Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-9pm4c Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-29T08:44:08.858Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

5 - Authenticity in the Age of Digital Companions

from PART II - THE IMPORTANCE OF MACHINE ETHICS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 June 2011

By
Sherry Turkle
Edited by
Michael Anderson  and
Susan Leigh Anderson
Michael Anderson
Affiliation:
University of Hartford, Connecticut
Susan Leigh Anderson
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
Get access

Summary

With the advent of “thinking” machines, old philosophical questions about life and consciousness acquired new immediacy. Computationally rich software and, more recently, robots have challenged our values and caused us to ask new questions about ourselves (Turkle, 2005 [1984]). Are there some tasks, such as providing care and companionship, that only befit living creatures? Can a human being and a robot ever be said to perform the same task? In particular, how shall we assign value to what we have traditionally called relational authenticity? In their review of psychological benchmarks for human-robot interaction, Kahn et al. (2007) include authenticity as something robots can aspire to, but it is clear that from their perspective robots will be able to achieve it without sentience. Here, authenticity is situated on a more contested terrain.

Eliza and the crisis of authenticity

Joseph Weizenbaum's computer program Eliza brought some of these issues to the fore in the 1960s. Eliza prefigured an important element of the contemporary robotics culture in that it was one of the first programs that presented itself as a relational artifact, a computational object explicitly designed to engage a user in a relationship (Turkle, 2001, 2004; Turkle, Breazeal, Dasté, & Scassellati, 2006; Turkle, Taggart, Kidd, & Dasté, 2006). Eliza was designed to mirror users' thoughts and thus seemed consistently supportive, much like a Rogerian psychotherapist.

Type
Chapter
Information
Machine Ethics , pp. 62 - 76
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Aldiss, B. W. (2001). Supertoys last all summer long and other stories of future time. New York: St. Martin.Google Scholar
Breazeal, C, (2002). Designing sociable robots. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Brooks, R. A. (2002). Flesh and machines: How robots will change us. New York: Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Buber, M. (1970). I and thou. New York: Touchstone.Google Scholar
Dick, P. K. (1968). Do androids dream of electric sheep?Garden City, NY: Doubleday.Google Scholar
Dreyfus, H. L. (1986). Mind over machine: The power of human intuition and expertise in the era of the computer. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Freud, S. (1960 [19191). The uncanny. In Strachey, J. (Transl., Ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (vol. 17, pp. 219–252). London: The Hogarth Press.Google Scholar
Kahn, P. H., Jr., Friedman, B., Pérez-Granados, D. R., & Freier, N. G. (2006). Robotic pets in the lives of preschool children. Interaction Studies, 7(3), 405–436.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahn, P. H., Jr., Ishiguro, H., Friedman, B., Kanda, T., Freier, N. G., Severson, R. L., & Miller, J. (2007). What is a human? – Toward psychological benchmarks in the field of human-robot interaction. Interaction Studies 8:3.Google Scholar
Kiesler, S. & Sproull, L. (1997). Social responses to “social” computers. In Friedman, B. (Ed.), Human values and the design of technology. Stanford, CA: CLSI Publications.Google Scholar
MacDorman, K. F. & Ishiguro, H. (2006). The uncanny advantage of using androids in social and cognitive science research. Interaction Studies, 7(3), 297–337.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
MacDorman, K. F. &Ishiguro, H. (2006). Opening Pandora's uncanny box: Reply to commentaries on “The uncanny advantage of using androids in social and cognitive science research.” Interaction Studies, 7(3), 361–368.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ornstein, P. H. (Ed). (1978). The search for the self: Selected writings of Heinz Kohut (1950–1978) (vol. 2). New York: International Universities Press.
Parise, S., Kiesler, S., Sproull, L., & Waters, K. (1999). Cooperating with life-like interface agents. Computers in Human Behavior. 15(2), 123–142.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Picard, R. (1997). Affective computing. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piaget, J. (1960 [1929]). The child's conception of the world (transl. J. & Tomlinson, A.), Totowa, N.J.: Littlefield, Adams.Google Scholar
Reeves, B. & Nass, C. (1999). The media equation: How people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Searle, J. (1980). Minds, brains, and programs, The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3, 417–424.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shibata, T. (2004). An overview of human interactive robots for psychological enrichment. Proceedings of the IEEE, 92(11), 1749–1758.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the screen: Identity in the age of the Internet. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Turkle, S. (2001). Relational artifacts. Proposal to the National Science Foundation SES-01115668.Google Scholar
Turkle, S. (2003). Technology and human vulnerability. The Harvard Business Review, September.Google ScholarPubMed
Turkle, S. (2004). Whither Psychoanalysis in the Computer Culture?Psychoanalytic Psychology, 21(l), 16–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turkle, S. (2005 [1984]). The second self: Computers and the human spirit. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Turkle, S. (2006). Diary. The London Review of Books, 8(8), April 20.Google Scholar
Turkle, S., Breazeal, C., Dasté, O., & Scassellati, B. (2006). First encounters with Kismet and Cog: Children's relationship with humanoid robots. In Messaris, P. & Humphreys, L. (Eds.), Digital media: Transfer in human communication. New York: Peter Lang.Google Scholar
Turkle, S., Taggart, W., Kidd, C. D. & Dasté, O. (2006). Relational artifacts with children and elders: The complexities of cybercornpanionship. Connection Science, 18(4), 347–361.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Turkle, S. (Ed). (2007) Evocative objects: Things we think with. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Weizenbaum, J. (1976). Computer power and human reason: From judgment to calculation. San Francisco, CA: W. H. Freeman.Google Scholar
Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and reality. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Winograd, T. & Flores, F. (1986). Understanding computers and cognition: A new foundation for design. Norwood, NJ: Ablex.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×