FLORIDI-2008-AI and The Fourth Revolution

r 2008 The Author
Journal compilation r 2008 Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK, and
350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA
METAPHILOSOPHY
Vol. 39, Nos. 45, October 2008
0026-1068
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCES NEW FRONTIER:

ARTIFICIAL COMPANIONS AND THE FOURTH REVOLUTION
LUCIANO FLORIDI
Abstract: In this article I argue that the best way to understand the information
turn is in terms of a fourth revolution in the long process of reassessing humanitys
fundamental nature and role in the universe. We are not immobile, at the centre of
the universe (Copernicus); we are not unnaturally distinct and different from the
rest of the animal world (Darwin); and we are far from being entirely transparent
to ourselves (Freud). We are now slowly accepting the idea that we might be
informational organisms among many agents (Turing), inforgs not so dramatically different from clever, engineered artefacts, but sharing with them a global
environment that is ultimately made of information, the infosphere.
Keywords: artificial companions, computer revolution, inforg, infosphere.
At the beginning of Shakespeares Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice asks:

Who is his companion now? Today, the answer could easily be: an
artificial agent.
Artificial companions, or ACs (Lee et al. 2007), come in various forms.
Examples include the Wi-Fi-enabled rabbit Nabaztag, the therapeutic robot
baby harp seal Paro (Wada and Shibata 2007), the child-sized humanoid
robot KASPAR (Cole 2007) and the interactive doll Primo Puel. This first
generation of simple ACs is interactively sociable, informationally skilled
and capable of some basic natural-language processing (AISB 2005). Later
generations are expected to become more autonomous, and hence behave in
self-initiated, self-regulated, goal-oriented ways, and to be able to learn from
their users, in the machine-learning sense of the expression (Wilks 2007).
The technology is largely available already, and the question is when rather
than whether ACs will become commodities (Benyon and Mival 2007).
Bandai, interestingly the producer of the Tamagotchi as well, has sold
more than one million copies of Primo Puel since 2000. ACs are a
technological success because they are not the outcome of some unforeseeable breakthrough in Good Old-Fashioned AI, but the social equivalent of
Deep Blue: they can deal successfully with their interactive tasks, even if
they have the intelligence of a toaster. And they are philosophically
significant precisely because they are neither Asimovs robots nor Hals
children. Out of the realm of thought experiments and unrestrained
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LUCIANO FLORIDI
speculations, they posit very concrete, ethical challenges (Floridi 2007b),

which usher in what may be defined as a fourth revolution in humanitys
self-understanding (Floridi and Sanders 2004). Let me explain.
How we build, conceptualise and interact with ACs will influence our
future ability to address humanitys needs and wishes, with a serious impact
on standards of living and related economic issues. In 2007, for example, an
estimated $40.8 billion was spent on biological pets in the United States
alone.1 To get a sense of the magnitude of such a figure, consider that this is
roughly how much Saudi Arabia plans to invest over the next twenty years
to meet the kingdoms water needs, according to Reuters.
The arrival of a whole population of helpful and psychologically
acceptable ACs may change this dramatically.
It is often argued that ACs will become increasingly popular the more
they are able to assist elderly users satisfactorily and cost-efficiently (Mival
et al. 2004). This is true and encouraging, especially for countries where
there is an ageing population, like Japan and parts of Europe. We should,
however, remember that future generations of senior citizens will be not emigrants but children of the digital era. Here the gaming industry provides
useful projections. Today, sixty-seven percent of American heads of
households play computer and video games, and the average game
player is 33 years old and has been playing games for 12 years.2 When
they retire, it is not so much that they will be unable to use IT products as
that they may need help to do so, in the same way that one may still be
perfectly able to read, but no longer without glasses. Thus, they may
welcome the support of a personal assistant in the form of an AC, which can
act as an interface with the rest of the world. ACs should be planned more
with the digitally impaired in mind than the computer illiterates.
The last point suggests that, in the long term, ACs may be evolving in
the direction of specialised computer agents, dedicated to specific
informational tasks, following trends already experienced in other technological industries. Three are already envisionable.
First, ACs will address social needs and the human desire for emotional bonds and playful interactions, not unlike pets (Lee et al. 2007),
thus competing with the omnipresent television set for attention. Here a
key question is whether allowing humans to befriend ACs might be
morally questionable. Should their non-biological nature make us discriminate against them? Not necessarily, if one agrees with Descartes
(1996), Huxley (1893) and Wiener (1961), who argued that animals are
living machines anyway. On the other hand, the question casts an interesting light on our understanding of what kind of persons we would like to be.
1
Source: American Pet Products Manufacturers Association, at http://www.appma.org/
press_industrytrends.asp
2
Source: Entertainment Software Association, at http://www.theesa.com/facts/top_10_
facts.php
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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCES NEW FRONTIER
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Perhaps there is nothing wrong with pet-like ACs. After all, they already
constitute a widespread and innocuous phenomenon. In January 2008,
there were more than 220 million neopets online, owned by more than 150
million people.3 Nobody has yet raised any moral objection.
Second, ACs will provide ordinary information-based services, in contexts such as communication, entertainment, education, training, health and
safety. Like avatars, ACs are likely to become a means to interact with other
people as well as social agents in themselves. In this context, one of the
challenges is that their availability may increase social discriminations and
the digital divide (Norris 2001). In particular, with respect to individuals
with relevant needs or disabilities, the hope is that they will be able to enjoy
the support of an AC, just as the Motability Scheme in the United
Kingdom, for example, provides disabled individuals with the opportunity
to own or hire powered wheelchairs and scooters at affordable prices.4
Finally, ACs will act as memory stewards (OHara et al. 2006), creating
and managing a repository of information about their owners. This is also
good news. For leaving behind a lasting trace has always been a popular
strategy to withstand the oblivion that inevitably follows ones death.
Nowadays, we can all be slightly less forgettable, in so far as we succeed
in our mnemonic DIY. This trend will grow exponentially, once ACs become
commodities. Storage capacity is increasing at an astonishing pace. Between
2006 and 2010 [ . . . ] the digital universe will increase more than six fold from
161 exabytes to 988 exabytes.5 It is only a matter of decades before a whole
life will be recordable by an AC. But then, it will not be long before some
smart applicationFbased on a lifetime recording of someones voice, visual
and auditory experiences, expressed opinions and tastes, linguistic habits,
millions of digital documents and so forthFwill be able to simulate that
person, to the point where one may interact with her AC even after her
death, without noticing, or even deliberately disregarding, any significant
difference. A personalised AC could make one e-mortal. After all, an
advanced, customised ELIZA can already fool many people in Second Life.
Our new memory stewards will exacerbate old problems and pose new
and difficult ones. What to erase, rather than what to record (as is already
the case with ones e-mail), the safety and editing of what is recorded, the
availability, accessibility and transmission of the information recorded,
its longevity, future consumption and re-playing, the management of
ACs that have outlived their human partners, the redressing of the fine
balance between the art of forgetting and the process of forgiving
(consider post-dictatorial or post-apartheid cultures), and the impact
3
Source: Neopets, at http://www.neopets.com/petcentral.phtml

Source: Motability, at http://www.motability.co.uk/
5
Source: The Expanding Digital Universe: A Forecast of Worldwide Information
Growth Through 2010, white paper sponsored by EMC-IDC, at http://www.emc.com/
about/destination/digital_universe/
4
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LUCIANO FLORIDI
that all this will have on the construction of personal and social identities,
and on the narratives that make up peoples own past and roots: these are
only some of the issues that will require careful handling, not only
technologically, but also educationally and philosophically.
The previous trends suggest that ACs are part of a wide and influential
informational turn, a fourth revolution in the long process of reassessing
humanitys fundamental nature and role in the universe. We are not
immobile, at the centre of the universe (Copernicus); we are not unnaturally
distinct and different from the rest of the animal world (Darwin); and we are
far from being entirely transparent to ourselves (Freud). We are now slowly
accepting the idea that we might be informational organisms among many
agents (Turing), inforgs not so dramatically different from clever, engineered artefacts, sharing with them a global environment that is ultimately
made of information, the infosphere. The information revolution is not
about extending ourselves but about re-interpreting who we are. When ACs
become commodities, people will accept this new conceptual revolution
with much less reluctance. It is humbling, but also exciting. For in view of
this important evolution in our self-understanding, and given the sort of
IT-mediated interactions that humans will increasingly enjoy with other
agents, whether natural or synthetic, we have the unique opportunity of
developing a new ecological approach to the whole of reality. This approach
is not just biocentric and does not privilege only the natural or the
untouched, it treats as authentic and genuine all forms of existence and
behaviour, even those based on synthetic or engineered artefacts. In the end,
how we build, shape and regulate ecologically the new infosphere is the
crucial challenge brought about by ACs and the fourth revolution (Floridi
2007a). Beatrice would not have understood an artificial companion as an
answer to her question. Yet future generations will find it unproblematic. It
is going to be our task to ensure that the transition from her question to
their answer will be as ethically unproblematic as possible.
Department of Philosophy
University of Hertfordshire
de Havilland Campus
Hatfield, Herts AL10 9AB
United Kingdom
[email protected]
References
AISB. 2005. Hard Problems and Open Challenges in Robot-Human
Interaction. In Proceedings of AISB 05 Symposium on Robot Companions. Hatfield, U.K.: Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence
and the Simulation of Behaviour. Available at http://www.aisb.org.uk/
publications/proceedings/aisb05/5_RoboComp_final.pdf
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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCES NEW FRONTIER
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Benyon, D., and O. Mival. 2007. Introducing the Companions Project:

Intelligent, Persistent, Personalised Interfaces to the Internet. In
Proceedings of the 21st British HCI Group Annual Conference (HCI
07), edited by J. Ball Linden et al. Available at http://www.bcs.org/
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Cole, E. 2007. Using a Robot to Teach Human Social Skills. Wired.
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Descartes, R. 1996. Meditations on First Philosophy: With Selections from
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Floridi, L. 2007a. Global Information Ethics: The Importance of Being
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Floridi, L., and J. W. Sanders. 2004. On the Morality of Artificial
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Huxley, T. H. 1893. On the Hypothesis That Animals Are Automata,
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Norris, P. 2001. Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty,
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OHara, K., R. Morris, N. Shadbolt, G. J. Hitch, W. Hall, and N.
Beagrie. 2006. Memories for Life: A Review of the Science and
Technology. Journal of the Royal Society Interface 3:35165.
Wada, K., and T. Shibata. 2007. Living with Seal Robots: Its Sociopsychological and Physiological Influences on the Elderly at a Care
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Wiener, N. 1961. Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the
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r 2008 The Author

Journal compilation r 2008 Metaphilosophy LLC and Blackwell Publishing Ltd

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCES NEW FRONTIER:

At the beginning of Shakespeares Much Ado About Nothing, Beatrice asks:

speculations, they posit very concrete, ethical challenges (Floridi 2007b),

r 2008 The Author

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCES NEW FRONTIER

Source: Neopets, at http://www.neopets.com/petcentral.phtml

r 2008 The Author

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCES NEW FRONTIER

Benyon, D., and O. Mival. 2007. Introducing the Companions Project:

r 2008 The Author

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