![\"Artificial](\"https:\/\/cdn.vanderbilt.edu\/t2-my\/my-prd\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2261\/2019\/01\/Artificial-Intelligence.png\")
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Written by Nicole Gillis (student of UNIV 3275)<\/i> Ted Chiang explores the complicated nature of how humans could both reinforce and blur the perceived distinctions between AIs and humans in his work The Lifecycle of Software Objects<\/a>. <\/em>\u00a0Within his novella, Chiang showcases a fictional world where humans treat artificial intelligence (AI) as something inherently other and subordinate to themselves, while contradictorily raising those AIs with similar emotions and social structures as one would raise a human child.\u00a0 Chiang establishes this dynamic by creating a realm where humans have created a simulation world named \u201cData Earth,\u201d and in this simulation AIs, called \u201cdigients,\u201d are trained through experience and education to evolve from animal-like creatures to beings capable of basic level sentences and human-like emotion.\u00a0 In this world, there is a clearly established hierarchy; humans are responsible for making digient \u201clife\u201d on Data Earth possible and control the decisions that affect digient life.\u00a0 Despite the humans existing in a clear position of superiority over the digients, they often forget that the digients are inherently different than humans and project human-level expectations of development and emotion onto the AIs in a way that characterizes them as children.\u00a0 The projection of human developmental expectations leads the humans to refuse the digients sexual maturity and delves into the question of whether these AIs are capable of \u201cexpressive authenticity\u201d as explained in Colton, Pease, and Saunder\u2019s 2018 paper \u201cIssues of Authenticity in Autonomously Creative Systems<\/a>.\u201d The contradictory nature of the human interactions with the digients shows that the distinctions between AIs and humans can simultaneously be qualified yet blurred when human emotion is added to the situation.<\/p>\n Throughout The Lifecycle of Software Objects<\/em>, Chiang emphasizes that humans are superior to digients.\u00a0 By making humans responsible for keeping the simulation world up and running, the fate of the AIs depends on the humans.\u00a0 Additionally, the AIs could only develop their own culture after the humans taught them how to read, write, and go through school, thus making humans their mentors.\u00a0 In the closest approximation to the human form, the digients can leave Data Earth by projecting their code into a robot body in the human world, but even then, the code is run through servers outside of the robot\u2019s shell.\u00a0 Chiang\u2019s assertion of the digients\u2019 dependency on humans in combination with the AIs\u2019 inability to permanently exist within the human realm makes the AIs inherently dependent on, and \u201cother\u201d than humans.<\/p>\n Despite the obvious nature of the digients\u2019 \u201cotherness,\u201d the humans still develop emotional attachments to the AIs and treat them like human children that exist in a simulated world.\u00a0 The humans teach the AIs how to speak, how to read, and give them educational lessons and homework.\u00a0 They play with the digients and even interact with them in robot bodies in the human world.\u00a0 This parental relationship is exemplified when Ana, a human, tells Jax, her digient, \u201cMy life might be simpler if I didn\u2019t have you to take care of, but I wouldn\u2019t be as happy. \u00a0I love you, Jax.\u201d \u00a0To which Jax replies: \u201cLove you too,\u201d (Chiang, 2010, p. 103).\u00a0 Ana\u2019s motherly love for her AI shows that the subordinate nature of her digient makes her see the AI as a relatable child capable of human-like development rather than an \u201cother,\u201d and blurs the line between what distinguishes this AI from a human child.<\/p>\n Because the humans treat their digients like children, the humans are eventually faced with the dilemma of granting their digients sexual maturity, and therefore autonomy over their own \u201cbodies\u201d when a sex-doll company asks the humans to sell their digients with the goal of turning them into sex workers.\u00a0 The humans all object initially, denying that their digients are mature enough for sexual matters because of their \u201clack of experience of romantic relationships and jobs,\u201d (Chiang, 2010, p. 144). Yet this assumption treats the digients like human children when digients are inherently different than human children. Sexual acts do not exist in the digient world because humans have refrained from giving them that knowledge.\u00a0 One could say the same about human children; however, sexual acts do<\/em>exist in the human world whether parents want children to gain this knowledge or not.\u00a0 Some theories like Sigmund Freud\u2019s psychosexual development theory from \u201cThree Essays on the Theory of Sexuality<\/a>,\u201d (1905) even suggest that sexuality is an integral part of child development.\u00a0Although psychosexual development theories are considered unreliable by many, if it were true, then withholding sexual information from the digients could impact their development to make them even less like human children.\u00a0 This key difference between the acquisition of knowledge between human children and digients exemplifies how the distinction between humans and AIs can be qualified.\u00a0 The character Derek in the novella notes this distinction, and when thinking about whether or not to expose digients to sex he thinks \u201cBut perhaps the standards for maturity for a digient shouldn\u2019t be as high as they are for a human; maybe Marco is as mature as he needs to be to make this decision,\u201d and ultimately this thought process leads Derek to ask his AI if it agrees with becoming a sex worker, and proceeds to follow through given the affirmation of the AI (Chiang, 2010, p. 144).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Written by Nicole Gillis (student of UNIV 3275) Note: This post is a modified version of the author’s late-term synthesis exam essay\u00a0submission. Part 2 is here. Ted Chiang explores the complicated nature of how humans could both reinforce and blur the perceived distinctions between AIs and humans in his work The Lifecycle of Software Objects….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6860,"featured_media":1356,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-artificial-intelligence"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/universityfundingprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/universityfundingprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/universityfundingprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/universityfundingprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6860"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/universityfundingprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1394"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/universityfundingprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1406,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/universityfundingprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1394\/revisions\/1406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/universityfundingprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/universityfundingprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/universityfundingprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/my.vanderbilt.edu\/universityfundingprograms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nNote: This post is a modified version of the author’s late-term synthesis exam essay\u00a0submission. Part 2 is here<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n