Robotics Reference
In-Depth Information
accordance with the robot's goal of keeping the room within its desired
temperature range.
But although the thermostat believes “The room is too cold”, there
is no need to say that it
understands
the concept of “too cold”.
The internal structure of “The room is too cold” is a part of our
language, not its. [15]
Thus McCarthy shows that we can reasonably ascribe beliefs to ma-
chines, even though the machines may not know or understand the con-
cepts in which, by virtue of their construction, they believe.
Robot Dreams
Humans dream during certain states of sleep, when we are in certain
states of consciousness. We may speculate as to whether robots with
consciousness will also have dreams. Clearly we could program robots
to dream but the interesting question is whether robots will themselves
evolve in directions that cause them to dream. If so, what will their
dreams be like? Will a robot go visit or e-mail its psychiatrist robot in
order to have its dreams interpreted? Presumably the psychoanalysis of
robots will involve less effort if every robot is given the necessary software
to enable self-analysis of its psychological condition, which analysis will
include the interpretation of dreams. And if robots do have dreams,
how will these dreams affect the robots' subsequent lives and evolution
as they create offspring? Will a newly-created, robot-designed robot bear
any hereditary psychological or emotional traits that emanate from the
dreams of its ancestors?
Can Robots Have Free Will?
Human free will is a product of evolution and contributes to the
success of the human animal. Useful robots will also require free
will of a similar kind, and we will have to design it into them. [16]
In discussing the subject of free will in robots, McCarthy distinguishes
between having choices and being conscious of these choices:
Both are important, even for robots, and consciousness of choices
requires more structure in the agent than just having choices, and
is important for robots. [16]
