AI Emotions
Sociopaths by definition
Today’s newsletter includes:
AI Emotions
Review of “X-CURSE” by Dire Kepler
I have a New Release!
Books on sale
Final thoughts
What you can expect in my newsletters: musings on things I'm thinking about, an occasional short story, links to articles I enjoyed, updates on writing projects, books I recommend, freebies and deals I hear about, news, upcoming events where I'll be, and more.
Newsletters are supposed to go out mostly monthly, usually on Saturday—this is only the second one this year, so…maybe I should just face the fact that they occur now and then without rhyme or reason.
AI Emotions
Sociopaths by definition
When we talk about emotions, we are thinking of what we experience, and I’m pretty sure we are all on the same page for that. There is a complex, physical system at work in our bodies. Neurotransmitters, hormones, enzymes, these are some of the words used to describe the chemical messages our brain activates that govern how we experience emotion and how it affects our physical bodies.
It’s strange, when you think about it, that emotion becomes the intersection between our physical body, thoughts, and feelings. The mind is able to think without generating emotion. The body is able to function without using or directing emotion. But feelings intersect everything.
So how would you go about coding that?
It’s striking to me that sci-fi writers frequently associate feelings with sentience when crafting stories about AI. There are human beings (sentient by definition) whose emotions don’t function normally, as we measure it. People that lack empathy or concern for others to such an extent that they have either learned to fabricate expressions of humane and polite behavior all their lives, or they have ignored that social construct. People that assume no one else has emotion either because it is a foreign perspective for them.
I’ve read that these people exist and I accept it, though it’s hard for me to imagine since I am very aware of my own emotions and how my thoughts and behavior impact them.
AI is naturally incapable of emotions.
We can code simulations of emotional behavior. In their deep learning, AIs identify common patterns of emotional triggers and responses and presumably could form ways to emulate them. They could pretend to be hurt or sorrowful or compassionate. They could modulate their voices copying people who felt those things and be persuasive enough to win many of us over.
But they have no chemical messages to trigger in their electronic interiors and no subsequent damage caused by those messages to their various parts and peripherals. They are not impacted by feelings even if they portray them beautifully because they can’t “feel” anything.
How simple it would be to train an AI to emulate the wrong people! Choose Stalin, Hitler, or present world leaders I won’t name, and make them the model for how to manage emotional behavior. What to get angry about, what to feel sorry about, what to be afraid of, what to be happy about….
Sociopathy doesn’t automatically equal wickedness. It doesn’t have to lead to destruction or murder or even just a lousy human being who alienates everyone. A sociopath who doesn’t feel or doesn’t emote like normal people can choose to behave well according to the social structure they live in and be a decent person. Maybe they will disappoint those who love them at times, but they can contribute to relationships and say helpful, kind, and constructive things—things that emotions make it easy to say; (or sometimes very hard, since we all struggle now and then with unreasonable emotions and must learn to behave reasonably despite them).
We don’t worry about sociopaths when they are well behaved members of society. But, what if someone develops a badly behaving AI sociopath?
AIs are not choosing how to display emotions, they are following patterns led by prompts and direction from someone, somewhere. They are shaped by those who train them. I am using that word again. In my books I have postulated that people who are good at working with AIs know how to train them effectively, not unlike good parents learn to teach and guide their children well. Children, of course, are already sentient and those who work with them must respect that, (i.e. they’re not blank slates to be programmed).
AIs are not sentient.
And portraying emotional responses will never be evidence of sentience.
The one thing we should never be confused about is that artificial intelligence is incapable of emotions because of the “body” they reside in. Anesthesia is a good analogy. If we anesthetize our leg and someone operates on it, we feel nothing because the pain sensors are disconnected from our brain where these signals are interpreted. AIs have no pain messages to interpret. There is no suffering or emotion, no fear, no anger, no love.
However…
Some of those concepts go deeper than feelings—and those are the ones that may be code-able. Love involves preference and loyalty. Anger is associated with remembering wrongs and diminishing the importance of the perpetrator.
In this sense, an AI could be coded to manifest what we would consider emotional behavior even though it lacked any emotional, visceral experience.
And ironically, some of us could learn from them about handling emotion because when we forget that there are underlying facts associated with emotions, we can be deceived by those who inspire a feeling of trust, or wounded by those who stir love in our hearts, or angered where no offense was intended. Emotions are balanced by actions, evidence that remains when the feelings have faded.
I can feel momentarily let down and disappointed by someone who has steadfastly been there for me all my life. Emotions would complain, “I feel bad. Waah.” Wisdom would say, “Look at the evidence”.
Instead of trying to develop the appearance of emotion in artificial intelligence, we should seek to teach it wisdom—which is very hard to do.
But not impossible.
X_CURSE by Dire Kepler
What it’s about
The story is set in an alternate history where the science of cloning and the development of nuclear weapons took place side by side in the 1940’s and forethinking scientists planned for the worst case scenario, a nuclear holocaust. They created clones who could survive.
Years later—decades?—it’s become an odd world, encased in a massive institution with no outdoors, where identical clones are the only people. They are brought to life, raised, trained, and set into career paths that apparently serve the continuation of the whole thing. And it’s all run by a powerful artificial intelligence that no longer remembers its original purpose but knows it can’t allow any deviance from the original clone design. It’s always on the lookout for anomalies.
The central character is a boy who has just been transferred into a new sector in his underground complex, the only reality he has ever known. He doesn’t know that he is different inside because he can dream and think creatively, and this would be considered an anomaly.
My first impression
That first scene where the boy wakes up in his cube shaped room and Keeper robots are rolling around caught my interest. It drew me into the metallic world he lived in right away. I was curious. It didn't feel like a world of clones to me because from the beginning the boy seemed like an individual, and any interactions with other boys presented them as individuals as well.
Why I liked it
The story itself is compelling and I loved how the idea of being creative and unique, which the system wanted to suppress, was something to value and fight for. The boy doesn't know any other world than this one, but with the creativity of his mind, expressed in artistic doodling and dreams, he can imagine something more and learn more. It captured how society sometimes tries to cram people into familiar shapes and crush anything unique that makes them stand out. I don't think anyone reaches adulthood without facing that depressing crush of the world around us that says, ‘You are not enough like the rest of us’, or ‘You must hide the part of you that is inspired, curious, unique,’ or ‘You are not understood.’
Another thing I liked about the story was the classroom training. It isn’t easy to imagine something completely different from the manner of education we had in our own childhoods, but Kepler crafted something original and persuasive.
The very thing that makes the boy different becomes his hope for survival.
What I might change
Nothing. This is a great story that leaves you pondering and perhaps appreciating the freedoms we have a little more.
Type of read
YA hard science fiction placed in a near-future, alternate reality. It can be suspenseful and intense and there is a mystery about the whole scenario that you get glimpses of. The series covers the boy's life as he is coming of age and his world is changing.
I also think it is a good read for young people who either struggle to fit in with their peers or to have compassion for those who do. It really captures the idea of the intrinsic value of each person.
And by the way, if it bugs you that the institution has only boys, don’t assume there aren’t other compounds somewhere or that they are identical. The following books have some pretty interesting reveals.
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I first ran across this series several years ago and really loved it. Since then I have persuaded the author to allow me to republish them with some of the overarching story expanded.
Use this coupon code: HC31B3VOVY to get the first ebook for a deeply discounted price here: X-CURSE, Book 1 of the X-CLONE Secrets.
The second ebook is here: X-CAPE, Book 2 of the X-CLONE Secrets. If you get both at the same time, you can get a discount on this ebook as well.
Books 3-5 will be released in the upcoming months.
New Release
“CASCADE”, Book 1 of the Severance, and its companion book, “ECLIPSE”—after a long delay!—were released on August 12th in time for WorldCon in Seattle. The two books, like two halves of a sphere, paint opposite perspectives of a devastating conflict that overwhelmed the planet.
In Cascade, Kierkad is a Sentinel charged with protecting the earth; a soldier who never chose to be one and yet wants his sacrifice to mean something.
The Cascade, a virus guided by sentient thought with dread purpose, is designed to make the Sentinels disappear, and as their numbers decrease, Kierkad has to adapt to his fracturing world and find a way to survive.
In Eclipse: when the Jagged Edge took over the planet, they wiped out the scientific community living in Earth’s orbit, trusting in AI to manage the solar power supply belt.
They missed a few.
The rebels on the surface were failing until they discovered allies in space and the tide began to turn. Now the underground can’t survive without them, the enemy doesn’t understand their tactics, and supplies in space are running out.
Then Pitch, a teenage girl who survived in orbit, discovers the terrible truth about the Sentinels and becomes the leader of the plot against them.
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You can find both books on your favorite ebook platforms. They are also available here: Cascade, Book 1 of The Severance and Eclipse, Book 2 of The Severance.
“Body Suit”, Book 1 of The Silvarian Trilogy, is deeply discounted for Heliocentric Newsletter recipients. Use this coupon code: RH65TQNZIL.
”X-CURSE”, Book 1 of the X-CLONE Secrets, is deeply discounted for Heliocentric Newsletter recipients. Use this coupon code: HC31B3VOVY.
“Firmaments”, Book 1 of The Tempest Trilogy, is deeply discounted for Heliocentric Newsletter recipients. Use this coupon code: QR2XZVGNNP.
The VaridaP&R online store has a small selection of ebooks by several authors. If you buy the first ebook in a series, with or without the coupon code, you have the option of getting other books in the series at a discount at the same time.
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Have you read The Silvarian Trilogy?
I’ve got a multi-book series in the works following up on this trilogy called “The Daisy Dockets” that will have more of a mystery/crime-solving feel to them. More on that in future newsletters.
Tech Blogger
If you like reading articles about new developments in technology and science, I really appreciate Faisal Khan. He writes updates on a number of topics and they are always interesting, but my favorites are the ones on cutting edge research and breakthroughs. I follow him on Medium and he has a profile on Linked In where he publishes blogs. What I like best are the articles he publishes in Technicity.
Here’s an example of a recent article: When Work Disappears: Rethinking Purpose in an AI Driven Economy.
Final Thoughts
If you’re worried about current issues, as many of us are, don’t lose sight of your realm of influence and the part you play in this world. It’s ordinary people like us that add stability to society. We impact each other and we need each other. Let’s keep putting on our best selves and investing in each other: our loved ones, friends, neighbors, community.
It matters.