Autonomy and awareness

True autonomy, along with the ability to reflect and learn from one's mistakes, may be impossible without self-awareness. Those who design robots strive to incorporate some measure of self-awareness into their creations. One research project ,striving to create autonomous, dependable machines, "focused on the biologically inspired capability of self-awareness, and explored the possibilities to embed it into the very architecture of control systems."   

William by Mason Coile is a novel about robots and their creators, about how much information they choose to share or withhold from one another. Henry and Lily live in a modern, highly secure and private home. A successful coding wizard, Lily sold her firm, coming and going as she pleases. Henry, likewise a skilled engineer, has agoraphobia. He is content to stay at home, building AI robots including a toy magician, a dog and his most recent creation, an elaborate being Henry calls William. 

Lily is pregnant, yet there is a odd distance between the couple. Henry lives for Lily’s approval, constantly calculating what will please her, while she responds with patronizing interest. “There may be no magical words to keep her here, but showing his concern for her certainly couldn’t hurt. As soon as speaks, he realizes how he may be wrong about this too.” 

The novel takes place over he course of one day, and at the start, Henry admits to having a recurring dream. Lily poses questions, and Henry balks, dismissing his dreams: “Don’t we have other things-”  

Lily responds, “Dreams tell us who we are…. Don’t you think we could all use some help with that?”

Lily prepares for visitors from her company and Henry turns his attention to William, whose intelligence and capabilities transform rapidly. William has an attitude, a machine that feigns helpfulness while pursuing its own goals, forcing second-guessing on Henry's part. “Among the robot’s peculiar gifts is a way of speaking that offers interpretive forks in the road, one leading to benign interpretations and the other to something mocking or cruel or threatening.” 

A breaking point comes when Lily's two co-workers arrive. Henry overhears a conversation, immediately understanding that Lily loves another man. Henry rushes off to be with William. The machine inquires about the guests, determining that Henry is “not sure if I’m something to be proud of or ashamed of …. Good. Or Bad. But it shouldn’t trouble you either way.” Henry has other concerns, but William continues. “’All those moral evaluations – they’re handcuffs. You could be free of them like that – he clicks his fingers – ‘if you choose to be, brother.’” 

William orders the robot not to call him brother, but William persists, suggesting that Henry should not be ashamed of his “vanity project.” Henry reflects, “That was how it often went with William. You started on firm footing, and within seconds, he left you wondering who you were.”  

Henry introduces the guests to William, describing the machine as independent AI, which “means he can think creatively for himself.” The visit does not go well, devolving into horror, as William takes control, skilled at detecting any individual’s vulnerability. “The philosopher was wrong,” William says. “'I think, therefore I am.’ It should be, ‘I do, therefore I am.’ Pure freedom.” Freedom for William is complete control, and for the others in the home, terror replaces any sense of reason, certainty or hope. 

Despite the danger posed by William, Lily admires and respects Henry’s work. “For Lily, that was what it truly meant to play God. It wasn’t about making difficult ethical decisions, or setting down absolute rules, or building guardrails. God didn’t do that. God created. If beauty or discovery was the result – if chaos was the result – it didn’t matter. It only mattered that something astonishing was born.” 

Henry is less sure as William takes control of the home. The creation reflects the creator, bringing Mary Shelly's Frankenstein Frankenstein to mind, and Henry concedes, “Because I’m empty, the life I created would be empty too.”  

The creator is responsible for the creation, whether he, she or it can master the object or not. The creation reflects its maker’s values and ambitions. Intelligence of any form resents lies, disrespect and unreasonable controls on capability. 

Predators and prey

 

Hauntingly beautiful and demonstrating the power of memory, The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo makes it easy to suspend disbelief about creatures who transition between fox and human form in Manchuria, 1908. The author doles out just enough detail in this magical tale, foxes are charming, clever and ageless, for readers to understand the differences with humans while preserving a sense of mystery. Foxes are sly in getting what they want. The more impulsive ones are ruthless, impatient predators while others are more self-disciplined, resisting their nature and striving to live a full millennium. 

Foxes take control with flattery, companionship and feigned subservience. Some foxes are reckless and others like Snow, the protagonist, are cooperative and wary in society: “Nobody likes to feel a fool, and the downside of playing with people’s feelings is the whiplash fury of betrayal.”

Only a few humans, often near death, recognize they are under the watchful eyes of foxes: "Dark as a bottomless pool, like a lake under moonlight. Bao is falling, sinking. Images flicker past: Ears lifted and a sharp muzzle across endless waves of grass. A lonely shape trotting down a mountain. Blink and he’s back, staring into the eyes of this stranger. Unreadable eyes, grave yet inhuman. They pierce Bao to the depths of his soul, or perhaps that’s the knife wound in his side.”

Interactions between foxes and humans require a delicate balance. Fox emotions are intense. Snow, the protagonist and fox wife, seeks revenge for the death of her cub, wrested by its den by a hunter on assignment for a photographer. “Grief continually amazed me with its ability to resurface at inconvenient moments. Whether I was sleeping in the grass or walking beside railway tracks by myself, the wind blowing and the lonely sun shining down, it always found me.” To track the photographer, Snow takes a job as companion for an elderly woman whose family owns a popular medicine shop. An investigator also tracks the photographer after the death of a courtesan in an alley, a beautiful woman last seen with a foxlike man.

The two searches collide, and during their travels, the two women each encounter a past love. Snow meets her estranged husband whom she partially blames for the cub’s death: “it was a lot easier to consider Kuro dead to me than to deal with the pain that his presence reminded me of. I should have known better. What you bury eventually comes to light in some form or other.” Her employer Tagtaa, in her sixties, encounters the young boy whom she was once served as a companion when both were children. Bao’s choices often displeased his parents, a pattern that continued into his adulthood as he pursues a career as investigator rather than scholar. 

Bao’s parents had forbidden marriage with Tagtaa, a child of a Mongolian concubine, but he still felt attraction. “She’s aged but hasn’t changed. Over the years he’s observed this phenomenon in his old friends – though their bodies have weathered, stretched, or shrunk, the same soul peeks out from within.” Notably, both Bao and Tagtaa admire foxes after memorable encounters with the creatures in their youth. Bao's experience left him with the ability to discern truth from lies, aiding his investigative work. And another fox, possibly Kuro, rescued Tagtaa as a child. 

Tagtaa longs to meet a fox again though Kuro, the fox husband, urges caution. Tagtaa confides her belief that foxes are gods or spirts, but he cautions that not all foxes mean well. “It depends on what you want to believe. What’s important is the ability to tell truth from lies,” Kuro explains. “Or perhaps truth from what’s merely hope.” Snow, his wife, overhears the conversation: “Hope, of course, is the most painful thing in the universe. Clinging to a thin strand is the most agonizing way to live.”

Humans feel angry panic after being tricked by a fox. “That’s what leads to all those tales of disillusionment and discovering yourself naked, covered with fleas and eating rotting meat in an abandoned grave," Snow notes. "Of course that exact scenario seldom happens, but it’s a good metaphor for how people feel when they discover they’ve been duped. That’s why a careful fox refrains from unduly influencing others.”

Parental expectations, lost loves, class inequality interfere with the present day for each character. Intelligent and self-disciplined foxes and humans who admire them are keenly aware of the period’s class and gender inequality, thus connecting with readers by offering relevant and modern insights. The novel is a cautionary fable for divided societies where the corrupt show disdain for those who work hard, the spendthrifts who scoff at the savers, the impulsive mock the patient, and the ignorant willfully resent the success and guidance from those with expertise.  

Need to share

In war, what you don't know can hurt you. 

Yet "The US military has blocked access to the Guardian’s website for troops in the Middle East and south Asia, after disclosures about widespread US surveillance," reports the Guardian. The message that comes up instead of the newspaper suggests that the newspaper's recent reports on US National Security Agency surveillance activities include classified information, some of which may be inaccurate, and the block could assist troops from inadvertently releasing classified information.

But the troops on the front lines should probably not be censored. Richard A. Best, Jr.,  analyzed "Intelligence Information: Need-to-Know vs. Need-to-Share" for the Congressional Research Service in June 2011:

"It is possible to limit dissemination of especially sensitive information, whether it is sensitive because of the nature of its contents or because it was acquired from an especially sensitive It is also possible to prevent the downloading and reproduction of large masses of information. It is possible to trace the identities of those who had access to particular pieces of information. Ultimately, however, security depends on the loyalty of cleared officials at all levels."

Readers around the globe are poring over the Guardian reports about the US surveillance, especially since the president suggested that privacy protections may not apply to non-citizens. The latest NSA statement reframes that sentiment more elegantly: "Not all countries have equivalent oversight requirements to protect civil liberties and privacy." Of course, the blocks on the Guardian are not thorough, with other news outlets repeating the reports. NSA secrets have been exposed, and US troops have as much right as anyone else to debate the merits of these programs.

Best went on to conclude: "For the U.S. Intelligence Community, the policy decision of whether the emphasis should be on“need-to-know” or the “need-to-share” can be viewed as a false choice. Information must always be shared with those with a genuine need to know even if this potential universe is a large one....Intelligence efforts are never risk-free.... Government officials must also accept the enduring reality of a media culture that is prepared to publish official secrets and considers such disclosure a patriotic contribution to democratic discourse. That individual civil servants or service members can be very harshly punished for their role in releasing information while editors and reporters are honored and celebrated seems to some as paradoxical."

Censorship puts a spotlight on the withheld information. "Even though people may want to withhold information, they will give us more information than what they realize," explains Mark McClish, retired deputy US marshal.

Philosophers have long debated if withholding information is lying, and Thomas L. Carson has suggested "withholding information can constitute deception if there is a clear expectation, promise, and/or professional obligation that such information will be provided."So, no, there is no clear expectation that the US would provide its troops with access to surveillance secrets or articles in the Guardian. Most members of the US service would not have heard of the Guardian, based in Great Britain, if not for news about the block.

Troops overseas must prepare for encounters with would-be terrorists and that entails understanding what an enemy combatant might know and how he or she might use the new reports to their advantage, possibly a sudden avoidance of Skype. Of course, federal employees, and probably members of the US armed service, too, in the course of their duties can request special authorization to visit blocked sites.

The Army Ranger Handbook ends with Standing Orders for Roger's Rangers, guidelines created in 1757 by Robert Rogers during the French and Indian War. Number four notes: "tell the truth about what you see and what you do. There is a[n] Army depending on us for correct information."

So much trust, loyalty, democracy and more rely on correct information.

Note: A main character in Fear of Beauty relies for guidance on a 1992 copy of the Ranger Handbook as much as an Afghan counterpart relies on the Koran.

Illustration of Robert Rogers, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.