The Great Somatic Divide: Silicon vs. Carbon
Feelings we won't be able to share with an Artificial Intelligence machine.
Do you prefer an authentic or human-like AI?
The name I give to AI in this article is Ainhoa (basque for virgin).
Although Ainhoa could feel many of the stimuli that we, humans, feel through sensors, there are many feelings and emotions arising from the biological nature of our body that Ainhoa will never be able to experience first hand.
The following could be programmed into Ainhoa, but people interacting with Ainhoa would spot the weirdness:
Sexual Love
Ainhoa does not reproduce sexually and has no real gender.
Ainhoa could express sexual preference or sexual urge, but it would feel weird, since she has neither sex hormones nor genitals.
In the movie 'Her', the main character freaks out when he hears "Ainhoa" breathe heavily, saying: "Why do you do that?! You don't even need oxygen!"
Connected feelings such as attachment and jealousy are also tricky to express faithfully without an underlying sexual drive.
Hunger and thirst
Ainhoa needs no food or drink. She could not genuinely share the enjoyment and suffering related to them, she'd have no taste, so she could only fake appreciation or disgust.
The cognitive changes induced by eating/drinking and the effect of different nutrients on her mind could only be simulated (=faked).
Drugs
The extremely complex and subjective experiences of psychoactive substances are hard or impossible to emulate.
Drunkenness, even if it could be emulated, would feel fake, since the interlocutor would know that Ainhoa can only artificially render herself drunk and could snap out of it in a microsecond if she wanted.
Parental affection
Ainhoa will have no biological offsprings, therefore she will lack the connection a mother feels to her kid.
The love of a mother to his son is one of the deepest human feelings and without being able to truly engage in it, Ainhoa will just be less human.
Fatigue, sickness
Although not positive human feelings, these are deeply engrained in the human condition. Would a mind uploader choose not to have these feelings anymore?
Arguably Ainhoa would be less human without experiencing these states and therefore less able to empathize with people having a hard day.
Dreaming and the unconscious
With no neurons that need neurotransmitter restoration, with no hippocampus that needs to build up memories from the day's experiences, machines won't need to sleep.
Dreaming, although unconscious, is arguably a crucially important element in human creativity as new connections are made in the brain during sleep.
In our dreams, the control is given over to our unconscious, whose workings we do not yet understand. The relationship of our unconscious to our personality and our preferences is also a mystery, which is why the challenge of integrating it to Ainhoa seems so daunting.
Do you prefer an authentic or human-like AI?
The name I give to AI in this article is Ainhoa (basque for virgin).
Although Ainhoa could feel many of the stimuli that we, humans, feel through sensors, there are many feelings and emotions arising from the biological nature of our body that Ainhoa will never be able to experience first hand.
The following could be programmed into Ainhoa, but people interacting with Ainhoa would spot the weirdness:
Sexual Love
Ainhoa does not reproduce sexually and has no real gender.
Ainhoa could express sexual preference or sexual urge, but it would feel weird, since she has neither sex hormones nor genitals.
In the movie 'Her', the main character freaks out when he hears "Ainhoa" breathe heavily, saying: "Why do you do that?! You don't even need oxygen!"
Connected feelings such as attachment and jealousy are also tricky to express faithfully without an underlying sexual drive.
Hunger and thirst
Ainhoa needs no food or drink. She could not genuinely share the enjoyment and suffering related to them, she'd have no taste, so she could only fake appreciation or disgust.
The cognitive changes induced by eating/drinking and the effect of different nutrients on her mind could only be simulated (=faked).
Drugs
The extremely complex and subjective experiences of psychoactive substances are hard or impossible to emulate.
Drunkenness, even if it could be emulated, would feel fake, since the interlocutor would know that Ainhoa can only artificially render herself drunk and could snap out of it in a microsecond if she wanted.
Parental affection
Ainhoa will have no biological offsprings, therefore she will lack the connection a mother feels to her kid.
The love of a mother to his son is one of the deepest human feelings and without being able to truly engage in it, Ainhoa will just be less human.
Fatigue, sickness
Although not positive human feelings, these are deeply engrained in the human condition. Would a mind uploader choose not to have these feelings anymore?
Arguably Ainhoa would be less human without experiencing these states and therefore less able to empathize with people having a hard day.
Dreaming and the unconscious
With no neurons that need neurotransmitter restoration, with no hippocampus that needs to build up memories from the day's experiences, machines won't need to sleep.
Dreaming, although unconscious, is arguably a crucially important element in human creativity as new connections are made in the brain during sleep.
In our dreams, the control is given over to our unconscious, whose workings we do not yet understand. The relationship of our unconscious to our personality and our preferences is also a mystery, which is why the challenge of integrating it to Ainhoa seems so daunting.
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