From: John de Rivaz Subject: Re: Nanorobotics for the creation of pet robots Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Date: 7 Apr 1998 22:45:01 GMT Organization: Myorganisation Path: news.kth.se!news.stupi.se!netnews.com!newsfeed.direct.ca!newsfeed.wli.net!pingflood.geo.net!nanospace.com!nanotech Lines: 226 Approved: josh@discuss.foresight.org Message-ID: <6gea9d$7m8$1@news.nanospace.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.142.17.9 X-Server-Date: 7 Apr 1998 22:45:01 GMT TechSubList: n Originator: josh@discuss Xref: news.kth.se sci.nanotech:7686 April 1 joke or not, I worte an article a decade or so ago which is relevant to this subject: The Future of Companion Animals. The phrase "companion animal" has been used instead of the word "pet" to indicate a greater understanding and compassion for living things. Already a miscellany of cats and dogs are in cryonic suspension awaiting their owners. It is clear that many people place great value on the companionship of animals. It has also been shown in learned papers that there is definite therapeutic value in keeping certain animals. Cats have been living with humans for thousands of years. Probably the relationship was initiated because cats exterminate undesirable rodents, but over the years breeding has reinforced feline appearance and traits that please humans. Of course, some animals make better companions than others. For example there are reasons why it is not a good idea to keep monkeys. They are likely to carry diseases that are easily transmitted to humans. Some animals are unsuitable because of temperament and/or strength. Cats and dogs are the most popular pets. Dog owners say dogs are more intelligent because they can be trained, whereas cat owners claim that cats are more intelligent because they aren't so silly as to allow themselves to be trained! However a human is an animal, and therefore another human can be regarded as a companion animal. Do humans make ideal pets for humans?! To an extent it depends upon sex. Mortality statistics suggest that women can survive the loss of a spouse more easily than men. Therefore on average a man probably receives more from the companionship of a woman than vice versa. Nevertheless, the astronomical profits of the divorce industry suggest that such companionship is not without its dangers. Although it appears that men receive more from the companionship, women seem to get the most compensation if it ends. However I do not want to go into the extraordinary punishments levied by society upon those who chose the wrong companion in this article. The fact that the financial penalties for choosing the wrong companion are greater than the penalties for many serious crimes is something I simply don't understand therefore I can't write much about it. Of course, a man and a woman live together for more than companionship, but taking a natural lifespan as a whole it is probably the companionship that ends up being the most important part of the relationship. That companionship is sometimes enriched by the keeping of a companion animal. If a couple can't have or chose not to have children, then often keeping companion animals fulfils a need. Now many relationships are far from perfect. Indeed the fantasy film Splash made the point that a perfect relationship is so rare that it is worth leaving all one's previous life behind in order to pursue it. (This is probably what a lot of people think they are doing when they divorce one partner for another, but the chances are that it is all a cruel illusion.) The fact is that both people probably want the same thing from the other but are unable or unwilling to give it themselves. Soon, we will be in a position to engineer lifeforms much more quickly and exactly than by the process of selective breeding. To start with one may get an animal machine that performs a useful task. Already a cat will groom its coat by licking it. It seems to us to be a horrible thing to do, but cats have been doing it for millennia, and they seems to like it. In fact they like it because they are programmed to do it. Humans have babies because they desperately want to. Very few people see that having children is a terrible drain on one's life with the minimal reward, despite several serious and humorous treatises that have been written on the subject. Women will risk their lives in operations to correct infertility. If there is a choice between saving the mother's life or the child's at birth, some religions and cultures will demand that the mother be sacrificed. Yet if you step back and look at it coldly, you could argue that it is cruel and sick to create a being that wilfully allows itself to feel unwell for nine months and then suffer great pain to produce an offspring. Yet very few humans take this viewpoint. Therefore I suggest that it would not be cruel to design a catlike creature that is programmed to enjoy thoroughly spending its entire life going around a home licking up dust and going outside every so often and defecating it into holes in the garden. There are plenty of nutritious particles in house dust (house mites live off them very nicely, thank you), and the cat-cleaner could therefore live off the dust, and possibly some external supplementation. This animal could be designed to get as much pleasure doing that as could an ordinary cat gets killing mice. In addition it could be made to purr and sit about looking relaxed etc just like an ordinary cat. Some slight randomness could be added to the program so that to all intents and purposes the cat-cleaner would appear to have as much "soul" as an ordinary cat. Of course, such an artificial animal would not have a defined lifespan and arrangements could be made to for periodic saving of the program and data to prevent death by accident. They could also reproduce in the same way as ordinary pets, but possibly with the safeguard that they can only be fertile if they are first given an additional supplement that they can't find in the natural environment. Such an animal introduced into a human household could only bring benefits. Since it is virtually impossible to match up humans so that each partner behaves as it wants to yet pleases the other (a rational definition of an ideal match), an alternative would be to create a human like animal that somehow models itself to human behaviour in a sort of mirror image to be an ideal companion. Science fiction would suggest that such beings would eventually take over. A well known example is Star Trek's Mudd's Women. It was a theme so popular that a second story was written about the "likeable rogue" Harry Mudd. However the androids only took over with the help of Captain Kirk as a punishment for the "disgusting idea" of creating such beings. An android's program could be made so that it would not want to take over. However the Star Trek story does give us a tiny glimpse of a sensible idea. When the androids were turned against Mudd, they terrorised him like the worst caricatures of nagging wives. Kirk suggested that this process would reform him into a "useful" human being. Of course, it clearly wouldn't. It is known that people often pick up the traits of their companions. Women are advised that if their husband's behaviour suddenly changes inexplicably and he displays new mannerisms, it could be because he is seeing a lot of another woman and is picking it up from her. Therefore a suitably programmed artificial human companion could whilst pleasing its owner gradually modify his behaviour. Therefore a household could consist of two real humans and two artificial humans. The artificial humans would be programmed to have a sole purpose in life to educate and improve the real humans, and to integrate their behaviour. I would expect that such an idea would at present be repulsive to most people. However I don't find it illogical. I don't find it any more unethical to create beings whose sole purpose is to improve and help humans in the manner described, that it was to create humans in the first place. I would stress that there would be no coercion involved, as with Mudd's Women after modification by Kirk. In fact with my proposed idea Mudd wouldn't have noticed his "women" had been changed at all! Humans have after all one simple purpose in life and that is to create and nurture other humans, often at great distress and effort to themselves. It is interesting to note that humans are given bodies that are the finest examples we know of self repairing machines. However these facilities have been designed to last just 40 odd years, just enough to produce and look after a child. After this time the self repairing mechanism slowly goes to pieces, leaving the human to perish in agony. The proposed new beings would find perfect fulfilment in helping humans. Humans usually fail to find fulfilment in producing children. The new beings would also be physically immortal, and by a process of recording could be invulnerable to death by accident. Humans die of old age and accident, often in pain and distress. Also, it could be possible to have the automatic processes of the body switchable to control by the higher level of intelligence to deal with injury and illness. However intelligent design (as opposed to evolutionary design) would make illness much less likely. Rather than suffer in pain after injury, the proposed being could choose to dump program and data into a store and then shut down. Then a human could make a new body for the android and play the program and data into it. If it was damaged so much that such action was not possible, then the most recently recorded program and data could be used in the replacement. Thus the new beings, whether cleaner-cats or human analogues, would have a more enjoyable life than present-day cats or humans. It will not be unethical to make them. *** This article initially appeared in Venturist Voice 2,3 Summer 1987. In editorial comment, it was suggested that "The idea of immortals whose sole purpose centres around the happiness of others is a little disturbing (as are people who appear to exist today only to please others). The situation could be remedied by a healthy dose of self image and a feeling of intrinsic worth. If necessary each one of us should be able to stand alone, and this should apply to any intelligent being we create." Also, "Artificial animals, such as the cleaner-cat, is a dilemma which actually exist with the natural product too, connected with what their ultimate fate should be. Should they be allowed to die when they have served their purpose, or should they be teased into intelligent beings and made immortal, or shelved and kept indefinitely in a dormant state, for example?" As a footnote on divorce, since the article was written it was suggested by the life insurance industry that husbands should insure their wives' lives for 250,000 or more, as that it the amount of capital that would have to be invested to raise an after tax income sufficient to employ someone to perform the domestic duties of a wife and mother. There is an interesting corollary to this. In divorce proceedings the legal profession adds together the capital and income of wife and husband, and then divides it. Should the sum of 250,000 therefore be included in this sum and notionally form part of the wife's share, and be attached to any children that are looked after by the wife? In article: <6g2v5k$rr5$1@news.nanospace.com> Anders Sandberg writes: > > > I immediately realized this was an April joke - but the project sounds > quite doable, and I would be surprised if the goldfish robot wasn't in > toy stores within a decade or so. I've got a simple, magnet-run > plastic goldfish at home myself, and the robot version would simply > add actuators and electronics similar to what we find in today's > animats. > > -- > ----------------------------------------------------------------------- > Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! > asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ > GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y > > -- ***************************************** Sincerely, * Longevity Report * * http://www.longevb.demon.co.uk/lr.htm * John de Rivaz * Fractal Report * * http://www.longevb.demon.co.uk/fr.htm * * Music I like - see homepage * ***************************************** In the information age, sharing can increase world wealth enormously, because giving information does not decrease your information. http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/JohndeR Fast loading, very few slow pictures