Bonus: (sub)Text #3: Spielberg’s “AI: Artificial Intelligence”: What Is It to Be Human? (Part One)

0:06 Mark: This is the third bonus preview for Wes's new podcast, which is now officially called Subtext. You will hear a little less than the first half of it. Now, if you want to hear the whole thing, become a Partially Examined Life Citizen@PartiallyExaminedLife.com or a $5 or more Patreon Subscriber@patreon.com PartiallyExaminedLife this discussion covers Steven Spielberg's film Artificial Intelligence. Hope you enjoy it.

0:29 Wes: This is Wes Alwan, and I'm joined by David Kyle Johnson, who is professor of philosophy at King's College and a professor for a long time. Partially Examined Life sponsor the great courses. Welcome, David.

0:42 David: Hey, thanks for having me.

0:43 Wes: Wes, why don't you introduce yourself and tell us about your interest in this film and more generally. I know you have a course with great courses on science fiction and philosophy.

0:52 David: Yes. So I teach philosophy at King's College in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, but I also am a professor for the. The great courses. I've actually done three courses with them starting back in 2014, I guess. I have a metaphysics course with them called Exploring Metaphysics. I have a general introduction course with them called the Big Questions of Philosophy. And then I have a course that just came out this year, 2018, called sci fi, cleverly titled P H I. Sci Phi. Yeah, I stole it from the Sci Phi Journal, who was. The Sci Phi Journal is no longer publishing now, but I inadvertently stole it from them.

I started typing that blanket without even thinking about it, and my content editors loved it. And so we decided to name the course after that. But anyway, it's called Sci Phi: Science Fiction as Philosophy. And the idea is to, as much as I can, I try to, instead of like a lot of the pop culture and philosophy stuff that's out there, simply uses the pop culture as a springboard, right? The pop culture will raise issues or bring to light or raise certain questions or bring to light certain issues, or can simply be used as a thought experiment to discuss philosophical topics.

I try to, as much as I can treat in this. In this course, try to treat science fiction as philosophy. So in other words, the idea is to try to identify the argument that the filmmaker is actually trying to make. They're trying to make some kind of point, some kind of moral of the story. They're trying to make some kind of argument or take some kind of position. And so as much as I can, I try to identify what that is and then examine it, right? See if it's a legitimate point or not. What if what have real Philosophers said about it. What are the pros and cons?

What are the arguments for and against that kind of stuff? I span a lot of different. Like, I do some stuff that's barely considered sci fi, like the Handmaid's Tale. Some people would consider that sci fi. I do really hardcore sci fi stuff like Star Trek. Although I've heard even some people argue that Star Trek isn't science fiction, which is ridiculous. But I do Star Wars. Some people think that Star wars is more fantasy than sci fi, but I do Star Wars. But I also go back. Like, I have a lecture on Metropolis, which is a much older. It's a silent science fiction film.

And some of the stuff I do have a fun lecture on Soylent Green. I do some stuff from the 60s, 70s. But I have two lectures. So to get to the point, I have two lectures on artificial intelligence. And one of them is very much focused on AI Artificial intelligence. It's always been one of my favorite movies. Especially the interesting kind of connection between Kubrick and Steven Spielberg in the film and I guess not in the film, but in the history of the film and that kind of stuff. I've always thought it was an interesting mix of the two.

3:18 Wes: Yeah. So it originally started out. I know Kubrick, and the whole production of it goes way back. And Kubrick originally got this project started right before it ended up with Spielberg.

3:28 David: I've reached. It's been a while. Researched this whenever I was researching the lecture. And it was basically an idea that Kubrick had had for a long time and something he wanted to do for a really long time. And it just never was able to materialize for a number of different reasons. And so he finally sold it to Spielberg or his production company or whatever.

3:46 Wes: I think ultimately there's a 1969 short story called Super Toys Last All Summer Long.

3:52 David: That's right.

3:53 Wes: That is originally the basis for this. And it got postponed because Kubrick wasn't convinced that an actual human actor could play the. That Haley Joel Osment plays the robot child. And he didn't think special effects were up to it. So I think that that was part of the production delay.

4:10 David: Yeah, that's right. So I think the book was like. I don't know if the word commissioned is right.

4:14 Wes: Right.

4:14 David: But he had. The book was kind of written under his tutelage, under. With the idea that he would make the movie. And then it, like you said, it never did come to fruition. And then, you know, I guess it was in 2001, I think, is when the movie was made when it finally came out, that was right. As, like, everyone was lamenting the fact that Kubrick had died before the real 2001 had hit. Since 2001 was one of his big films, but this was also almost like his last film, but not quite since he was dead and Spielberg had made it. But anyway. And I've always thought it was a brilliant film. And I think it makes a nice philosophical point too, which we can talk about.

4:45 Wes: I hadn't seen. So I rewatched it for this episode, of course, but I hadn't seen this movie in a long, long time. And when you had mentioned. When you had suggested it as a possibility, that immediately jumped out at me because I remember being. I remember it not getting great reviews, and I don't think I saw it in the theater. And then when I saw it on dvd, I guess that was back when you saw things on dvd. You just remember being deeply touched and deeply affected by it and thinking, wow, this is a really underrated, wonderful movie. And one of the things that attracted it to me was something that this whole question of artificial intelligence, but also the larger question of what makes us human.

What makes. There's the Pinocchio theme, where there's the par with Pinocchio, and Pinocchio is an explicit theme of the movie, but where the idea is that the robot character is not real in some sense and wants to become real. And then the question is, well, what are the criteria of realness? So that stuff fascinates me. I've written and done talks on Ex Machina, which I'm sure you've probably thought about, too.

5:53 David: It comes up in the AI lecture. I don't dedicate a lecture to it in the sci Fi course, but it definitely comes up. And it has its own little section in one of my lectures on artificial intelligence.

6:01 Wes: And I actually thought that was a similarly poignant movie, which I'll talk about why I think these movies are poignant when we get into the analysis. But I'm glad you suggested this. So is your background. What did you do in grad school? What was your focus?

6:14 David: I got my PhD at the University of Oklahoma. My dissertation is on the freedom and foreknowledge problem, but it's very heavily based in logic. Have a lot of classwork and coursework and that kind of stuff in logic. But artificial intelligence and philosophy of mind was always kind of like a secondary major interest of mine. And so I've written on it, and of course, I've got multiple lectures on it, for the great courses. And that Kind of stuff. And so it's always been kind of a passion of mine in that way.

6:41 Wes: So did you say you have courses on that at King's College as well, or.

6:45 David: Yeah, I teach the philosophy of mind class at King's.

6:47 Wes: Okay.

6:48 David: And I have, like I said, I've got multiple lectures in it. A big section of the metaphysics course for great courses is on philosophy of mind and artificial intelligence is a lecture there. And. And then of course, I deal with it in the other courses as well.

7:01 Wes: All right, so why don't we do a little synopsis? I don't know if you're prepared to do that, if you want to do that.

7:08 David: Yeah, I think I can do that in pretty short order.

7:10 Wes: We try to assume they. I mean, obviously you should watch the movie if you're listening before listening to this conversation, but it's worthwhile just to. Why don't you go ahead?

7:18 David: Yeah, well, and I do the same thing in the course, in the Sci Fi course is I actually encourage the students to. The students, the customers, whoever's listening to the course to watch, like at the end of each lecture I say, okay, next time we're going to talk about this, so go watch this beforehand. But I also always assume that they didn't do that and give a little synopsis in the lecture. So it's not required that you watch the stuff as the course goes, but it certainly does help. That said, I have a little experience of summarizing these things, so let's see if I can do it off the cuff. So essentially, the film opens with who are clearly the brains behind an artificial intelligence program. Their business is, I forget the name

7:52 Wes: of the cybernetics, I think.

7:54 David: Yeah, cybernetics, right. So we open up in Cybernetics and they're having a discussion about essentially the next phase in their series of androids. And the creator, the president of Cybernetics, wants to create a robot that can feel, that can dream. That's one of the big things he talks about that can genuinely, like, basically completely pass what I would call a megaturing test where it would behave just like a human. It can really love and really dream. And there's a little bit of discussion about this about, well, if it can really love, what kind of obligation does the person who it loves have back to that Android or that Mecha?

They call them Mechas in the movie in return. And we cut then to 18 months later, we are introduced to a family whose son is very sick and is not expected to recover. And this is set in A future in which global warming and climate change has devastated a lot of things. Sea levels are very high, a lot of things are in short supply, and there is not enough food to go around. And so there is a. Basically a cap on the number of children you can have. This couple has already had their one child. They cannot have another. And yet their one child is in the hospital never expecting to recover.

And so they're desperate for a child companion. And the husband in the relationship works. It somehow is connected to cybernetics. And so he basically gets them to give him a prototype of this new Android that is set to actually be a child and be a child for a couple and be a loving child for a couple. And so he introduces it. David is the name of the Mecha to the mother. She freaks out for a little bit, not quite sure what to think about it. But then as she's trying to acclimate to it, he makes clear that they can take him back. But if she decides to keep him, she has to imprint him.

This series of words that she says to him that will have David imprint on her and that will make him unreturnable. That if they ever decide to give him away, they can't resell him. I guess they should say if they return him, they have to destroy him because he will have this unrevocable bond to the mother. And so it goes a while. It's a little awkward for a while. He kind of learning how to behave and that kind of stuff. But she finally decides to keep him and she imprints him. End up moment she does, he changes, he calls her mother, and he behaves much more like an ordinary child would.

And so she kind of gets accustomed to him being his child. But then, of course, the real son, the biological son, I should say, not to beg any questions, recovers. He comes back into the house and this wonderful. One of my favorite scenes is this ironic scene where this kid is sitting there. And the only reason he's able to be there is because of major technological advances and medical advances. And he basically has robot legs, right? Like he has these things on his legs that allow him to walk. And he's looking at David going, you're Mecha, I'm real.

And then he walks along in his electronic legs, right? Clearly some commentary there. But there's a rivalry develops between the boys. At one point, he kind of goads him into eating too much spinach or something like that. He has to be repaired. Long story short, the boy is not very nice. He kind of tricks David into doing Things he knows will get him into trouble. He tricks him into trying to get a lock of his mother's hair. And so the mother wakes up with him with scissors right by her face as he's trying to cut her hair, David trying to cut her hair.

That kind of freaks them out. They think he maybe poses a danger. They have a birthday party for the biological son, and some of the other kids are being cruel to him, and they poke him to see if he can feel pain, and of course he can. And he grabs ahold of his brother and says, keep me safe, keep me safe. And he ends up pulling him into the swimming pool. And the boy can't swim because his legs don't work, and he almost drowns, right? And so at that point, the mother decides that he's too much of a danger to the family and to her biological son, but she doesn't have the heart to return him to Cybertronics, where they would destroy him.

And so she just drives him out and leaves him out in the wilderness with his mechanical bear friend called Teddy, and just lets him go, gives him some money, says stay away from the flesh fairs and good luck. And she's obviously very emotional when she does this. And of course, David is very distraught because he has imprinted on her and his mother that he loves is leaving him behind. And then the rest of the movie follows his quest to become a real boy. So one of the things I left out was that one of the things that the brother kind of does to get at David is introduces, has the mother read the story of Pinocchio to them, and he can't determine the distinction between reality and fantasy and thinks that the Blue Fairy in the story is real.

And so he sets off on a quest after his mother dumps him in the woods to become a real boy, to find the Blue Fairy. And in the midst of that, he meets Jude Law, who plays a robot that is basically a male prostitute sex robot. And long story short, he helps him in his quest to find the Blue Fairy. This quest eventually leads them back to Cybertronics, where David discovers that Cybertronics has created a number of Davids, like he finds, multiples of himself. And he is very distraught by this. He finds his father, as it were, his maker there, but he's unsatisfied with the encounter that they have, and so he eventually drops himself into the ocean.

Cybertronics is actually in the ruins of New York City, which is now under the sea, essentially, except for the tops of the very tall buildings. And he just drops down into the water. And when he does, he sees the blue fairy. He sees basically, I guess it would be Coney Island. He sees the wonder wheel and there's a Pinocchio kind of display there. And he sees the blue fairy. He comes back up and Jude Law has basically the police copter that they hijacked to get to New York City and Cybertronics to begin with. And he says, I see the blue fairy down there.

The police are now after Jude Law. They take him away, but not before he sets basically the thing to submerge, puts David in there. And David goes down and finds the blue fairy underwater and decides to try to ask the blue fairy to make him a real boy. And of course, the statue just sits there and stares back at him. And his quest knocked one of the things, one of the wires holding up the wonder wheel loose. The wonder wheel falls on him. And David sits there for 2000 years looking at the blue fairy, asking the blue fairy to make him a real boy.

Of course, he eventually kind of shuts down. He's not saying anything anymore, but he's still just sitting there staring at the blue fairy. And then this is the part I think that critics didn't like.

13:50 Wes: Yeah, this really jumps the shark here.

13:52 David: But 2000, I thought the movie was gonna end when I saw it in a theater. I thought the movie was gonna end at that point. Right, exactly. And it goes to 2000 years in the future. And these alien looking, but they're not aliens. Androids, robots, mechanical beings rescue David from underneath the wonder Wheel. The Earth is frozen, essentially. Climate change is reversed, and it's all frozen. They dig him out of the ice and they're like, hey, this is an Android from the before time when humans, like, he actually knew humans. We don't know that much about humans.

He can teach us about this. So they reactiv. And they say, we want to make you happy. And he says, there's only one thing that would make me happy, My mother's love. Right? And they say, well, sometimes we can resurrect people from your time. Well, then resurrect her. And I say, well, the problem is that when we do that, they only last a day and they do it anyway. And so the end of the movie is David spending one last final day with his mother and kind of the one last perfect day where they do everything that he wants and it's all loving and wonderful and they do a little birthday party and yada, yada, yada, and.

And the day ends with her finally saying that she loves David and always has. And then she falls asleep. And of course she was going to die as she falls asleep because she only lives for one day. But David has finally achieved what he wanted, which was his mother's love. And he falls asleep next to her. And the credits. The narrator says that he dreams for the first time and you kind of expect that he's just going to stay asleep like he's finally got what he wants. He's just going to sleep next to her. And it ends with one of the. The saddest bits, I think is Teddy, who's this kind of companion he's had throughout the film, which is a little Android teddy bear or whatever.

David falls asleep to his mother, whatever. And Teddy just sits on the end of the bed completely alone in this 2000 year future. And that's the end. I skipped the Flesh Fair at one point. David runs into these things called the Flesh Fair where humans are sacrificing robots essentially because they see them as unnatural and immoral and trying to replace us. And they're shooting them through fans and burning them with acid and that kind of stuff. And there's this scene where they find David and they catch these androids to do this to them. And they catch David and the guy who directs it puts him up on the pedestal basically and says, this thing's a Mecha.

It looks like us, look, they're trying to replace our children, but we're not going to let him do it. And someone in the crowd shouts, he's just a boy. And the whole crowd reacts against him and essentially almost tears the place apart because they're going to of sacrifice David because he looks so human. And that's where David escapes and he escapes with Jude Law and that starts their journey to go find the Blue Fairy.

16:26 Wes: But anyway, I definitely could not have done that as you just did from memory. Yeah, I was going to accuse you of leaving out Teddy, but you got him in at the end since he's one of my favorite parts of the movie.

16:38 David: Yeah, he is really interesting and I would conclude about his sentience or I should say sapience just as much as I would David's. I think Teddy is definitely a conscious creature and I definitely feel sorry for him at the end when he sits on the edge of the bed and

16:51 Wes: just like, oh, he's a conscious creature and he's got very little to say except that he's quite cautious. Cautions David at various times to be careful when he's asked questions. I think he often just says, I don't know, kind of has this oddly melancholic aura about him, which makes him such a great character in the body of a teddy bear. And I think you see him multiple times, I think sewing himself up. That's his sort of hobby, this self repair function. What I really love about this movie is it gets at this question of what it means to be real. What it would mean for an Android to be really real, as opposed to just a simulacrum. In fact, the Flesh Fair you mentioned, the psychology of that is really interesting. So what is it? There's this enormous animus. And I was trying to look up the actor who plays. I think it's called the Ringleader in the script.

17:49 David: Yeah, that sounds right.

17:50 Wes: He's this famous Irish actor whose name I forget. But he does a wonderful job of conveying that. That sense of animus and the idea that what he's upset about is artificiality and what he wants to eradicate from the world is artificiality. So he has this great line.

18:12 David: I'm actually looking at the movie right now.

18:14 Wes: So this is around. So this whole Flesh Fair thing occurs around near the center of the movie. So the ringleader uses phrases like. And it's wonderful imagery because there's basically a hot air balloon that is in the shape of the moon and looks just like the moon with this, the undercarriage, which includes a prison to collect the Mechas. And I think he's saying things through a bullhorn or something like that. And he talks about his commitment to a truly human nature. And when it comes time to try to sacrifice David, to try and execute David in front of the crowd before they rebel, he says, do not be fooled by the artistry of this creation.

We're only demolishing artificiality. Look at what they're something to the effect. Look at what they're doing now. They're trying to imitate our emotions. So that's one way into this. Trying to get at. What is that animus about? I don't know if you have any thoughts on that.

19:16 David: Part of it is just based on the naturalistic fallacy, right? Like not the naturalistic fallacy, the appeal to nature fallacy. This idea that that which is unnatural is immoral and that which is natural is moral. That's just what he is. He is just opposed to artificiality, which is, in other words, to say he is just opposed to that which is unnatural. Right. If it's not biological, he doesn't like it. So it's kind of just kind of akin to a kind of Speciesism. There maybe is some kind of worry about them trying to replace us or something like that. Right.

19:44 Wes: I find it interesting that the Jude Law character, Gigolo Joe and David, they really share a profession which is prostitution. And there are early hints of this where. Where when the father, Henry, brings home David to the mother, Monica. Is it Monica?

20:03 David: Yeah, it's Monica, Yep.

20:04 Wes: She protests and she says, there's no substitute for your own child. This idea of a prostitute or a substitute which in some way functions as if it were real, as if it were someone we could really have a relationship with, but in fact doesn't have the capacity. The idea is that, I think that they don't really have the capacity to be fully part of the relationship, to have a genuinely intimate human relationship. I think that's part of the anxiety and the brain trust. At the very beginning. They talk about this as well. If there's all this animosity towards Mechas, how are you going to create something that even a mother would love?

20:40 David: That's a very interesting. I never thought about it that way. But they both are doing the same kind of thing. They are both prostitutes in a certain way. It's just they're prostituting a different thing. One is prostituting sexual love and the other is prostituting motherly love or childly love, I guess we might say. Right. But they're both made to replace something that people don't have in their life. This very well could be the case. Like with Gigolo Joe. Right. He says that, you know, what's the line? Once you've had Mecha, you'll never want anything again.

Right. Like I forget. I think. I feel like the line's better than that because it rhymes or something like that, but. And it very well could be the case that if David had not posed a danger to their biological child, that he may have proved to be better. In fact, if you compare David to the biological child, he's clearly a better person. He clearly would be a better child in general. He would certainly love better, but he certainly isn't a little jackass.

21:30 Wes: The word I had in my head for him was douche. It's such a great thing about the movie that when the kid recovers and comes back, you wonder why they want him back. He's a horrible kid.

21:42 David: And his friends are too, right? Yeah. I mean, he's somewhat jealous, Right.

21:45 Wes: He sees. Whenever he's horrible in the way kids are horrible and he's jealous and all that. So it's not something we've probably all experienced in childhood. No certain things like this. But yeah, yeah, yeah.

21:54 David: I mean, maybe he's not worse than the average child or whatever. But that's kind of part of the point. Is, like, David is better than the average child. He would make a better son than the average child would. Right. In the same way that Jigga Lojo makes a better lover than the average man. That may be another part of the animus there. Right. Like, that is what they are opposed to. That's what scares them about the artificiality, is that that they are better at what they do than the humans are. I think that's reflected also when David and Gigolo Joe are leaving the Flesh Fair. You actually see the signage and it actually says Flesh Fair celebration of life, which means biological life. Right. We are celebrating biology. We are celebrating non artificiality. But I think that they are ultimately scared of artificiality being better.

22:36 Wes: I think this is really key because. And this is brought out in the early parts of the movie where David is getting to know them, has just moved into the house. And he's acting like a real weirdo, for one thing. He's staring at his mother. He walks in on her in the bathroom thinking that it's going to be a hide and seek game. He's getting in her way, and she pushes him to a closet at one point where he stays until she retrieves him guiltily. And he really freaks her out in the beginning. And one of the really interesting things is that he cannot eat.

He. He sits at the dinner table with them and they'll be eating. But as we see later, if he puts any food in his body, it's going to break him. As Teddy puts it. It'll just go straight into his innards and make him malfunction. But he wants to be a part of that. This very basic way in which people kind of commune and connect to each other. And he goes through the motions he imitates. He'll have an empty bowl and he'll be imitating the motion of eating. It's a weird but poignant scene. And I think what's weird is it's as if the parents hadn't really thought this over.

They've essentially brought an immortal into their household, a demigod. The question is whether something like that could ever need them. Because he doesn't have the same sorts of needs as human beings. He certainly doesn't need to eat to sustain himself. And the question is whether he even needs to be loved.

24:00 David: Yeah, he only needs to be loved because he's programmed to. Right he doesn't need it until she imprints him, until she reads the words right. He only needs it in that he is programmed to desire it. So maybe the word need is not even right. He desires it only whenever that kind of desire is turned on, but in every other kind of way, he does not need them.

24:18 Wes: The other mechas don't have this, and you see some of that throughout the movie. They are capable of feeling pain. They're definitely sentient, conscious beings. They're capable of being playful. Gigolo Joe enjoys being a gigolo, giving pleasure to women, being a womanizer. But you see, and this is one of the great subtleties of the movie, you see that something is missing. So even though during the executions at the Flesh Fair, the robots who have been captured, they have a survival instinct of sorts, they're programmed to survive, they're programmed to be worried about pain.

One of the robots has another one shut off his pain receptors. But they also have kind of a somewhat nonchalant attitude about going to their executions. And you even see at one point a crowd member saying, well, these Mechas don't beg for their life, when she's thinking that David can't be a Mecha because what David does is different. He holds on to Gigolo Joe and won't let go. Keep me safe, keep me safe and

25:18 David: don't burn me, don't burn me, don't burn me. Right. Whereas the nanny robot that had kind of taken on to David a little bit before that she ends up going under the acid or whatever and she doesn't beg for her life, as you point out. In fact, she just kind of smiles at David.

25:30 Wes: She smiles as she melts.

25:31 David: Yeah, right, and. And it's very creepy. Right? But then as you point out, one of the people in the audience recognized that David's a little bit different. Mechas don't beg for their life, but that's because he is a different breed of Mecha. Speaking of that part right there too, maybe something useful will be the reason that I included AI in the science fiction course, and particularly in the lecture I have on whether or not artificial intelligence or whether an Android would be conscious or sentient, and actually misused the word sentient. I borrowed it from a TNG episode that defines sentience as conscious, intelligent and self aware.

And it's technically it should be sapient instead of sentient. The reason I included it in that part is because I don't think it's possible to watch AI artificial intelligence without reacting to David in the way that that Audience member does you have a genuine emotional reaction to him whenever he. I mean, you will cry whenever his mother leaves him in the forest. You will long for him to fulfill his quest to be a real boy. And that last day he gets to spend with his mother, you rejoice with him, but you also cry with a little bit of joy, but also sorrow whenever she finally says, I love you, and always have there at the end.

And what I do and when I teach, I teach this course at King's too. So I use my lectures, in fact, for one of the best courses I ever taught was when I was writing the course, I used drafts of the lectures as the textbook for the class. And I let the students basically criticize, like, what's wrong with the lecture? What would you do? What would you do different? What could you understand? What was good, what was bad, whatever. And what I did for the movie, since we. A television show, an episode we could watch in one class period, but the movies, we couldn't do that.

And so I would edit it. I would edit the down the movies down to like 40 minutes. And so for AI, I basically concentrated on the parts at the beginning with the mother and showed her leaving him in the forest, and then basically fast forwarded to the end where he finally gets to spend a day with her. And I filled in the gaps just with narration of telling him what happened or whatever. And I had a class full that was at the beginning of the semester, was not into sci fi at all. And most of them were crying by the end, just with that 40 minutes of the film, right.

And I think it's very, very difficult to watch, even though, you know, he's a machine, it's very difficult to watch it and not have that kind of reaction to it. And that plays. The reason I do that there in the lecture is because I think that what I call the megaturing test, where essentially in the same way that Turing said that if a computer can mimic the use of language in a way that is indistinguishable from a conscious human person, then you should think it understands language. In the same way, if an Android can mimic the way a human behaves in a way that is indistinguishable from a human.

So if you had David and you had something else and, you know, somebody else, and you couldn't tell the difference between them, you should conclude that they are conscious. And the reason you should do that is essentially because of the way they react to them. Although I don't want to. It's not Merely the way that you react to them. Because that would basically just be kind of like a anthropomorphic bias fallacy or something like that. Right? But the argument I make is that think about the problem of other minds. Can you know that anyone else has a mind besides you?

Only you are only aware of your own mind. How can you know that anyone else has a mind? And I think the solution to that problem is very simple. It's a similar solution I use for the skeptical problem. I can know that other people have minds because knowledge doesn't require certainty. Can I be certain that they have a mind? No, because I can experience it. I can experience their mental apparitions, their mentality, their consciousness. But they behave like me. They behave almost exactly like me. And I know that my mind is related to my behavior.

Either I behave like I do because I have a mind or the thing that makes me behave, my brain. Also like if you're an epiphenomenalist, the thing that makes me behave, my brain also generates, you know, consciousness. The best explanation. I'm just doing abduction here, right? The best hypothesis, the best explanation for why that person behaves the way that they do is that they have a mind. Can I know for sure? No, but I can know because it's beyond a reasonable doubt that they have a mind. If that's your solution to the problem of other minds, I conclude other people are minded because they behave like me.

If you have an Android that behaves like you for the same reason, you should conclude that it has a mind.

29:31 Wes: Well, I think it's really, really fascinating because the Flesh Fair people aren't so convinced. So for me, even it's not just David, but any of the Mechas are, just by virtue of being sapient, are sympathetic and it's. The level of cruelty in the movie is really grotesque. It's really disturbing. So what's going on in their minds? I think they're less convinced that there's a mind there of the relevant sort of the sort that. That demands that they treat them with respect or treat them as having rights or something like that. Because I don't think they're convinced that these are beings who are more than prostitutes, let's say, are more than substitutes in the sense that they are there to meet our needs.

But they are fakes in some sense. They're counterfeits and they can't need us. Little do they know David has been programmed to need. Right. But in general, I think that what they object to is these are essentially beings who cannot need and therefore cannot love. They're independent. They're not sort of woven into the human fabric in the appropriate way.

30:38 David: Because of that, maybe I'm pushing back on you, maybe not. Let me run this by and see what you think here. So I think that whenever they react to David like they do, what they're doing is employing the argument I just gave, right? Like, David is passing the mega Turing Test and behaving in every way like a human would. And when he does that, they apply the logic I just applied and said, he behaved like us, so he must be minded like us. What they have failed to do is, first of all, realize that that's how they would react to such a being, but then also kind of run the argument, stretch the logic of the argument out to apply it to these other Meccas that they've been torturing, right?

So here's how I structure the argument I give in the lecture. I say something like, all right, if you've got something like David that passes the mechaturing test, which you can do, because the Turing Test is like a blind taste test, right? Like, you're not supposed to know which is which. And if you can't tell the difference, then you say that they're the same. David can do that because David looks like a human. You don't get an actual mechaturing test out of Ex Machina because Caleb Smith, I believe, is the protagonist's name there. He already knows that she's a machine, so he can't really do an actual Turing Test with her because he already, like, the game's already.

He can't do a blind taste test because he's been unblinded.

31:49 Wes: It's a variation on a Turing Test in that movie, though.

31:52 David: Yeah, no, it totally is. And so, like, the conclusion, like, you would not conclude that Ava is not minded because you already know that she's a machine. You can back up and realize, yeah, but if I didn't know she would pass, and therefore, I should conclude that she's minded. And then you can go to something like, well, what about something that doesn't look human? So I couldn't do a blind taste test like C3PO from Star wars, say, well, we could never do a blind taste test with him because he looks mechanical, but if I put skin on him and he looked real, he would pass the test, and so I should still conclude that he's minded.

And then you back it up a little bit more. You say, well, what about something like Data from Star Trek, who you can Tell is an Android because he's got pale skin and yellow eyes. And then he also doesn't exactly behave like a human because he lacks emotion. He doesn't have an emotional reaction, he doesn't feel pain. I mean, so he doesn't have those particular conscious reactions, but he has all these other things. He clearly is intelligent. He clearly can see things. There's all this other mentality that's part of him. So he's not minded in exactly the same way that a human is, but he's still conscious.

He still has a mind. It's just a different kind of mind, Right? In the same way that an ape is minded, but has a different kind of mind. And even a dog is minded and has a different kind of mind. Right. And so you can see how I'm following the logic of the mecaturing test here, right? You kind of go down the scale and look at other kinds of things that wouldn't quite pass the test, but you would still consider the mind. And if you consider David minded, you would still consider them minded, maybe not in exactly the same way. And so what I think the people at the Flesh Fair have failed to do is run that argument, take that argument to its logical course, and realize that all of these other androids, like Gigolo Joe, like the nanny, like the weird war robot or whatever, the one that's got the like, like, they all are not as minded as David, right?

They may be deficient in one way or another, but they're still conscious and they still have minds enough to deserve respect. And that, the Turing Test essentially draws you to that conclusion. You just have to follow the logic of it in the way that I just described. And they haven't done that yet because they haven't met David yet.

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