Yamamoto’s robots in Stories of Ibis experience emotion in a wholly different way than humans do; they describe they way they feel by using a word and an equation using the imaginary/complex number system: “Love (5+7i),” (p. 334). To help illustrate just how foreign to humans this sort of thinking is, Angela developed an exercise in mapping the emotions mentioned by the robots in Stories of Ibis on a two dimensional plane was an excellent idea in that it further drove the point that humans--both in Stories and the readers--cannot fully grasp how an artificial intelligence would deal with emotions. The robots use a word that we might be able to understand, such as love or doubt but they then quantify it with a “fuzzy” number that might approximate the degree to which they feel it.
This explanation is given in the context of a machine explaining that “human thoughts are digital” and how we humans want to see things in terms of right/wrong, good/evil, black/white or any other binary that might be applicable to a particular situation. Angela asks how we might use science fiction in a manner similar to Yamamoto to disrupt this sort of binary thinking and if it is valuable to do so. Science fiction easily gives the audience a point of view that can be placed outside the normal binaries of human thought (Yamamoto uses robots, Butler has aliens: two common “others” used in science fiction). By providing these characters that do not necessarily think as humans do, science fiction authors/filmmakers/et cetera make the audience identify at some level with something decidedly non-human; even if it is only to be afraid of the aliens or robots.
An example of such things that might not be “science fiction” are comic book superheroes such as the X-Men. Most of the X-Men are human in the sense that they were all “normal” at some point in their lives and through some sort of mutation, they became more than human, perhaps transhuman or posthuman (Magneto calls them Homo Superior). The readers of these comics are able to identify with the characters because they are still human at some level: some still have human desires such as finding love or just wanting to be treated like a “normal” human. Time travel is another and perhaps one of the older ways writers have been able to get their audience to step back from their lives and look at things differently. H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine not only coined the term “time machine” but also introduced society at large to a new form of literature. His Eloi and Morlocks probably represented the aristocrats and working classes of the late nineteenth century, respectively. Introducing something outside what we might consider “normal” is the easiest way to get humans to step outside themselves for a time and perhaps step back inside to themselves with a new, enlightened point of view.
Different technologies throughout the ages have all had the hopes and dreams or humanity projected on to them. All sorts of things from hiding hair loss to printing replacement organs on an inkjet printer. Humans cannot help but dream of all the great things science can bring us in the future. The characters in the stories Ibis tells the narrator all are using technology to escape from the limits of their everyday lives, even Shion, a piece of advanced technology herself, wishes to overcome her fear of death by turning to books, television and humans to find a deeper understanding of her own existence. By telling stories to the narrator, Ibis hopes to reveal a truth about humanity’s relationship with technology. The narrator is lead to believe that the robots only wish to care for their humans and wants the narrator to tell his brethren about the goals of the robots. A great deal of the technologies humans create are made to help ease some facet of human life and in doing so these technologies allow humans to explore other things. Allowing humans to spend time exploring other ideas and concepts is beneficial. The fruits of that exploration may not always benefit humanity, but they occasionally do and that makes it worthwhile.
Science fiction allows the audience to explore ideas and cultures in a way that can be entertaining while inviting the audience to look at things in a different light than before. Attempts at this may not always be successful but if the story gets at least one person to see the world in a more enlightened view, then the attempt was worthwhile. One of my favorite things about science fiction is that the minds behind the stories know that it is not multimillion dollar budgets and elaborate plot twists (though those things can help make the work engaging) that make the piece of science fiction work but exposing the audience to different ideas while providing them a lens to look at their own world.
Followup Questions:
1. What would be a way to map human emotions using an understandable “fuzzy” system?
1a. Could that system be a single axis spectrum or does it need to be multi-axis? (Like Angela’s plot of the emotions mentioned by the robots)
2. Why do other genres of entertainment, while capable of disturbing the normal modes of human thought, do so less than science fiction?
The Facial Action Coding System:
This is an relatively simple way that has been used to help computers comprehend human emotions based on the facial expressions we use (though not too reliably). FACS breaks down movements and gestures into codes (0 is the “natural face,” 1 is raising the inner eyebrow and 19 is sticking out your tongue), once all of the movements in a particular expression are accounted for, a computer can make a guess at the emotion the human is portraying: happiness is 6+12 (cheek raising+raising the corners of the lips) while sadness is 1+4+15 (inner brow raised+lowering of the brow+lowering of the lip corners). We can teach computers to recognize our emotions but they would probably never understand them.
Gwap.com/ESP Game:
Games With a Purpose offers a few different games that help to teach computers to solve problems that humans excel at. My favorite is the ESP Game; both players are shown an image and both players have to describe the image, if both players use the same word, they get points and move on to the next one. Each match is applied to that image and used to help computers identify images and hopefully return more relevant image search results.
This explanation is given in the context of a machine explaining that “human thoughts are digital” and how we humans want to see things in terms of right/wrong, good/evil, black/white or any other binary that might be applicable to a particular situation. Angela asks how we might use science fiction in a manner similar to Yamamoto to disrupt this sort of binary thinking and if it is valuable to do so. Science fiction easily gives the audience a point of view that can be placed outside the normal binaries of human thought (Yamamoto uses robots, Butler has aliens: two common “others” used in science fiction). By providing these characters that do not necessarily think as humans do, science fiction authors/filmmakers/et cetera make the audience identify at some level with something decidedly non-human; even if it is only to be afraid of the aliens or robots.
An example of such things that might not be “science fiction” are comic book superheroes such as the X-Men. Most of the X-Men are human in the sense that they were all “normal” at some point in their lives and through some sort of mutation, they became more than human, perhaps transhuman or posthuman (Magneto calls them Homo Superior). The readers of these comics are able to identify with the characters because they are still human at some level: some still have human desires such as finding love or just wanting to be treated like a “normal” human. Time travel is another and perhaps one of the older ways writers have been able to get their audience to step back from their lives and look at things differently. H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine not only coined the term “time machine” but also introduced society at large to a new form of literature. His Eloi and Morlocks probably represented the aristocrats and working classes of the late nineteenth century, respectively. Introducing something outside what we might consider “normal” is the easiest way to get humans to step outside themselves for a time and perhaps step back inside to themselves with a new, enlightened point of view.
Different technologies throughout the ages have all had the hopes and dreams or humanity projected on to them. All sorts of things from hiding hair loss to printing replacement organs on an inkjet printer. Humans cannot help but dream of all the great things science can bring us in the future. The characters in the stories Ibis tells the narrator all are using technology to escape from the limits of their everyday lives, even Shion, a piece of advanced technology herself, wishes to overcome her fear of death by turning to books, television and humans to find a deeper understanding of her own existence. By telling stories to the narrator, Ibis hopes to reveal a truth about humanity’s relationship with technology. The narrator is lead to believe that the robots only wish to care for their humans and wants the narrator to tell his brethren about the goals of the robots. A great deal of the technologies humans create are made to help ease some facet of human life and in doing so these technologies allow humans to explore other things. Allowing humans to spend time exploring other ideas and concepts is beneficial. The fruits of that exploration may not always benefit humanity, but they occasionally do and that makes it worthwhile.
Science fiction allows the audience to explore ideas and cultures in a way that can be entertaining while inviting the audience to look at things in a different light than before. Attempts at this may not always be successful but if the story gets at least one person to see the world in a more enlightened view, then the attempt was worthwhile. One of my favorite things about science fiction is that the minds behind the stories know that it is not multimillion dollar budgets and elaborate plot twists (though those things can help make the work engaging) that make the piece of science fiction work but exposing the audience to different ideas while providing them a lens to look at their own world.
Followup Questions:
1. What would be a way to map human emotions using an understandable “fuzzy” system?
1a. Could that system be a single axis spectrum or does it need to be multi-axis? (Like Angela’s plot of the emotions mentioned by the robots)
2. Why do other genres of entertainment, while capable of disturbing the normal modes of human thought, do so less than science fiction?
The Facial Action Coding System:
This is an relatively simple way that has been used to help computers comprehend human emotions based on the facial expressions we use (though not too reliably). FACS breaks down movements and gestures into codes (0 is the “natural face,” 1 is raising the inner eyebrow and 19 is sticking out your tongue), once all of the movements in a particular expression are accounted for, a computer can make a guess at the emotion the human is portraying: happiness is 6+12 (cheek raising+raising the corners of the lips) while sadness is 1+4+15 (inner brow raised+lowering of the brow+lowering of the lip corners). We can teach computers to recognize our emotions but they would probably never understand them.
Gwap.com/ESP Game:
Games With a Purpose offers a few different games that help to teach computers to solve problems that humans excel at. My favorite is the ESP Game; both players are shown an image and both players have to describe the image, if both players use the same word, they get points and move on to the next one. Each match is applied to that image and used to help computers identify images and hopefully return more relevant image search results.
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