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“Siri, where should I eat lunch”? “Ok Google, I need to buy an umbrella. Where should I go”? We have come to live in a world where we ask our phones everything from where the closest gas station is to how many stars are in our galaxy. Whether we realize it or not, artificial intelligence, has become a part of our everyday lives.  The popularity of films like Ex-Machina, A.I. Artificial Intelligence, and Wall-E demonstrate our recent preoccupation with artificial intelligence and the potential uses and implications for the technology.

My last blog post  got me thinking about artificial intelligence and how AI technology attempts to interpret and anticipate our emotional and physical needs. Movies like Ex-Machina capitalize on the fear that AI technology may one day develop consciousness with disastrous consequences. There is absolutely a potential to cause harm with AI technology, conscious or otherwise. I started to wonder if there was a way to instill artificial intelligence technology with a moral code, a sense of right and wrong.  I was also curious to find out what the government’s stance on AI is.

An article recently published in Nature  suggests that as AI technology becomes more advanced and more intelligent the only way to ensure that AI technology is benevolent is to focus programming efforts on instilling a code of ethics in AI. As for what that would look like, I’m not entirely sure. Who would be in charge of this moral code? After all, each one of us lives by our own code of ethics, which are informed by our individual world view and cultural experience.

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As far as the government is concerned, the White House, released an official report on the future of artificial intelligence earlier this month.  They laid out a plan, though not in detail, to utilize AI to increase economic growth and automate certain sectors of industry. AI is definitely something to keep an eye on as it isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.

Works Cited

Happy, sad, angry, confused: four basic emotions that those of us who experience empathy can immediately identify in someone else’s facial expression. Or can we?  During a sociology class in high school we were shown a series of facial expressions and asked to identify the emotion that person was feeling. If we guessed accurately, it indicated we felt empathy, if not we were told it was indicative of anti-social behavior and the marker of a sociopath. I always wondered how accurate this test was and how universally it could be applied. This is an important topic because, not only does this have ramifications for the study of psychopathy but also for developing artificial intelligence technologies that attempt to recognize facial expressions.

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In a 2008 study conducted on inmates published by the National Center for Biotechnology Information, doctors Hastings, Tangney, and Stuewig found that psychopath was negatively correlated with facial recognition of both sad and happy emotions. The inmates were tested using the Hare Psychopathy Checklist: Screening Version the field standard screening process that tests for psychopathic personality disorders. I couldn’t help but wonder how universally these tests could be administered as both the Hare Psychopathy Checklist and the aforementioned study that utilized it are studies conducted in the western world. Could these same standards be applied to different cultures and peoples?

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A recent article published in Science suggests that it may not as facial expressions are not necessarily universal. Studies conducted with isolated peoples in Papua New Guinea found that facial expressions may be cultural constructs. The Trobrianders of Papua New Guinea recognized expressions that you and I would read as shock or fear as angry and threatening. This divergence suggests that expressions of emotion are not universally understood.

I would be interested to find out what would happen if tests that are the standard in the west, like the Hare Psychopathy Checklist, were administered to peoples of vastly different cultures.  I would also be interested to see if there was a way to test these theories in a double-blind, controlled study as they are far more reliable.

Works Cited

Hastings, Mark E., June P. Tangney, and Jeff Stuewig. “Psychopathy and Identification of Facial Expressions of Emotion.” Personality and Individual Differences. U.S. National Library of Medicine, May 2008. Web. 19 Oct. 2016.

“Multi-Health Systems — Home.” Multi-Health Systems — Home. N.p., n.d. Web. 20 Oct. 2016.

Price, Michael. “Facial Expressions—including Fear—may Not Be as Universal as We Thought.” Science (2016): n. pag. Web.

Imagine if there was a switch in your brain that could shut down your ability to control impulses and self-control. A recent study published in Science Advances has found evidence of just that. Since the temporoparietal junction of our brains allows us to view things from the perspectives of others, including the perspective of ourselves down the line. This is the portion of our brain that allows us to regulate the impulse to better ourselves in the present at a cost to ourselves in the future. This function is tied to the decisions we make in the present, if we are not able to see how decisions will effect ourselves in the future it is unlikely we will make rational decisions.

The study was carried out by Alexander Soutschek and his team, in a controlled study. They attempted to interrupt the temporarparietal junction with transcranial magnetic stimulation for 40 seconds followed by a 30 minute task. The control group received the same transcranial magnetic stimulation in a different area of the brain so as not to skew the results. Participants of both the control and test group were asked to choose between the instant gratification of a monetary reward the amount of which was uncertain or the longterm benefit of receiving a larger, guaranteed reward within three to eighteen months.  They were then asked to view a series of red dots from the perspective of an avatar. This series of questions tested not only the participants’ ability to make well-informed choices by taking on the perspective of others but also by taking on the perspectives of themselves down the line. The team was able to reject the null hypothesis when participants failed to use perspective to make good decisions.

I began reading the article I found it to be a really interesting discovery. However, I couldn’t figure out what good it could do for society as a whole until the conclusion. An article in Scientific American,  pointed out the potential benefits of this discovery on addiction.  If addicts are unable to view their lives in the future, having gotten clean, it is unlikely they will feel the compulsion to quit as they lack the motivation to do so.

If you are interested in learning more about the temporoparietal junction of the brain, as I was, check out this video, to find out how this area of the brain can effect moral decisions.