hearts as heart support devices. J Heart Transplant 5(3):229–235
Latour B (1987) Science in action: how to follow engineers and scientists through society. Open University Press, Milton Keynes
Law J (1991) Introduction: Monsters, Machines and Sociotechnical relations. In: Law J (ed) A sociology of monsters: essays on power, technology and domination. Routledge, London
Licklider J (1960) Man-computer symbiosis. IRE Trans Hum Factors Electron HFE-1:4–11
Lin P, Abney K, Bekey GA (2011a) Robot ethics: mapping the issues for a mechanized world. Artif Intell 175(5):942–949
Lin P, Abney K, Bekey GA (2011b) Robot ethics: the ethical and social implications of robotics. MIT press, Cambridge
Maeterlinck M (1907) The intelligence of the flowers. The University Press, Cambridge
Markram H, Muller E, Ramaswamy S, Reimann MW, Abdellah M, Sanchez CA, Muñoz-Céspedes A (2015) Reconstruction and simulation of neocortical microcircuitry. Cell 163(2):456–492
Matyszczyk C (2015) Steven hawking says we should be more frightened of capitalism than robots. CNET. Retrieved 25 Oct 2015 from http://www.cnet.com/news/stephen-hawking-says-we-should-be-more-frightened-of-capitalism-than-robots/
Millward D (2015). Robot passes self-awareness test: a simple experiment has shown that robots have greater self awareness and deductive powers than previously thought. The Telegraph. Retrieved 25 July 2015 from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11748084/Robot-passes-self-awareness-test.html
Müller VC, Bostrom N (2016) Future progress in artificial intelligence: a survey of expert opinion. In: Müller VC (ed) Fundamental issues of artificial intelligence. Synthese Library, Springer International Publishing, Switzerland
Nietzsche F (1968) The will to power. Vintage, New York
Novet J (2015) Facebook open sources its artificial intelligence server. Venture Beat. Retrieved 13 Dec 2015 from http://venturebeat.com/2015/12/10/facebook-open-sources-its-artificial-intelligence-server/
Parisi D (2014) Future robots: towards a robotic science of human beings. John Benjamins Publishing Company, Amsterdam
Petersen S (2012) Designing people to serve. In: Lin P, Abney K, Bekey GA (eds) Robot ethics: the ethical and social implications of robotics. MIT press, Cambridge, pp 283–298
Reuters and Prigg M (2016) Robots and artificial intelligence will kill off five million jobs by 2020—and women will be worst hit. Daily Mail Online. [online]19 January 2016. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3404547/Robots-new-working-ways-cost-5-mln-jobs-2020-Davos-study-says.html. Retrieved 02 Feb 2016
Shaw R (2015) Bringing Deleuze and Guattari down to earth through Gregory Bateson: plateaus, rhizomes and ecosophical subjectivity. Theory, Cult Soc 32(7–8):151–171
Silver D, Huang A, Maddison CJ, Guez A, Sifre L, van den Driessche G, Dieleman S (2016) Mastering the game of go with deep neural networks and tree search. Nature 529(7587):484–489
Solon Q (2013) The cyborg foundation: we urge you to become a part-machine. Wired. Retrieved 25 Nov 2015 from http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-10/30/cyborg-foundation
Sparrow R (2012) Can machines be people? Reflections on the turing triage test. In: Lin P, Abney K, Bekey GA (eds) Robot ethics: the ethical and social implications of robotics. MIT press, Cambridge, pp 301–315
Steere DA (1997) Spiritual presence in psychotherapy: a guide for caregivers. Bruner/Mazel, New York
Turing AM (1950) Computing machinery and intelligence. Mind 59(236):433–460
Veruggio G, Operto F (2008) Roboethics: social and ethical implications of robotics. In: Siciliano B, Khatib O (eds) Springer handbook of robotics. Springer, Berlin, pp 1499–1524
Wallach W, Allen C, Smit I (2008) Machine morality: bottom-up and top-down approaches for modelling human moral faculties. AI Soc 22(4):565–582
Warwick K, Xydas D, Nasuto SJ, Becerra VM, Hammond MW, Downes JH, Whalley BJ (2010) Controlling a mobile robot with a biological brain. Def Sci J 60(1):5
Zunt D (2002) Who did actually invent the word “robot” and what does it mean? Retrieved 10 May 2016 from http://capek.misto.cz/english/robot.html
Acknowledgments
I would hereby like to express my gratitude to the anonymous referee for the inclusive comments and bibliographical suggestions that helped this paper reach its final form. It is more than true that the amount of relevant literature on AI is expanding in every direction—verifying, I believe, the present article’s main argument (schizophrenics often tend to speak a lot). Nonetheless, discussion and dialog, even if covered by the ethical veil of anonymity of publishing procedures, are therapeutic means, and we should preserve and cultivate them as virtues, instead of being engaged in polemical attitudes, independently of the side. I’d further like to thank my friend Vassilis Razcha for his invaluable suggestions as the article reached its final stage.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Galanos, V. Singularitarianism and schizophrenia. AI & Soc 32, 573–590 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-016-0679-y
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-016-0679-y