OUR WIDELY DISTRIBUTED INTELLIGENCE ... AND OUR REMARKABLE ABILITY TO IGNORE IT

What happens when technology forces us to redefine human consciousness itself?

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Last January I took my annual pilgrimage to CES, the consumer electronics show in Las Vegas, and I stopped at a booth that showed off a shiny new humanoid robot. It was the size of a small adult, like a jockey or a coxswain, and was designed with a jaunty, embodied friendliness. A promotional video announced that this new robot would “provide companionship that anticipates your needs and makes life easier and adapts to your lifestyle.” Meanwhile, the robot noticed me and walked over to shake my hand.

I didn't catch the robot's name because I was busy taking a picture of its hand in mine, which was rude. I treated the robot as a machine, an object, rather than as the rising star it was made out to be. Meanwhile, in the time it took to shake my hand, the robot read the media pass around my neck and could have read everything I've published online. With a few prompts, it could have sifted through my Facebook friends, LinkedIn connections, and Google searches to figure out how to anticipate my needs and desires. If I had stayed a bit longer, I wouldn't be writing this now against a deadline because my companion would have drafted the piece months ago.

If you build a machine that learns and behaves like a human, are you at some point building a soul?

But it was only after the robot left me and then turned to wave goodbye that I finally noticed something disconcerting. This robot had no face. The “head” was a glowing, turquoise-colored ring that sat upright on its neck so that I could see right through it. The traditional space for a human brain was empty—and the missing brain brought me back to the first time I shook hands with a robot, when my ideas about human consciousness and machines began to fall apart.

S&H JOINS THE MIT AI LAB