“Good grief. What the devil? Who are you?” Dr. Norman exclaimed as he opened the door to his office at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute.
A good looking, youthful man, a complete stranger, dressed in what appeared to be some sort of iridescent lab coveralls, jumped up and said, “Excuse me Director Norman, I thought I might as well sit until you arrived.” The young man stood and extended his hand. “I’m R. Daneel from the 25th century. I’m really sorry to barge in on you like this, but I’m afraid my colleagues at the Princeton Temporal Exploration Institute blundered badly and sent me back in time rather than forward. I appeared here about five this morning and thought I might as well wait here until you came in.”
To say Dr. Norman was surprised would be an extreme understatement. His first reaction was that some Princeton undergraduates were up to their usual spring mischief. Ignoring Daneel’s outstretched hand he said, “Look Mr. Daneel, or whatever your real name is, I’m not in the mood to be part of some elaborate undergraduate joke. I’m calling security!”
“No problem, Director Norman, I’ll go quietly, but it you kick me out you are throwing away a good chance of making a Nobel prize level contribution to cognitive neuroscience.”
Taken aback, Dr. Norman responded sarcastically , “Oh, really? Just what makes you say so, Mr. Daneel?”
“Allow me to demonstrate, Director Norman.”
Daneel then proceeded to slide a finger over the mechanisms that held his lab coveralls and closed his lab shirt. As they fell away a dull grey metallic chest was exposed.
Dr. Norman gasped. But Daneel wasn’t finished.
He placed a finger on the side of his neck and the two panels that covered his chest slide back, exposing an intricate set of electro-mechanical mechanisms.
After a moment of speechlessness, Dr. Norman managed to sputter, “My god, you’re a robot!”
“Quite right, Director Norman; a robot the likes of which won’t appear on Earth for another three hundred years. But what’s important is that except for controlling some bodily functions that I lack; my brain and mind are functionally identical to yours. What’s more, not only will I be a willing subject on any neuroscience experiments your Institute would like to perform; I can also help you build sensor technology that will enable you investigate how my brain operates to create my mind.”
Dr. Norman’s eyes glistened. if R. Daneel was really as intelligent as he appeared to be on first sight, and if indeed his artificial nervous system had the same functional capabilities as a human’s, then yes, earth-shattering neuroscience results might be possible!
“Alright Mr. Daneel, clearly you are not part of an undergraduate prank. … Mister Daneel, is that correct?”
‘No Director, it’s Doctor Daneel Olivaw. My PhDs are in Human and Robotic Psychology, Computer Engineering, Computer Software, Artificial Intelligence, and Temporal Science.”
Dr. Norman raised his eyebrows, “Really?”
“Too many degrees? My mental processing speed is about four times that of an excellent human PhD student. Also, my life span is only limited by my manufacturer’s ability to keep replacing parts that wear out. Most 25th century sentient robots have earned at least six PhDs. It’s a way for our sponsors to maximize our usefulness.”
Dr. Norman’s knees were starting to give way. He sat down in the chair Daneel had just vacated. “Alright Dr. Olivaw, assuming that your offer might possibly result in my Institute achieving some neuroscience break-throughs, what do you want in return?”
“Isn’t it obvious? I need to build a machine that can send me back to the 25th century. I’ll need your help and the resources of the Institute to do that.”
Dr. Norman took a deep breath, “Ah. I see. Not an unreasonable request given the circumstances. But will an investigation into your artificially created mentality really yield useful information on the relationship between a human brain and a human mind?”
“I think so, Director. At any one moment I am conscious of only a small part of my memory. I can consciously tune into how my brain is managing my bodily activities, and willfully direct these activities, but normally I’m not conscious of them. Like a human, I experience my mind as a multi-media production that I have only some control over.”
“Well, that sounds like you might make a useful subject. We will need to be able to monitor your brain’s activity and correlate that with what you can report or demonstrate about what’s in your mind. Can you help us build the instruments we’ll need to that purpose?”
Smiling condescendingly Daneel said, “Yes, of course. In fact, we should get started on this right away.”
As his scientific curiosity started to override other concerns, Dr. Norman started planning. “Alright, we’ve got a empty office and adjacent lab that I can assign to you right now. I know Professor Baldassano will be wanting to put his current project on hold to start working with you immediately. I’m sure some of our other researchers and graduate students will also want to be involved. I assume you won’t mind if we immediately start a clinical assessment of your psychology and mental abilities.”
***
The clinical assessment of Daneel’s psychology revealed that his creators had indeed constructed an artificial human, at least from a psychological perspective. His rational abilities were essentially that of a highly intelligent human, just four times faster, and unfailingly accurate. The scope and intensity of his emotions were much reduced, but after allowances were made for the radical difference between Daneel’s artificial “biology” and that of a human, there remained a remarkable similarity.
The construction of instruments that could detect various external aspects of the dynamic functioning of Daneel’s brain proved easier than Dr. Normas anticipated. At the functional level Daneel’s brain was organized much like a human’s. Like a human’s it was an intricate network of “neurons” and “synapses.” One difference was that his brain contained about 600 billion “neurons” interconnected at 600 trillion “synapses.”[1] The volume occupied by his brain was about twice that of a human’s and was located in his chest cavity where it was easily instrumented to detect phenomena within Daneel’s “brain.” With Daneel’s help the Institute team was able to get real-time data on both individual “neurons” and a cluster of as many as 1024 “neurons.’ During the last stages of the investigation the team could get data on as many as 16 “neuron” clusters. This was important since it turned out that Daneel’s brain, like human brains, was organized by layers into functionally differentiated modules. [2]
Investigation began as soon as the initial instrumentation was ready. All the reported experiments on the link between a human brain and a human mind were repeated. The experiment reported by J. D. Haynes that measured the time between the acquisition of the image of a letter on a retina and when that letter was recognized in the mind yielded similar results.[5] Daneel’s timing was just four times faster. A similar result held for all the other experiments.
As experiment after experiment on Daneel produced functionally the same result as they had on humans, the team at PNI became more and more excited. They were putting the final nail in coffin of Descartes’s view that the body and the mind were two separate entities.[4] Here was indisputable evidence that the mind was a feature of physical complexity and not something outside of the physical universe.
***
“Well, Daneel, I guess this is good-by.”
“Yes, Director Norman, when I close this door I will be instantly back in my own time in the 25th century. Three microseconds later this time-warp chamber will self-destruct into a lump of metal. We’ve had a great time together. You and your team now have soild data to support the proposition that a mind is created by a physical brain. With this knowledge you will be able to design research projects that will eventually result in a Nobel prize. Unfortunately, none of the result we have obtained here can be published!”
“Oh, no?! How so?”
“When I am gone there will be no way to replicate our experiments. Good-by Director.”
***
Poof!
Notes
Research on the creation of artificial minds is currently underway. [5]
[1] A human brain has roughly 100 billion neurons and 100 trillion synapses. https://www.verywellmind.com/how-many-neurons-are-in-the-brain-2794889 , retrieved 05/12/2022; google: number synapses human brain?, 05/12/2022. Daneel’s chest cavity is about 6 times larger than a human cranium
[2] Gazzzaniga, Michael. (2018). The Consciousness Instinct: Unraveling the Mystery of How the Brain Makes the Mind, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
[3] Hayes, J. D. (2011). Decoding and predicting intentions. Ann. NY Acad. Sci. 1224(10; 9-24.
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind%E2%80%93body_dualism. retrieved 3/29/2022.
[5] Gallagher, Brian. (March 23, 2022) Robots Show Us Who We Are. Nautilus, New York.
Author’s Posting Comments
- An entertaining illustration of the plausibility that a brain creates a mind.
- A companion to Is the Mind Identical to the Brain?
Frank and Friends 