Wallach in H+ Magazine

An interview of Wendell Wallach by Ben Goertzel has been published in H+ magazine online. Goertzel asks Wallach a number of questions regarding the likelihood of developing artificial agents with moral decision-making capabilities and consciousness.

Ben:
What are your thoughts about consciousness? What is it? Let’s say we build an intelligent computer program that is as smart as a human, or smarter. Would it necessarily be conscious? Could it possibly be conscious? Would its degree and/or type of consciousness depend on its internal structures and dynamics, as well as its behaviors?

Wendell:
There is still a touch of the mystic in my take on consciousness. I have been meditating for 43 years, and I perceive consciousness as having attributes that are ignored in some of the existing theories for building conscious machines. While I dismiss supernatural theories of consciousness and applaud the development of a science of consciousness, that science is still rather young. The human mind/body is more entangled in our world than models of the self-contained machine would suggest. Consciousness is an expression of relationship. In the attempt to capture some of that relational dynamic, philosophers have created concepts such as embodied cognition, intersubjectivity, and enkinaesthetia. There may even be aspects of consciousness that are peculiar to being carbon-based organic creatures.

We already have computers that are smarter than humans in some respects (e.g., mathematics and data-mining), but are certainly not conscious. Future (ro)bots that are smarter than humans may demonstrate functional abilities associated with consciousness. After all, even an amoeba is aware of its environment in a minimal way. But other higher-order capabilities such as being self-aware, feeling empathy, or experiencing transcendent states of mind depend upon being more fully conscious.

I suspect that without somatic emotions or without conscious awareness (ro)bots will fail to interact satisfactorily with humans in complex situations. In other words, without emotional and moral intelligence they will be dumber in some respects. However, if certain abilities can be said to require consciousness, than having the abilities is a demonstration that the agent has a form of consciousness. The degree and/or type of consciousness would depend on its internal structure and dynamics, not merely upon the (ro)bots demonstrating behavior equivalent to that of a human.

The full interview is available here.

Do Hospitals Hype Robotic Surgery?

Johns Hopkins Medical School issued the following news release: "Hospitals misleading patients about benefits of robotic surgery, study suggests."

Johns Hopkins research shows hospital websites use industry-provided content and overstate claims of robotic success
An estimated four in 10 hospital websites in the United States publicize the use of robotic surgery, with the lion’s share touting its clinical superiority despite a lack of scientific evidence that robotic surgery is any better than conventional operations, a new Johns Hopkins study finds.

The promotional materials, researchers report online in the Journal for Healthcare Quality, overestimate the benefits of surgical robots, largely ignore the risks and are strongly influenced by the product’s manufacturer.

“The public regards a hospital’s official website as an authoritative source of medical information in the voice of a physician,” says Marty Makary, M.D., M.P.H., an associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the study’s leader. “But in this case, hospitals have outsourced patient education content to the device manufacturer, allowing industry to make claims that are unsubstantiated by the literature. It’s dishonest and it’s misleading.”

In the last four years, Makary says, the use of robotics to perform minimally invasive gynecological, heart and prostate surgeries and other types of common procedures has grown 400 percent. Proponents say robot-assisted operations use smaller incisions, are more precise and result in less pain and shorter hospital stays — claims the study’s authors challenge as unsubstantiated. More hospitals are buying the expensive new equipment and many use aggressive advertising to lure patients who want to be treated with what they think is the latest and greatest in medical technology, Makary notes.

But Makary says there are no randomized, controlled studies showing patient benefit in robotic surgery. “New doesn’t always mean better,” he says, adding that robotic surgeries take more time, keep patients under anesthesia longer and are more costly.

None of that is apparent in reading hospital websites that promote its use, he says. For example he points out that 33 percent of hospital websites that make robot claims say that the device yields better cancer outcomes — a notion he points out as misleading to a vulnerable cancer population seeking out the best care.

Makary and his colleagues analyzed 400 randomly selected websites from U.S. hospitals of 200 beds or more. Data were gathered on the presence and location of robotic surgery information on a website, the use of images or text provided by the manufacturer, and claims made about the performance of the robot.

Forty-one percent of the hospital websites reviewed described the availability and mechanics of robotic surgery, the study found. Of these, 37 percent presented the information on the homepage and 66 percent mentioned it within one click of the homepage. Manufacturer-provided materials were used on 73 percent of websites, while 33 percent directly linked to a manufacturer website.

When describing robotic surgery, the researchers found that 89 percent made a statement of clinical superiority over more conventional surgeries, the most common being less pain (85 percent), shorter recovery (86 percent), less scarring (80 percent) and less blood loss (78 percent). Thirty-two percent made a statement of improved cancer outcome. None mentioned any risks.

“This is a really scary trend,” Makary says. “We’re allowing industry to speak on behalf of hospitals and make unsubstantiated claims.”

Makary says websites do not make clear how institutions or physicians arrived at their claims of the robot’s superiority, or what kinds of comparisons are being made. “Was robotic surgery being compared to the standard of care, which is laparoscopic surgery,” Makary asks, “or to ‘open’ surgery, which is an irrelevant comparison because robots are only used in cases when minimally invasive techniques are called for.”

Makary says the use of manufacturer-provided images and text also raises serious conflict- of-interest questions. He says hospitals should police themselves in order not to misinform patients. Johns Hopkins Medicine, for example, forbids the use of industry-provided content on its websites.

“Hospitals need to be more conscientious of their role as trusted medical advisers and ensure that information provided on their websites represents the best available evidence,” he says. “Otherwise, it’s a violation of the public trust.”

In addition to Makary, other Johns Hopkins researchers involved in the study include Linda X. Jin, B.A., B.S.; Andrew A. Ibrahim, B.A.; Naeem A. Newman, M.D.; and Peter J. Pronovost, M.D., Ph.D.

Media Contact: Stephanie Desmon

410-955-8665

An Algorithm for Evolving Altruism?

Dario Floreano and Laurent Keller of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland claims that altruism quickly evolves in simulations using robots. He suggest that an algorithm for altruism has developed from this research and may be used in other robots. Science Magazine has an online article about his research titled, Even Robots Can Be Heros. Science Daily's online article discussing the research is titled, Robots Learn to Share: Why We Go Out of Our Way to Help One Another. Dario Floreano and Laurent Keller report on the research in PLoS Biology. Dario Floreano explains the research in a video on UTube.

The Court-Martial of a Predator Drone

Predator Drone Court-Martialed For Afghani Civilian Deaths

ICRAC Change of Web Address

The International Committee for Robot Arms Control has a new URL. It is www.icrac.co.uk.

MoD Questions Ethics of Killer Robots

The British Ministry of Defense (MoD) has produced an internal study that warns of the dangers in the incremental development of military robots.

It says the pace of technological development is accelerating at such a rate that Britain must quickly establish a policy on what will constitute "acceptable machine behaviour".

"It is essential that before unmanned systems become ubiquitous (if it is not already too late) … we ensure that, by removing some of the horror, or at least keeping it at a distance, we do not risk losing our controlling humanity and make war more likely," warns the report, titled The UK Approach to Unmanned Aircraft Systems. MoD officials have never before grappled so frankly with the ethics of the use of drones. . .

The report was drawn up last month by the ministry's internal thinktank, the Development, Concepts and Doctrine Centre (DCDC), based in Shrivenham, Wiltshire, which is part of MoD central staff. The centre's reports are sent to the most senior officers in all three branches of the armed forces and influence policy and strategy.

Read the full article from Guardian online here.

Robots deployed in Japanese Reactor

A few weeks back at the Innorobo Trade Show in Lyon, France, Colin Angle, the CEO of iRobot, reported that they had sent two robots, similar to but larger than the normal Packbots, to the nuclear reactor in Fukushima. At the time it was hoped that the bots would be used to drag cooling hoses near to the core. But as we all know now the core has melted down. However, the New York Times reports today that the iRobot systems have been used to collect data on radiation levels.

Workers have not gone inside the two reactor buildings since the first days after the plant's cooling systems were wrecked by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. Hydrogen explosions in both buildings in the first few days destroyed their roofs and littered them with radioactive debris.

But a pair of robots, called Packbots, haltingly entered the two buildings Sunday and took readings for temperature, pressure and radioactivity. More data must be collected and radioactivity must be further reduced before workers are allowed inside, said Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency.

The full article titled, Robot in Japanese Reactors Detects High Radiation, is available here.