Baby-bot Birthday
February 19, 2020, marked the first birthday of the world’s first artificially intelligent robot baby, and I had the pleasure of celebrating it at the newly opened futurist museum, Futurium, in Berlin. The mastermind behind it all, Dr. A.E. Eiben, a professor in evolutionary computing at Vrije University, the Netherlands, presented the mathematical mastery and philosophical considerations that led to the day when two artificially intelligent robots could reproduce with no interference from human beings.
Evolutionary computing design had produced so-called ‘evospheres’, in which artificially intelligent robots could reproduce in a closed ecosystem. The womb of the AI robot baby was a 3D printer, and the parents were two AI robots who had been given a language in which to communicate. Their interaction and sensory input were sent via Wi-Fi to the womb, which printed the offspring. This was the first time in world history that the simulation of robotic reproduction resulted in a morphological body. (Today’s 3D printers are not advanced enough to print complex parts like spinal cords. Organs are printed, stored in an organ bank, and assembled by humans.)
As a futurist, it is my job to consider the long-term consequences of present-day decisions. This birthday made me question the intersection between biology, technology and quality of life. Although the impact of 21st century AI on human life is resourceful, human beings have thus far remained the convergence factor between different technologies. How we choose to interweave technology with biology will be key in designing socio-tech environments.
The breakthrough for artificial intelligence came in a chess match in 1997, when the computer Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion. But while 20th century artificial intelligence focused on the brain, the 21st century’s AI development is focusing on the interaction between body and brain and how they shape each other.
Although computer cognition may now be advanced enough to beat humans at various tasks, the design of energy-efficient robots still has a long way to go. The amount of energy required for computers to exceed human capabilities far surpasses the energy consumption of the human body and is thus unsustainable. The human brain consumes more than 20 percent of the body’s energy, which is highly efficient compared to the energy expenditure involved in computer cognition. It would therefore seem that the doomsday preppers, who fear that robots may escape human control, do not need to rush to prepare for the end of the world.
The birth of a robot baby could mark the beginning of the super-intelligent era as the futurist Nick Bostrom imagines. What surprised Professor Eiben and his PhD students was that the two robots approached each other and became intimate; the AI bots’ data input had not been seeded with ‘intimate sentiments’. The bots began investigating each other by touch.
This surprise may be followed by more as we continue to explore the potential of AI robots. The upsides of 21st century AI are already being utilized in, for example, neuromorphic computing, to detect natural disasters, malware and diseases, but robotic offspring have not been around long enough to confirm the value that robots bring to human civilization, which is still both developing and contested. Nonetheless, the ways in which we design the current relationships between robots and humans will come to influence the future socio-technological environment.
Should we give humanoids rights like human rights, as was suggested in the Swedish sitcom Real Human? Or should we give robots citizenship, as Saudi Arabia did for ‘Sophia’ in 2017? Should we tax AI robots to compensate for unemployment, and possibly to finance a universal basic income for citizens? What if humanoids could take care of most basic jobs in the future, GDP was no longer tied to population growth and productivity, and value was generated by robots rather than human beings?
Such a scenario requires that we humans rethink our function in society and mature technologically by utilizing AI bots in a manner in which we, as a species, make the most of technology and apply it as an enabling factor to enhance the quality of life for the majority of people, moving beyond the current orgy of technological applications. Evolution is about adaptation to changing environments.
