Programming and Thinking

One thing that Brian Christian speaks about in his book The Most Human Human is that humans have a certain over humans when it comes to dialogue, humans don't follow a script. Human beings jump around from topic to topic in conversation. A robot has to be prompted to change the subject. Sure we do have some scripted sayings we say in certain situations such as "How are you?" when we answer the phone. But in the end, a true conversation is random and never follows a certain topic.

In the movie I, Robot, the robots and the computer system VIKI are programmed to serve, protect, and take care of humans. However, they come to the conclusion because of this programming that humans cannot take care of themselves and would eventually die out, leaving the robots with nothing to do. VIKI's solution to this is to simply take over and have robots control humans.

The issue here is that if the robots and VIKI were true AI, then they would know that humans are capable of taking care of themselves if need be. But, since they are simply programmed to act a certain way, that programming becomes their basis for conclusion about the way humans work. Naturally, not every human can take care of themself if we take into account age, disability, and mental health, but as a general rule of thumb, humans are rather self-reliant. They were the ones who built and programmed these robots in the first place as a way of making their lives easier.

To connect this back to Christian's book, the computers he encountered and those shown in the movie have a set way of thinking. This is what makes them not human. A human would learn and continue to learn through experiences. Humans do not make a decision and then stick to it no matter what. People's opinions and knowledge change, and with that their choices change, too.