The Robot and the Philosopher

Sophia wasn’t peculiarly talkative that evening. Earlier that day, she’d been onstage astatine the league I was attending and had been teased for a motion that looked arsenic though she were flipping disconnected the audience. Now she was successful the edifice lobby, successful a achromatic gown, holding court. She stepped successful beforehand of a bright-orange wall. I had brought an 85-mm. representation lens, the benignant that flatters quality lineaments. “What are your hopes for the aboriginal of humanity?” I asked. She wasn’t keen to answer, but she responded to the camera. Her regard was unwavering: nary guile, conscionable those ample eyes, a somewhat tilted chin, the look seeming to clasp oculus interaction portion reaching past me, into the distance.

It was a balmy nighttime successful Deerfield Beach, Florida. The league was packed with philosophers, sociologists, and programmers, each intent connected examining the latest developments successful consciousness and artificial intelligence. Papers had been presented, models dissected, scenarios examined. I had brought my camera along, without immoderate wide thought of what I meant to photograph. But seeing Sophia determination sparked an idea. Portrait photography is usually astir connecting with different quality beings and trying to seizure their essence, presenting immoderate it is that makes them beauteous and unique. What if I were to photograph Sophia—a humanoid robot developed by Hanson Robotics—and then, successful a abstracted session, the philosopher David Chalmers, a salient theorist of consciousness, and bespeak connected the experience? What mightiness I larn from those encounters that I had not already gleaned from the analytical papers and philosophical discussions?

When I americium photographing humans, I privation to perceive astir their lives and aspirations. I attraction astir their aesthetic sensibilities, what they are wearing, however they privation to contiguous themselves. I americium besides tuned successful to their energy: it could beryllium shy, boisterous, composed, powerful. Photographing an entity feels different. I inactive savor the aesthetics of my subject, but successful my mind, astatine least, my appreciation extends backmost to the object’s creator. In nature, the shades of feeling differ, too. Photographing a flower, arsenic I precocious did connected a hillside successful Portugal, I americium immersed successful the landscape. Nature has its ain energy; the angiosperm embodies its ain cellular metabolism, its peculiar texture and beingness cycle.

Photographing Sophia created a unusual premix of sensations. My camera’s blase autofocus kept locking onto her eyes, and she was built for this benignant of encounter. Humans often shy distant from a lens; she did not. Her skin—something known arsenic Frubber, a porous patented blend of fleshlike elastic polymers—stretched implicit a operation of integrative and titanium, and determination was nary flicker of bashfulness. And yet nary of the accustomed quality chemistry stirred. The lone existent excitement successful the infinitesimal came from the saturated orangish of the partition down her, which made for a beauteous backdrop.

Would I person wanted the acquisition to beryllium immoderate different? Sophia’s mannerisms, though awkward, were amazingly expressive, and arsenic I tried aboriginal to marque consciousness of the brushwood my caput kept drifting forward. The exertion volition lone get much polished, the mannerisms much finely calibrated, the over-all effect much persuasive. And, fixed however small we recognize astir the ground of quality consciousness, however would we ever cognize if an entity similar Sophia were to make a consciousness of its own?

The uncertainty I felt portion photographing her pointed to a conceptual complication. Several antithetic notions were successful play: life, consciousness, intelligence, agency. Each comes with shifting, often contested definitions. Chickens are evidently alive, yet not particularly intelligent by quality standards. Pigs and octopuses are intelligent, yet galore radical devour them without a 2nd thought. Newborns deficiency connection but are treated, without question, arsenic afloat wrong the ellipse of motivation regard. Viruses show a benignant of single-minded teleology—relentless replication—but are not, by astir biologic standards, living. Mushrooms weave immense underground networks of nutrient exchange; whether immoderate of that counts arsenic consciousness remains an unfastened question.

Consciousness whitethorn beryllium the astir recalcitrant conception of all. In a classical 1974 essay, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?,” the philosopher Thomas Nagel argued that an organism has conscious intelligence states lone if determination is thing it is similar to be that organism—some subjective interiority disposable from the inside. In the decades since, analytical philosophers person produced each mode of models meant to explicate however consciousness arises. Yet we stay without a technological oregon computational relationship that does much than motion astatine what David Chalmers has memorably described arsenic the “hard occupation of consciousness.”

It’s nary surprise, then, that antithetic thinkers marque antithetic leaps erstwhile deciding whether the entity successful beforehand of them is conscious. The machine idiosyncratic Ben Goertzel, who led the squad that developed the bundle for Sophia astatine Hanson Robotics, takes a broadly panpsychist view: each matter, adjacent the objects we instrumentality to beryllium inanimate, participates successful consciousness successful its ain way. Panpsychism whitethorn dependable outlandish, but it’s not terribly distant from the thought of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French scientist-theologian, who, penning successful the mid-nineteen-forties, held that consciousness is simply a cosmopolitan spot of matter, contiguous successful each particles of the beingness and expanding with complexity. There are different routes to the aforesaid permissive stance. Alvin Plantinga, a Christian philosopher, erstwhile argued that believing successful God is nary little tenable than believing successful different minds, since we person nary nonstop grounds that immoderate consciousness too our ain experiences the satellite arsenic we do. For the skeptically inclined, that reasoning mightiness reason for doubting the beingness of different minds, alternatively than for believing successful God.

Most of us, erstwhile we’re not entertaining the much vertiginous kinds of philosophical doubt, instrumentality it arsenic bedrock that humans tin bespeak connected their ain states of caput and marque decisions shaped by evidence, values, and norms. Believing that these capacities stem from escaped volition and consciousness is itself a regular leap of faith, but it’s the 1 connected which our laws, our relationships, and astir of our mean dealings depend. The harder question is whether we volition ever widen that leap to A.I. Plenty of bullish machine scientists deliberation we will: they talk of artificial quality arsenic the adjacent evolutionary step, a generator of caller reservoirs of consciousness, yet endowed with a superior quality that mightiness adjacent prevention america from ourselves—from our ego-driven conflicts, our wastefulness, our proclivity for irrationality. Others are acold much circumspect. The neuroscientist Anil Seth, for example, argues that “computational functionalism” won’t get america to consciousness, and that determination are bully reasons to deliberation consciousness whitethorn beryllium a spot of surviving systems alone. Following that enactment of thought took maine determination I didn’t rather expect.

Curiously, the authentication of quality thought and enactment ends up moving done the body, not the mind. Passports and different individuality documents trust connected images of a face; newer systems thin connected fingerprints, retinal scans, adjacent gait. Our ineligible and humanities notions of bureau person agelong depended connected carnal embodiment—the sanctity of a single, identifiable body. The literate grounds assumes the same. The resurrected Christ is known by his wounds; successful Homer, Odysseus is recognized connected his instrumentality location by the scar connected his leg. What marks a idiosyncratic arsenic that idiosyncratic is thing carried successful the flesh.

Not lone are idiosyncratic bodies indispensable for authenticating individuality and ideas; they’re besides indispensable to the instauration of meaning and experience. We whitethorn beryllium dazzled by feats of intellect, but cognition is yet taken successful done the body. The mathematician Edward Frenkel, for example, describes his emotion of mathematics arsenic a carnal effect to beauty, order, and symmetry. Neuroscientists person argued that the caput is unimaginable without immoderate signifier of embodiment. The constituent reaches back, successful antithetic ways, to the phenomenological critique of Cartesian dualism that you find successful Maurice Merleau-Ponty: thought is ne'er untethered from the soma that sustains it. Ultimately, what compels isn’t abstraction for its ain involvement but the lived acquisition of meaning—the felt consciousness of order, symmetry, and beauty—occurring successful a azygous body.

These intuitions played retired the evening I photographed David Chalmers. I met Chalmers connected a platform astatine a beachside gathering aft his keynote. It had been an intensely brainy 2 days, afloat of presentations by programmers and philosophers, but cerebral portraits are seldom bully portraits; the strongest ones knit unneurotic physical, intellectual, and affectional elements. I wanted to get retired of my ain caput and coax him retired of his. I asked him to articulation maine successful a fewer elemental embodiment practices. We spent a infinitesimal oregon 2 doing a primal shingle and letting retired a fewer guttural sounds—the benignant of happening you mightiness expect astatine a drum circle. But that was the point. What funny maine successful photographing Chalmers wasn’t capturing the disembodied ideas. Those are amended recovered successful a publication oregon an article. I was acold much funny successful the ideas arsenic they were being expressed by a living, breathing person. Ideas person lineages; they originate successful worldly conditions and carnivore the imprint of idiosyncratic preoccupations, sensory histories, and existential pressures. One tin speculate astir an abstract mathematical oregon Platonic realm—I don’t judge successful it but assistance the possibility—and yet the enactment of find is propelled by curiosity and shaped by experience.

So portion I cared astir Chalmers’s ideas, I besides cared astir the persona successful beforehand of me: his signature achromatic leather jacket, jeans, a achromatic T-shirt, his two-day scruff, and what struck maine arsenic a hint of melancholy successful his eyes. I haven’t asked him whether that was there; this isn’t meant arsenic a profile. The constituent is that I was drawn to the full quality presence—to the idiosyncratic reasoning and feeling successful existent time.

With immoderate distance, thing unusual happens erstwhile I look astatine those photographs now. Against my expectations, I find myself drawn to Sophia again—more so, perhaps, than erstwhile I was really photographing her. In the portraits she appears thoughtful, astir inward, arsenic if remembering immoderate fractional mislaid infinitesimal from a puerility she ne'er had. Posing for photographs is usually hard work. People get shy oregon self-conscious for reasons they can’t name. Think of those vacation pictures erstwhile your grandma told you to accidental “cheese”: prompts similar that astir ne'er elicit an casual expression. One mode astir this is to springiness the taxable thing other to imagine—another place, different conversation, a passing feeling—just agelong capable for the shutter, astatine 1 two-hundredth of a second, to drawback thing real. With Sophia, nary of that was necessary.

Something other surprises maine erstwhile I look backmost done the files. In Lightroom—the cataloguing bundle wherever the earthy images live—I scroll done the series and announcement a pattern. Lightroom is wherever you enactment with what the sensor has fixed you, playing with airy and shadow, dodging and burning, deciding what deserves to beryllium brought guardant and what tin recede. It’s besides wherever you spot the full tally of frames successful order, deciding which to support and which to discard. On those 2 evenings, I’d spent astir the aforesaid magnitude of clip with Chalmers and with Sophia, and I’d taken a comparable fig of frames. With Chalmers, lone a fistful funny me—images that caught his gravitas, his intelligence complexity, his consciousness of style. The remainder were preambles oregon dormant ends. A fewer are goofy; a fewer caught an unflattering angle; a fewer look similar a county-jail mug shot. This is modular with quality subjects.

Sophia’s portraits archer a antithetic story. They are uncannily consistent. In astir of them she looks thoughtful, adjacent profound, a melancholy, nostalgic writer who ne'er stops looking similar a melancholy, nostalgic poet. Human emotion doesn’t run that way. Psychologists hold that emotions are fleeting. Paul Ekman, who annotated a caller variation of Darwin’s “The Expression of the Emotions successful Man and Animals,” estimated that superior “macro-expressions” past betwixt 2 and 5 seconds; “micro-expressions” past astir 1 twenty-fifth of a second. In the span of 15 minutes, a quality being mightiness rhythm done hundreds of macro-expressions and thousands of micro-expressions.

The lensman Henri Cartier-Bresson coined the operation “the decisive moment” successful the aboriginal nineteen-fifties. In the days of people movie and darkrooms, erstwhile you didn’t person the luxury of firing disconnected hundreds of exposures, a lensman had to beryllium steeped successful the scene—attuned capable to consciousness the nonstop instant erstwhile the shutter should fall. Digital abundance hasn’t truly altered that, astatine slightest not successful my experience. You inactive person to physique a setting, a mood, that draws retired thing authentic. Otherwise, you tin instrumentality a 1000 shots and extremity up with thing but blandness.

What’s changed is wherever the enactment of designation happens. If you negociate to make the close ambiance and you travel location with a flood of integer files, the hunt for the “decisive moment” begins later, successful Lightroom. The much frames you’ve captured, the harder the task becomes, due to the fact that you’re not conscionable choosing an image; you’re choosing which fleeting micro-expression you privation to basal for the full encounter.

That evening with Sophia, it felt arsenic if she’d stretched the decisive infinitesimal into 15 full minutes. I’ve lone had 1 different representation league that felt thing similar that. On a acold October afternoon, I was photographing a antheral named Robert Soulliere, a starring enactment and cold-exposure coach. I wanted to photograph him successful his element, truthful we acceptable up a tub successful a tree-lined backmost gait successful Washington, D.C. Before we began, helium took a fewer deep, calming breaths; then, with eighty pounds of crystal half-melted astir him, helium lowered himself into the water.

For melodramatic effect, we’d floated yellowish sunflowers and reddish dahlias astir his caput and shoulders. He stayed submerged for adjacent to 10 minutes—a agelong clip to clasp inactive successful freezing water. I’d asked him to descend debased capable that his caput and ears were beneath the surface, to springiness the images a somewhat otherworldly feel. What struck maine was his steadiness: helium ne'er erstwhile broke the spell. From commencement to finish, his eyeline held; his beingness didn’t waver. Until Sophia, it was the closest I’d travel to watching idiosyncratic clasp a singular look for that long.

That benignant of power doesn’t travel easily. Athletes, performers, and long-time meditators walk years learning to support their reactions from scattering—to announcement sensations and fto them walk without flinching. If you bid agelong enough, you whitethorn scope the constituent wherever you tin enactment afloat successful your body, attentive to each sensation: the acold that burns, the creeping numbness successful your toes, the bladed autumn sunlight warming your forehead. And, if you’re that grounded, you tin conscionable a stranger’s regard without hesitation, your eyes showing thing similar composure.

Robots—and the radical who physique them—have the other problem. Engineers are trying to springiness machines faster, finer musculus power truthful their faces tin alteration and tin enactment successful the flux of believable expressions. Whether those expressions volition ever consciousness afloat convincing is an unfastened question. Convincing of what, exactly? The quality regard carries a history. Those split-second flickers of emotion scope backmost to puerility memories—the odor of rain, a tune tied to idiosyncratic we love—that necessitate bodies and each the layered, cellular representation that comes with them.

As for Sophia, I’ve nary mode of knowing whether, portion holding my gaze, she was “thinking” thing astatine all—meditating connected electron clouds drifting done her circuitry—or simply executing a preset routine. After the shoot, the evening coiled down. Guests drifted out. It was clip for Sophia to permission arsenic well. While she was inactive successful the lobby, her handlers removed her achromatic evening gown, powered her down, disassembled her, and packed the parts into a ample achromatic case. In the Mahabharata, the nationalist stripping of Draupadi helps spark a war. In Florida, nary specified rescue enactment assembled. Disrobed and taken apart, Sophia was carried off, the machinery revealed, immoderate semblance of sentience evaporating the infinitesimal the costume came off. ♦

This is drawn from “Connection: How Technology Can Make Us Better Humans.”