Study Shows Babies Think Friendly Robots Are Sentient 159
seanonymous writes "A study from University of Washington claims that babies think robots are human, so long as the robots are friendly. No word on what evil robots are thought to be. From the article: 'At 18 months old, babies have begun to make conscious delineations between sentient beings and inanimate objects. But as robots get more and more advanced, those decisions may become harder to make. What causes a baby to decide a robot is more than bits of metal? As it turns out, it takes more than humanoid looks — babies rely on social interaction to make that call.'"
understandable (Score:5, Funny)
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"it is because babies like the oo sound"
I'd bet it is their mothers those that like it, more than the babies.
Humm... any grant for my study?
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Don't make fun of babies... (Score:2)
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C'mon, he was making with the jocularity -- unbunch your panties for a minute.
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Aww come on you gotta tell us what it means now...
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klaatu_barada_nikto [wikipedia.org]
How does this differ between humans and animals? (Score:4, Insightful)
Do they think the dog is sentient?
Re:How does this differ between humans and animals (Score:5, Funny)
Do they think the dog is sentient?
Initially, yes. Interestingly, when our toddler was developing her language skills, she practiced three sets of sounds - English language sounds that she heard her parents speaking, Spanish-language sounds that she heard from her nanny and grandmother and growly barky sounds that she heard from the dog. Eventually she realized the dog was a lower-order being and stopped trying to speak dog.
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depends on your definition of sentience. By the wikipedia definition for example I'd say dogs are sentient.
from wikipedia...
"Sentience is the ability to feel or perceive. The term is used in science and philosophy, and in the study of artificial intelligence. Sentience is used in the study of consciousness to describe the ability to have sensations or experiences, known to Western philosophers as "qualia""
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The problem with the term sentience is that it is a word like 'Lots". We know what it means, but it is a sliding scale.
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Your laptop can feel? What does it feel?
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They feel my touch, and respond to it.
And every time I go out of the door and press the doorhandle, it opens. This must mean that the doorhandle is actually feeling my touch and that it is sentient. No wait...
The fact that an object reacts when it's touched does not mean the object knows it is being touched. Modern computers aren't any more sentient than typewriters and calculators. Sure, they are really fancy typewriters and even fancier calculators, but we are far from creating any sort of sentient machine.
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Your laptop can feel? What does it feel?
It despises it's dirty fingered owner.
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I don't think my laptop or phone can 'feel or perceive'. These things have sensors, but I don't think it is remotely the same thing.
The problem with the term sentience is that it is a word like 'Lots". We know what it means, but it is a sliding scale.
I agree the line between sentience and non-sentience is very ill defined, but in my opinion its clear that higher animals fall on the sentient side of it while laptops and cell phones fall on the non-sentient side of the line.
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I agree the line between sentience and non-sentience is very ill defined, but in my opinion its clear that higher animals fall on the sentient side of it while laptops and cell phones fall on the non-sentient side of the line.
I don't disagree with this. But, feel and perceive is not in any way what defines it.
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Humans have sensors that allow them to feel and perceive also. That is how we do it.
Sensors are necessary but not sufficient.
I don't disagree with this. But, feel and perceive is not in any way what defines it.
Check the wikipedia article so that we are on the same page with a common working definition of "sentience". I think you might be using sentience in another sense, perhaps to include "cognizance" or "sapience" or some other characteristic... Or perhaps you are simply over simplifying sentience so that
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+1 Dogs, cats, mice, turtles are all sentient.
Some creatures like jellyfish and some simple insects which have simple nervous systems that "hardwire" reactions instead of a complex brain are in more of a gray area. But anything that can learn very much deserves to be called sentient.
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Before anyone jumps in asking whether I consider those "chat with a computer" apps to be sentient, I was strictly talking about animals. Any AI needs to first pass some tests that any animal would before it could be considered for classification as "sentient." - how does it react to certain stimuli, etc. Getting out of the jellyfish/simple insect gray area won't be easy either.
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>>>wikipedia definition
hahahahahahahahahahaahaha! Hilarious. Look it up in a real dictionary (one with research staff, linguists, historians, etc) and your dog nor any other animal is sentient by their definition.
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http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sentience [merriam-webster.com]
SENTIENCE
1 : a sentient quality or state
2 : feeling or sensation as distinguished from perception and thought
Dog qualifies.
http://oxforddictionaries.com/view/entry/m_en_gb0755520#m_en_gb0755520.005 [oxforddictionaries.com]
sentient (sen|tient)
Pronunciation:/sn()nt/
adjective
* able to perceive or feel things:
Dog qualifies.
hahahahahahahahahahaahaha! Hilarious. Look it up in a real dictionary (one with research staff, linguists, historians, etc) and your dog
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Hm. Attack quickly followed by condescending smiley? Check. Viewpoint designed to belittle and offend? Check. Ignorance of topic in question and clear lack of qualification to comment based on statements? Check.
I'm gonna go ahead and ask you to shut the fuck up.
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Hm. Attack quickly followed by condescending smiley? Check. Viewpoint designed to belittle and offend? Check. Ignorance of topic in question and clear lack of qualification to comment based on statements? Check.
Good boy. Here's a treat.
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I've heard other people say that, before you.
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I have a Pavlovian response to the sound of a beer being poured in to a frosty glass.
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I know when the damn dog jumps on me, or slobbers all over me, I automatically consider the THING to be inferior to human beings.
Hell even that Android Data has more intelligence then a damn bitch.
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If you think a dog is sentient, then you must be as dumb as one. ;-) Dogs are no smarter than a mouse, or turtle, or any other animal. They simply react to rote repetition. (Run a can opener - they salivate. Pavlovian response not intelligence.)
This raises the obvious question: is a person with a severe mental handicap sentient?
If your answer is yes, then the requirements for sentience which you've listed here are irrelevant, and you're operating off some other definition. If your answer is "no", then you're internally consistent, but I'm not sure I agree with your definition of sentience.
Also, it's worth pointing out that dogs have about the same level of intelligence as a human child early in it's developmental cycle. Is a 6 month old baby se
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No. No. No. And no.
If an organism can't achieve at least 80 on an Adult IQ test, I don't consider it sentient, although it may have the potential to reach that point someday (after maturing and/or several million years evolution). And yes I know the test has flaws but there has to be a standard which separates Homo sapiens from less creatures, just the same as HR Offices establish 3.0 or 3.2 for their minimum requirements for new hires.
Correction (Score:5, Insightful)
Correction: Should read "Babies behave towards things the same way they observed adults behaving towards them". The babies in the study didn't behave as if the robots were sentient unless they had watched an adult treat the robot as if it were sentient. Only if they watched an adult 'play' with the robot like a human child did the babies respond as if the robot were alive, even though the robot was programmed with the exact same movements in both set ups. This says a lot more about how children learn from adults than it does about how children perceive robots.
Exactly (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Exactly (Score:4, Insightful)
Exactly. And likewise there's no genetic reason for babies to understand the concept of robots.
The whole question seems silly. Considering a decently life-like device, the wiser and more perceptive (read: older) a human needs to be to distinguish robotic from organic.
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If that was too long, here's the same thing in comic form [smbc-comics.com].
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I am SO glad I'm not the only one who thought there was always a band in the radio studio when I was a little kid!
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I thought that all music on the radio was performed live.
I was going to quip that when you were little it was probably true, but then I saw your 7-digit SlashID.
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Never judge a book by its UID (Score:2)
I seriously dislike children on my lawn.
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What's truly incredible about all this research is that for decades now we've known that infants can form stories about what a person is doing by observing them - even though the infant is incapable of performing the same activities, has never participated in those activities, etc.
Coming up with the experimental technique to reach this conclusion has been an education in itself.
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What's truly incredible about all this research is that for decades now we've known that infants can form stories about what a person is doing by observing them - even though the infant is incapable of performing the same activities, has never participated in those activities, etc.
Yeah, but how accurate are those stories? After all, we know that the Cargo Cults formed stories about what the White Man was doing on their islands, and even attempted to imitate what they saw. Unfortunately their stories reflected their own culture, experiences, and beliefs, and only superficially resembled what they were observing. If what we're seeing in infants is the same, I don't see anything particularly incredible about it.
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Where the hell is Rosie? (Score:2)
Seriously, where is she? [youtube.com]
Though, sometimes she is a little bossy.
These are not the humans you are looking for (Score:2, Funny)
Re:These are not the humans you are looking for (Score:5, Funny)
Re:These are not the humans you are looking for (Score:4, Funny)
Do you want Planet Earth to be destroyed?
DON'T DATE ROBOTS!
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Wolowitz, is that you?
No word on what evil robots are thought to be. (Score:2, Funny)
That is simple. They are known to be republicans.
Well... (Score:2, Funny)
viral video idea (Score:2)
the first scientist to upload video of a baby playing with a (friendly) robot wins 20 million youtube views (whatever that's worth). I'd watch.
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Not surprising--babies are stupid (Score:2)
Not at all surprising--there have been conclusive studies done in the past on just how stupid babies are [demon.co.uk].
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Not just babies. Set up a robot in any city in Kansas and watch them burn it at the stake.
" No word on what evil robots are thought to be." (Score:2, Offtopic)
Babies just have a hard time saying the word.
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Maybe... (Score:2)
Thi
Babies think everything that moves is sentient (Score:5, Interesting)
According to psychologist Paul Bloom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Bloom_(psychologist) [wikipedia.org] , babies think lots of things are sentient.
If they show a movie to babies with geometrical figures, they assume that the geometrical figures are helping or hindering each other because geometrical figures want to.
He said this makes sense from an evolutionary perspective, because it improves survival if you assume everything around you that moves might be out to get you.
He also says that this is an evolutionary explanation of religion, by finding sentient beings behind all of nature. If you see a storm, there must be a sentient being behind it.
Re:Babies think everything that moves is sentient (Score:5, Informative)
During the show, they showed how babies (roughly 3 - 9 months old) could discern good from bad by watching colored blocks and how they behaved towards one another or how puppets played nice with one another.
One thing that came out during the show and made me say, "Hmmm" was the fact that if I were to point at something, without saying anything, you would look in the direction I was pointing.
Oddly enough, so do dogs. If you point at something, a dog will look. Here's the interesting part: wolves don't do this. Apparently, through the ages, as we've bred dogs to their current form, we have inadvertently bred this trait into them whereas wolves, ostensibly the originator of modern dogs, lack this trait.
To see the programs, visit http://video.pbs.org/program/1356407145/ [pbs.org]
or here:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/humanspark/tag/alan-alda/ [pbs.org]
In the second link, the second excerpt called Social Networks and the Spark, has the video of a baby choosing an inanimate toys who appears friendly/cooperative compared to one that isn't.
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Thanks for pointing that out. I don't watch much TV right now, but one thing I miss is some pretty good science TV programs.
Interesting about dogs. Oddly enough, chimpanzees won't look (as I recall). You can put a reward under a can, point to it, and they won't realize you're giving them a hint.
There's a reason why humans and dogs get along so well together. Our behavior has co-evolved for 10,000 years.
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You are correct. That was pointed out in the show also. However, something in regards to chimps that was shown, is that if you have a treat which requires two chimps to cooperate to get, they will do it.
Now, if one chimp wants the treat and the other doesn't, while the first chimp might help for a short time, it will eventually stop. It is at that point that the second chimp appears to "encourage" the first chimp to pull its load so the second c
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Yes, chimpanzees cooperate like that in the lab, but no one has seen them cooperate like that in the wild.
So you wonder how they managed to evolve this potential without using it.
Chimpanzees cooperate in a general way, by sharing food or hunting together, but only humans cooperate in order to accomplish complex tasks like the ones the researchers thought up, with food too far away to reach.
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If you point at something, a dog will look.
Not a cat. If you point at something for a cat, the cat will just look at your hand. At best. If they don't just ignore you.
What does that say about cats, then?
(On the other hand, I often use my cat to help me locate a strange sound, or identify whether a strange sound is a threat. Hear sound, check cat's reaction. If the cat shows interest, then it's a novel stimulus and may warrant my attention as well. If the cat runs away, it's probably a visitor or some other cat-threat. If the cat runs to the d
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Grammar Nazi alert: Those 3-9 month-olds were also _inferring_ intention on the blocks.
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So essentially we're hardwired for animism. I'm so glad we've finally settled that question.
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Human sacrifice at 11.
TMX (Score:2)
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I'm pretty sure your 18 month old is right. That thing is fucking scary. [wordpress.com] :)
Adults think their pets are human (Score:5, Interesting)
Adults think their pets are human, and humans of different colors are animals. People are generally not a good source of judgment.
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Except for the adults who don't think that...
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I don't think that's fair. All but a handful genuine crackpots know that their pets are not human. Some treat them as human, but that's not necessarily an indicator of poor judgement.
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If you want to get all semanticky about things, babies can't "think", period. Their brain wiring comes out without insulation (myelin), so their heads can be smaller so they'll fit through the human birth canal which has to be small because erect posture means the gestation takes place directly over the pelvic opening which can't be so big the uterus prolapses halfway through the process. What they're doing is recognizing shapes and motions that are hardwired into the more primitive portions of the brain
Are babies sentient? (Score:2)
What are the qualifications to be be considered sentient?
Re:Are babies sentient? (Score:4, Informative)
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Are you thinking Sapient?
Sapient, Sentient, Conscious and Self-Aware aren't all the same?
I'd say: Babies are Sentient (Can feel and perceive), Marginally Sapient (can make basic judgments only), Conscious (aware that stuff is going on[when they're, you know, awake]) and not very self-aware (not much identity of self)
Regarding the dog conversation above, I dont think this is much different than a dog. I heard a line once "A kid is like a dog that grows up and learns how to talk".
(don't hate me, kids are cool
Conversely... (Score:2)
...the robot was not impressed.
Are you sure about that 18 months? (Score:5, Funny)
I think there is strong evidence [wikipedia.org] that humans much older than 18 months cannot make a delineation between sentient beings and inanimate objects.
If the supplied evidence is not enough, try this [wikipedia.org].
Unsurprising, really (Score:2)
Even the inanimated (Score:2)
Ditto mine. Considering how she adores & coddles her inanimate doll, methinks "sentience" to the very young is a matter of affinity & affection, not activity.
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Perhaps your kids are smarter than you are giving them credit for?
They are. (Score:2)
Friendly robots are sentient. Friendliness is a quality that only sentient beings can have. If your robot is not sentient, then it is only simulating friendliness.
Remember the Sirius Cybernetics Corp's definition (Score:5, Funny)
"Your plastic pal who's fun to be with"
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I have a 2yr old... (Score:3, Insightful)
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I have a 2yr old and he thinks Train set is Sentient. So I don't really think this is any kind of breakthrough.
I remember feeling guilt about picking an unblemished apple over a bruised one. I must have developed my empathy skills fairly quickly though; only a few months later I was already trying to create a new species of flightless insects.
It seems that the membership of certain [peta.org] organisations [armyofgod.com] are still in the infantile stages though.
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That second link is NSFW. Unless you use Lynx.
WARNING! (Score:2)
Do not let the robot hold your baby! I have it on very good authority that this is a bad idea.
Gaze != Sentience (Score:2)
I'm not debating whether or not the babies actually thought the robot was sentient or not (who knows what babies think?). But it's a logical leap to assume that "gaze following" equates to "sentience". It might be that the babies know enough about technology to know that even a robot can focus a gaze. Assuming that a baby is smart enough to know what a gaze is implies they're smart enough to know what a robot is.
In related news... (Score:2)
In related news, it was discovered that AI researchers thought sentient robots were friendly.
Related Study (Score:2)
In a related study, infants judged geeks to be 18% less human than the robots.
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And Vice Versa (Score:2)
babies/toddlers are easily fooled (Score:3, Interesting)
Indoctrination (Score:2)
Sentient =/= Sapient (Score:3, Informative)
Robots that respond to their environment are essentially sentient. Dogs certainly are sentient. Neither are SAPIENT.
Sci-fi has misused the work sentient when they meant to say sapient.
That does NOT mean that sentient means self aware, it means the sci-fi writers and everyone else who says sentient when they mean sapient are WRONG.
Yes, even if the dictionary agrees with them.
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fictional != non-sentient (Score:2)
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(Yes, that was a joke.)
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So did my friend, Mr. Tree. And the stop sign that slightly bows in the wind. It's not all that great of an accomplishment, really.
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Your 18 month old thinks a tree is human?
Advanced technology = magic (Score:2)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Arthur C. Clarke, "Profiles of The Future", 1961 (Clarke's third law)
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And some of us even improve!