Science Fiction Prototyping. Brian David Johnson
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form of multiple personas which we hypothesize might be applied to improve the performance of services robots by providing a mechanism to vary the balance of current and past experiences in control decisions which appear to serve people well. (Egerton, Callaghan and Clarke, 2008)
The idea of multiple personalities is not a new concept to people. The concept was brought to the attention of popular culture with the 1973 book Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber. The book was about a patient, Shirley Ardell Mason, who was being treated for dissociative identity disorder by her about her psychoanalyst Cornelia B. Wilbur. Mason’s condition was more popularly known as multiple personality disorder. In 1976, a popular made-for-television mini-series was produced based on the book starring Sally Field as the patient and Joanne Woodward in the role of Sybil’s psychiatrist. Field won an Emmy award for her performance. The Internet Movie Database describes the movie like this: “The true story of a young woman named Sybil, whose childhood was so harrowing to her that she developed at least 13 different personalities” (IMDB, 2010).
Egerton, Callaghan, and Clarke take the multiple personalities and apply it to the development of robots and AI. They expand multiple personalities into multiple personas, which has a little bit of an expanded meaning. Most think of a persona as the role that we as people play in society and in our lives, whereas a personality is a collection of traits that make up a person. The highly influential Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung defines personas as “the mask or appearance one presents to the world.” Egerton, Callaghan, and Clarke use this idea to radically rethink the design of AI and software systems.
Multiple personas in philosophy and psychoanalysis are seen as one explanation for irrationality and are based upon the generally pathological process of splitting. In this instance splitting for functionally sound reasons is suggested as a possible aide to robust and efficient working within a variety of different contexts. In this sense it is more akin to the benign forms of splitting that allow us to be parents, siblings, children, workers, partners etc. (Egerton, Callaghan and Clarke, 2008)
The scientists are using “multiple personas” in a constructive and pragmatic way in the development of their robot’s AI. The splitting of the personalities in this case is not negative as with Sybil. They take a very different approach. They view the splitting of the personalities into personas as a highly efficient and functional way to segment a robot’s intelligence or brain. By separating the functions of the robot into these personas, it becomes easier for the scientists to design and develop the robot’s intelligence.
This persona based approach to the architecture will allow us to explore the hypothesis that multiple personas guide our actions, that we do not make decisions purely on our immediate sensing of the world. By having a reservoir of specialised personas to call upon, the persistent and evolving nature of such personas would allow us to explore the value of accumulated experience that in us manifests itself as a somewhat ill defined ‘self’; which, when making decisions, occasionally overrides the logical nature of the world, akin to what might appear to be irrationality, putting it down to nebulous mechanisms such as “a hunch” or “a feeling.” This approach will allow us to open up a line of research to explore the nature and value of such abstracted personas and their dynamics. (Egerton, Callaghan and Clarke, 2008)
Nebulous Mechanisms acts as an SF prototype for the scientists’ vision for an approach to programming AI. The story allows us to imagine some extreme effects of their approach and what it might mean to have “irrational” robots. What could be the positive and negative effects of this? Ultimately, Nebulous Mechanisms pushed us to think about Egerton, Callaghan, and Clarke’s work in new ways and from different angles. The result of this new perspective is a now expanded concept of the scientists’ original work.
In Chapter 7, we will explore other examples of SF prototypes in the Dr. Simon Egerton Stories and how researchers and scientists are using the stories to expand and further define their development of software, AI, and robots.
Runaway Were-Tigers
On July 19, 2010, the 1st International Workshop on “Creative Science—Science Fiction Prototyping for Research” (CS’10) was held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. This workshop explored the use of science fiction as a means to motivate and direct research into new technologies and consumer products.
The workshop did this by creating science fiction stories grounded in current science and engineering research that are written for the explicit purpose of acting as prototypes for people to explore a wide variety of futures. These “prototypes” were created by scientists and engineers to stretch their work or by, for example, writers, school children and members of the public to influence the work of researchers. The outcome of these interactions was then to be fed back to guide further research and development activities.
The website for the workshop describes its approach to SF prototypes in this way: SF prototypes involve the widest section of the population in determining the science research agenda, thereby making science investment and science output more useful to everyone ranging from companies, through scientists and engineers to the public, consumers and the government that indirectly fund R&D. In this way, fictional prototypes provide a powerful interdisciplinary tool to enhance the traditional practices of research, design and market research. The goals of the workshop were to act as a catalyst of this new approach by acting as a forum where researchers from differing disciplines (notably science fact and science fiction) can come together to explore how to develop this area (Creative Science Foundation, 2010).
One of the SF prototypes that was presented at the workshop was called The Were-Tigers of Belum by Kar-Seng Loke and Simon Egerton. I have compiled an overview below. The full text of the story can be found in Appendix A.
The screen flashed. Raja jumped back to his seat. He selected the hotspot on the screen to get the readout on it.
Just about then, the sun in the between the hills began to show itself, casting longish shadows on this nondescript shop lot in the leafy suburb neighbourhood of TTDI, in Kuala Lumpur. The plain signage on the door simply read A.E.O.N….
* * *
Just then, Kim let out a whistle, and called out to Raja, “Look at this model animation of the gait, Raja, they look weird, certainly not a normal gait of a tiger.”
“Oh my god, I don’t believe this.” Raja gasped. Then he continued, “You know, Kim, the natives believe that a tiger-spirit roams the forest. They believed that the tigers are the guardians of the forest, and its protector. These spirits are the re-manifestation of their ancestral spirits. To see them is an occurrence of dire portent, a harbinger. It is also believed that these spirits can be called into existence by the bomohs, or by some momentous future event … usually a sign of something that is going to happen, be it good or bad.”
“Surely you don’t believe in that stuff, anyway, what has it to do with this?”
“Well what if it’s true, there might be something to it? What if we have triggered something in the deep forest, our machines have penetrated into parts of the forest where nobody has ever gone before, what if we have violated the sanctity of the tigers most ancestral place and awakened the semangat of the forest!?”
“Aw c’mon Raja, stop pulling my leg, this is the 21st century, you are a good scientist and you are still talking about spirits? What have been smoking lately?”