This post is a review of the 2021 article by Dr Cindy Mason on ‘Artificial Compassion’, available at: https://www.preprints.org/manuscript/202104.0784/v1
Nothing in our daily lives brings us more frustration and upset than digital technologies that do not work for us. We have all felt the rage of a computer that decides to reboot at the wrong time, the smartphone that is out of battery, the cash machine that is out of use, the car that needs a diagnostic check-up. It is making me cross thinking about it.
Humans need and love technology that works for them.
This article by the renowned technologist and NASA scientist, Dr Cindy Mason, is an important contribution to the field of digital technology for two main reasons:
1) It explains how humans are in a deeply connected emotional relationship with the digital technologies that influence every aspect of our lives and the ‘rub off’ we feel.
2) It suggests that we can all be happier - and more in control - if future technologies are designed with inbuilt compassion for humans.
What Mason calls the growth of the “digitizing society” needs to reflect that adults and children experience the world through relational spaces: to ourselves, each other, our environment, and our world. These can be felt as positive and uplifting or as negative and harmful to our wellbeing.
Most of the technology we have now has been designed by educated white men to perform tasks that educated white men enjoy – like playing games and driving cars. Mason argues that for the good of all of us future technologies, and especially those using artificial intelligence like machine learning, need to be:
- more humane, e.g., more inquisitive, creative, expressive, and nurturing, rather than task orientated
- far more inclusive and representative of the diversity of humans as a strength of humanity
- consider the impact on different types of people in society.
This article presents a vision for “Artificial Compassion” as a new foundation for a more humane digital future. But what is impressive is that it also provides the technical expertise to do it. It takes the reader step by step through the learning that has been captured over many years building robots.
One of the most fascinating points of this paper, and Mason’s work, is that robots can be made to be compassionate if they are given the right software programming, called ‘cognitive architecture’. It means deciding how you want a robot to think and creating that in code, sensors, and ways the robot communicates or behaves. Technologists can programme the internal ‘mind’ of the robot to reflect what humans understand as compassion.
In simple terms, Artificial Compassion means a digital agent has the software to reflect on what they are thinking or doing. They are a far more advanced version of most of our present technology that is based on a sense-think-do model. The robot can pick up on the impact it is having on the human and even more importantly it can learn to pre-empt the impact its behaviour might have and judge its own behaviour.
Our future digital society will give great power and control to some people and not others – which is clearly a potentially dangerous thing. Advances are being made internationally in digital ethics to build safety nets, accountability structures, transparency and clarity about the dangers and advantages of the technology. However, there is a pressing need for the funders, regulators, technologists, scholars and educators, digital designers, students learning to code, and the public to be educated about Artificial Compassion.
It is up to us all, to demand a compassionate digital future.
If you are interested in these issues, please read Dr Cindy Mason's article at the address above.