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Artificial Intelligence from Science Fiction to Soul Machines: (Re‐)Configuring Empathy between Bodies, Knowledge, and Power

  • Johanna Pitetti-Heil
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Artificial Intelligence and Human Enhancement
This chapter is in the book Artificial Intelligence and Human Enhancement

Abstract

In science fiction, empathy has long been treated as an exclusive trait of human beings, and the ability to feel empathy allows many authors to establish social hierarchies between humans and non-humans who feel or show empathy in unexpected ways. Such treatments foster what Donna Haraway has called “human exceptionalism,” which connects empathy to morality in an ableist manner. This article argues that Richard Powers’s Galatea 2.2 and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? counter this exceptionalist tradition by treating the electrical circuits of a neural network and the particular bodies of androids as forms of “vibrant matter” (Bennett) that develop their own senses of embodiment, loyalty, empathy, and efficacy. In a parallel development, the realworld company Soul Machines has been challenging preconceived conceptions of empathy in developing empathetic AI systems. Connecting these developments in AI research to science fiction discourses of empathic intelligence, the article (re)thinks empathy and (artificial) intelligence in relation to questions of morality, responsibility, and power, and asks what models of care and empathy are necessary if humanity is to develop in collaboration with artificial intelligence systems.

Abstract

In science fiction, empathy has long been treated as an exclusive trait of human beings, and the ability to feel empathy allows many authors to establish social hierarchies between humans and non-humans who feel or show empathy in unexpected ways. Such treatments foster what Donna Haraway has called “human exceptionalism,” which connects empathy to morality in an ableist manner. This article argues that Richard Powers’s Galatea 2.2 and Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? counter this exceptionalist tradition by treating the electrical circuits of a neural network and the particular bodies of androids as forms of “vibrant matter” (Bennett) that develop their own senses of embodiment, loyalty, empathy, and efficacy. In a parallel development, the realworld company Soul Machines has been challenging preconceived conceptions of empathy in developing empathetic AI systems. Connecting these developments in AI research to science fiction discourses of empathic intelligence, the article (re)thinks empathy and (artificial) intelligence in relation to questions of morality, responsibility, and power, and asks what models of care and empathy are necessary if humanity is to develop in collaboration with artificial intelligence systems.

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Table of Contents V
  3. Acknowledgements VII
  4. Introduction: Affirmative and Critical Approaches to Artificial Intelligence and Human Enhancement 1
  5. Part 1: Challenging “Strong AI” from the Perspective of Human Agency
  6. The Artificiality of the Human Mind: A Reflection on Natural and Artificial Intelligence 17
  7. Merits and Limits of AI: Philosophical Reflections on the Difference between Instrumental Rationality and Praxis-Related Hermeneutical Reason 33
  8. Experience, Identity and Moral Agency in the Age of Artificial Intelligence 51
  9. Outsourcing the Brain, Optimizing the Body: Retrotopian Projections of the Human Subject 79
  10. Life Care/Lebenssorge and the Fourth Industrial Revolution 101
  11. Part 2: Examining Merits and Limits of Applied AI
  12. AI’s Winograd Moment; or: How Should We Teach Machines Common Sense? Guidance from Cognitive Science 127
  13. Passing the Turing Test? AI Generated Poetry and Posthuman Creativity 151
  14. Why Neuroenhancement is a Philosophical Issue 167
  15. The Future of Artificial Intelligence in International Healthcare: An Index 181
  16. Part 3: Encounters with Artificial Beings in Film, Literature, and Theater
  17. Dark Ecology and Digital Images of Entropy: A Brief Survey of the History of Cinematic Morphing and the Computer Graphics of Artificial Intelligence 209
  18. Sentience, Artificial Intelligence, and Human Enhancement in US-American Fiction and Film: Thinking With and Without Consciousness 225
  19. “I, Robot”: Artificial Intelligence and Fears of the Posthuman 237
  20. AI on Stage: A Cross-Cultural Check-Up and the Case of Canada and John Mighton 261
  21. Artificial Intelligence from Science Fiction to Soul Machines: (Re‐)Configuring Empathy between Bodies, Knowledge, and Power 287
  22. List of contributors 309
  23. Index of Authors 315
  24. Index of Subjects 319
https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110770216-016

Chapters in this book

  1. Frontmatter I
  2. Table of Contents V
  3. Acknowledgements VII
  4. Introduction: Affirmative and Critical Approaches to Artificial Intelligence and Human Enhancement 1
  5. Part 1: Challenging “Strong AI” from the Perspective of Human Agency
  6. The Artificiality of the Human Mind: A Reflection on Natural and Artificial Intelligence 17
  7. Merits and Limits of AI: Philosophical Reflections on the Difference between Instrumental Rationality and Praxis-Related Hermeneutical Reason 33
  8. Experience, Identity and Moral Agency in the Age of Artificial Intelligence 51
  9. Outsourcing the Brain, Optimizing the Body: Retrotopian Projections of the Human Subject 79
  10. Life Care/Lebenssorge and the Fourth Industrial Revolution 101
  11. Part 2: Examining Merits and Limits of Applied AI
  12. AI’s Winograd Moment; or: How Should We Teach Machines Common Sense? Guidance from Cognitive Science 127
  13. Passing the Turing Test? AI Generated Poetry and Posthuman Creativity 151
  14. Why Neuroenhancement is a Philosophical Issue 167
  15. The Future of Artificial Intelligence in International Healthcare: An Index 181
  16. Part 3: Encounters with Artificial Beings in Film, Literature, and Theater
  17. Dark Ecology and Digital Images of Entropy: A Brief Survey of the History of Cinematic Morphing and the Computer Graphics of Artificial Intelligence 209
  18. Sentience, Artificial Intelligence, and Human Enhancement in US-American Fiction and Film: Thinking With and Without Consciousness 225
  19. “I, Robot”: Artificial Intelligence and Fears of the Posthuman 237
  20. AI on Stage: A Cross-Cultural Check-Up and the Case of Canada and John Mighton 261
  21. Artificial Intelligence from Science Fiction to Soul Machines: (Re‐)Configuring Empathy between Bodies, Knowledge, and Power 287
  22. List of contributors 309
  23. Index of Authors 315
  24. Index of Subjects 319
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