If robots started drinking (or, can AI have non-linear thoughts?)

Many years ago, I remember having a colleague who had come over to our flat for dinner.? She’d remarked on the prosecco glasses we were using, they were champagne coupes, and I told her I’d picked them up in a charity shop.? She was shocked and really quite horrified that we were drinking fizz from second hand glasses, something she noted she would never buy.

This was a colleague who I’d been out with a few times for after work Friday drinks, and let’s face it, bars definitely use the same glassware night in, night out.

I could never really get her to explain why the glasses I’d purchased, and obviously washed, were disgusting but the (sometimes grimy) ones in the bar were okay.

These conflicting cognitions are very much part of the human condition, where we have two conflicting thoughts – as in glasses in bars are fine to drink from but not ones from charity shops even though both have been used by strangers.? Psychologists talk about cognitive dissonance, or the discomfort between these two thoughts and how, as humans, we manage to accept both thoughts and move past the discomfort.

In the case of my colleague, she believed that the glasses in the bar were probably cleaner as cleaned by bar staff in proper dishwashers whereas who knew how many layers of grim were on mine.? It doesn’t say much about her thoughts on my cleaning ability!!

But, what if robots started drinking (like the quirky robot Bender in Futurama) – how would they feel about second-hand or used glassware?? Or remove the (loved by sci-fi) robots and just consider AI, will the technology ever be able to think in the same way as a human?? To hold two conflicting beliefs at once and be able to justify those thoughts?

The chaotic nature of human thought will be a tricky one for AI when, as humans, we change our minds, behaviour and attitudes in a very individual way – just how much data we’d need AI to consider in order to think in a non-linear way is mind blowing.

#AI #cognitivedissonance #robots #cognitive

Elaine Mullan, Head of Marketing & Business Development at Corlytics

#regtech #regulatory #regulatoryintelligence