Turing and the thinking machines: How the future is preparing for conscious robots

Saturday, 01 de February de 2020

Is it even possible that one day robots can acquire the ability to think for themselves and be aware of their own existence? This somewhat distant future has divided the scientific community. Some believe that robots will never be able to imitate the ability of human intelligence, however, other scientists and futurists like the entrepreneur Elon Musk and Singularity University co-founder, Raymond Kurzweil, believe that, technological singularity is near, an irreversible moment in time where robots will be so intelligent and conscious that they will outdo humans.

It is scary to think that robots will one day surpass human intelligence. However, this possibility has come closer and closer to becoming real. Through artificial intelligence and its sub-areas such as machine learning and deep learning, scientists have achieved the goal of making robots more intelligent, emotional and aware. The Japanese creation of the humanoid robot Pepper stands out, the first robot capable of recognizing human facial expressions, understanding feelings, recognizing tones of voice and thus interacting with humans. The Pepper robot is one of the Japanese bets as an alternative for the care of the elderly, since the elderly population in Japan has exceeded the birth rate and have a high life expectancy. Likewise, scientists at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the United States were also able to create a conscious robot capable of reflecting about their actions.

Some of these intelligent robots are already part of our daily lives. They have contributed to the improvement of health systems, finances, urban mobility systems, internet searches based on personal likes, such as virtual assistants, Apple's Siri, Alexa created by Amazon and the Google assistant, waze, AI system from Netflix and youtube.

Image: Alan Turing

The beginning of thinking machines occurred in 1950 by Alan Turing, one of the greatest mathematicians and computer scientists. Turing is today considered the father of computer science, as he contributes significantly to the advancement and development of this science. During World War II, Alan Turing helped the English nation to defeat the Nazis by decoding the Enigma machine. Although for many years his work has not been recognized. Turing's contributions to the world were very relevant, it is due to his achievements that today we benefit from the technology of computers and smartphones. His story became world famous through the film “The imitation game”.

Image: The Imitation Game

Alan Turing was the first to consider the possibility that in the future there will be machines capable of thinking by themselves and being intelligent. Although he was not the originator of the term Artificial Intelligence or AI, but the creation of AI it is also attributed to him. Turing developed a test that became world famous and is used nowadays, known as the Turing test.

At Turing test, a human (Interrogator) should communicate by text in a separate environment with a computer or another human. The interrogator must be able to find out who he is talking to, whether it is a human or a machine. If the interrogator does not find out, it means that the machine has passed the Turing test and therefore assume that the computer has artificial intelligence.

Image: Turing test

Despite artificial intelligence it has been contributing to the formation of conscious and thinking machines. This reality may still be distant. Since, the conscience is not yet understood by the scientific community, being therefore, a subject of great interest and widely discussed by researchers.

The scientist Gerald Edelman proposed that consciousness consists of two main types, primary consciousness and secondary consciousness. Primary consciousness is present in humans and animals, it is formed by concrete facts, in which the skills of perception, emotion and reinforcement learning are involved. In this type of awareness, the individual is able to learn by repeated stimuli and thus acquire awareness for decision making. This is what happens in humans, animals, and it can happen with robots. Since, they are being trained to learn through machine learning techniques and thus make decisions.

Secondary consciousness, on the other hand, is related to abstract aspects of perception and questioning of its own existence and the complexities to its surroundings, as well as the capacity for creation. This type of consciousness is presented only in humans and scientists still do not know for sure how it is organized, its anatomical and physiological aspects. It is believed that it is a more complex system of learning. Perhaps that kind of consciousness that separates us from animals is not achieved by robots.

Consciousness has been studied through techniques capable of investigating the brain in its functioning, some of these equipments are the EEG, NIRS and fMRI. Scientists, for example, have used EEG techniques to admit the presence of consciousness in patients in a vegetative state.

The vegetative state was characterized in medicine as a condition in which the individual who emerges from the coma did not show signs of consciousness, being, therefore, incapable of reacting to stimuli and for this reason they were considered "living dead". However, through electroencephalogram or EEG and fMRI research shows that patients in a vegetative state, when asked to imagine moving hands and feet, areas of the motor cortex are activated in the same way as in the control groups of healthy patients. This justifies the presence of conscience in these individuals.

Despite the distant future where robots will become conscious. Robots and intelligent systems have already helped to improve human life.

Reference:

[1] Como a inteligência artificial poderia acabar com a Humanidade - por acidente. Retirado de: https://www.bbc.com/portuguese/geral-50228913

[2] Emotional' robot sells out in a minute. Retirado de:

https://edition.cnn.com/2015/06/22/tech/pepper-robot-sold-out/index.html

[3] A mind to go out of: Reflections on primary and secondary consciousness. Allan Hobson, Ursula Voss. ScienceDirect 2011. Retirado de:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20965750

[4] Have Robots Achieved Consciousness? Retirado de:

https://towardsdatascience.com/hybrid-humans-and-conscious-robots-2a00bca1f509

[5] Editorial: Consciousness in Humanoid Robots. Antonio Chella, Angelo Cangelosi, Giorgio Metta and Selmer Bringsjord. Frontier in Robotic and AI. Retirado de:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2019.00017/full

[6] Eletroencefalograma pode detectar se paciente em estado vegetativo está consciente. Retirado: https://veja.abril.com.br/ciencia/eletroencefalograma-pode-detectar-se-paciente-em-estado-vegetativo-esta-consciente/

[7] Engenheiro explica como desenvolveu um robô consciente das próprias ações. Retirado de: https://exame.abril.com.br/ciencia/engenheiro-explica-como-desenvolveu-um-robo-consciente-das-proprias-acoes/

[8] Esqueça 2016 e comece a fazer planos para 2099. Retirado de:

https://brasil.elpais.com/brasil/2015/12/30/ciencia/1451492115_324965.html