Judge John Hodgman - Are Machine Guns Robots?

Episode Date: November 15, 2010

Two friends dispute whether machine guns are robots.

Please rise. The court of the Honorable Judge John Hodgman is now in session. I'm bailiff Jesse Thorne. This week, the case of the machine gun Robin. Please welcome Judge John Hodgman. Come before me, ye who seek justice. You may now be seated, if indeed you were actually standing up. I'm sorry about that. Sorry about that. Complainant Zach, please stand and raise your right hand. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? So help you God or whatever. I do.

Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, no matter how odious it may be to your own personal interests? I do. You may sit. Up and down, up and down. Boy, oh boy, give these people a rest, Bailiff Thorn. It's like a Pogues concert. I know.

Boy, oh boy. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God or whatever? I do. Do you swear to abide by Judge John Hodgman's ruling, no matter how horrific it may seem to you when it is issued? I do. Judge Hodgman, you have the floor. horrific it may seem to you when it is issued. I do. Judge Hodgman, you have the floor. Well, wait, can he sit down now?

No, I'd rather he didn't. I've been sitting all day. It's fine. All right. Very well. Thank you for coming here, gentlemen, to seek justice. John Hodgman style. Who is the complainant?

Was it Zach, I believe? Yes. All right, Zach, would you state the nature of the complaint, please? The disagreement and the complaint I'm bringing is that Josh has insisted for a number of years that a machine gun constitutes a kind of robot. Did you say a machine gun is a robot? Yes, that is his position. I see. And you would like him to stop saying this? Yeah, and stop believing it, if at all possible. I think that's within our realm of judgment here, if I come

to that decision. But before I do, Josh, why don't you state your position, if you don't mind? Is a machine gun a robot? It absolutely is. A machine gun is and has always been a robot. Well, maybe not like a Civil War Gatling gun, but certainly for at least the last

75 years. I see. And on what do you base this? It's a provocative claim. One might even say mad. Well, there are primarily three points. First of all, a machine gun performs a task that would be difficult, dangerous, and repetitive for a human being, in this case, making a bullet fire. Number two is that a machine gun is programmable. It's got its semi-automatic mode, its burst fire, and, of course, fully automatic, for which machine guns are famous. And third, perhaps most importantly, at least for me, is that I would not want to fight a machine gun,

and I would never want to fight a robot. So like a bear? In many regards? In many regards. In many regards. They perform difficult tasks that are boring to humans. They have different modes hibernation and foraging and you would not want to fight one unless you were mad.

Correct. So bears are robots then. Got it. What is your answer to this, Zach? My claim has always been that a machine gun is a tool, not a robot, in that it amplifies the direct human input being provided to it in the same way of a crescent wrench or some other kind of wrench. Or a bear. In that a machine gun only does what you've told it to do immediately and has no agency of its own. Or a bear. May I ask if you two have ever discussed this subject matter while sober?

Yes. Routinely. Many times. So you've gone to all measures to work it out yourself? Yes. All right. Let me ask Josh a couple of questions here. You say that a machine gun is a robot because it performs a difficult and repetitive task.

Do all robots perform such tasks? It's certainly typical for them. For example, like a welding robot performs the same spot weld over and over again all day, all night. What about Asimo, the walking robot? I guess he walks all the time and sometimes dangerous if it's icy. Well, how do you come to the position that it that fire one bullet, pull the trigger and have it fire a set number of bullets, typically three or five, or hold in the trigger, which is a different mode of functioning, which will fire bullets until the machine gun is no longer supplied with bullets.

So it's a sort of rudimentary program, you would say? Yeah. Well, the first computers were theorized to be mechanical. It's not necessarily an electronic concept. You're talking of Babbage's difference engine? Sure. Which was never completed. He died eventually.

Because it shot him to death. So you see what I'm saying? Yes. You would not want to fight it. No, I would not. And that is also, for you, the definition of a robot? Something you would not want to fight? If it's not an animal or a force of nature,

and I wouldn't want to fight it, that's usually an indicator that it's a robot. A highly personalized definition, to be sure. Certainly. It's in line with my intuition. As I said, it's a somewhat intuitive definition. So why is it not a tool? Because a tool, you tell it what to do by basically doing the thing that you want. So if we look at Zach's example of a wrench, you twist something and it effectively makes you twist better. With a machine gun, all you're doing is squeezing something and it's going to chamber around, fire it off, eject the shell, chamber the next round. And it's going to do all that with very little input from you, whereas you actually have to do all the work if you're going to use a wrench.

Would not a regular gun then therefore also be a robot, a non-automatic repeating gun? Because that's also, you're squeezing a trigger and something mechanical is happening. Well, a regular gun isn't programmable, and I think that's a big difference. It's got one program, to kill, I suppose. Zach, what do you have to say to this? I think the mechanical complexity of the action carried out upon pulling a trigger has little bearing on whether or not something is a tool or a robot. I don't think anyone would call a Rube Goldberg machine a robot. It's bound to perform only one thing upon being started.

Hang on, Josh. Do you know what a Rube Goldberg machine is? I do. Is that a robot? It is not because it isn't programmable. It has a single task. The program you're talking about, again, is whether to fire one bullet or lots of bullets, right?

One bullet, all bullets, or a certain number of bullets. Let me get to my point here. The robot as a term was invented in 1920. You don't disagree there, do you? I do not. It was termed in a play called R.U.R. Rossum's Universal Robots, in which the robots were what you might call a humanoid, android-type robot. Indeed, they were slave labor. And the play, as plays tend to be, essentially was about whether or not this was a morally appropriate thing to do, to build a machine that was a slave.

There was a difference, of course, between these robots, which took the name from the Czech robota, meaning serf, or serf labor, slave labor, from ordinary machines, of course, because these robots were self-aware. machines, of course, because these robots were self-aware. Does not self-awareness or at least autonomy traditionally describe what we commonly know as a robot? Your R2-D2s, your Vincent from the Black Hole, your Asimo, what have you, fictional or non-fictional? Certainly it can be, but I don't think it's a requirement. Industrial robots are not at all autonomous. They're almost always manually programmed by someone on the floor, and then they're all managed by a central computer system

that actually tells them what to do and when to do it. Of course, a machine gun, if it were a robot, would be violating or would be incapable of honoring any of the laws of robotics, as laid out by Isaac Asimov, no? Or do you not recognize fictional laws? I feel that those laws only apply to robots with at least a minimal degree of self-awareness. I see. A robot may not injure a human being. That's obviously not part of a machine gun's maxim.

A robot may not obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the first law. A robot must protect its own existence, because as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law, a machine gun can't do any of those things, because it is completely un-self-aware, isn't it? Yes, a machine gun is completely un-self-aware, much like an industrial

welding robot. It has no autonomy whatsoever. No, none whatsoever. It cannot fire itself, can whatsoever. It cannot fire itself, can it? It cannot fire itself, although with a single pull of the trigger, if so programmed, it can fire more times than the trigger has been pulled. Zach, do you stipulate that an industrial welding robot is a robot? It depends on the kind of industrial robot you're talking about. Many of them do operate in the open loop fashion that Josh is describing, but many more modern ones have sensing elements to them in that they will not proceed beyond certain hard boundaries on

their joints, or they can actually image what they are about to spot weld rather than just spot welding nothing or a worker or something like that. And so I would characterize the latter of those as a robot and the former as an incorrectly named robotic arm. What would you call a robot? What would you call a robot? That it can observe its environment or surroundings and act accordingly to accomplish some goal or task. That's true. A machine gun has no observation capabilities. I think the chief issue with Josh's definition is that it would also extend to something like an outboard motor. An outboard motor burns gasoline, which is very hazardous to people. It has a variety of throttle settings,

and I certainly wouldn't want to fight it because it has cutting knives that move very quickly. What do you think about that, Josh? Is an outboard motor a robot or an outboard motor? I feel that an outboard motor is not really programmable. It goes, and then you twist, and you give it more gas or less gas, but you're manually setting the power. It really only does one thing, and that's outboard motor.

It's a little bit of a hair-splitting thing to say that going from automatic to semi-automatic to manual single-bullet firing is a program. Sorry, it's not a splitting hairs. I just don't follow that logic at all. I would say that the rate at which fuel is consumed can easily be set by a static throttle, not immediate input, and then the outboard motor could be left to consume fuel at whatever rate you told it to, and that that would be very similar to how many bullets it fired per trigger. Zach, let me ask you this question. What do you care what your friend Josh calls a robot? Because he's wrong, and I think he should be corrected for that. What happens if we accept his definition of a robot? A huge new class of objects become robots. And could not those robots turn against us?

It's a concern. Josh, what do you think? Don't you think that if we extend the definition of robots to machine guns that it's a slippery slope? It's possible. But in a way, maybe it would make people more aware of things that they should be afraid of as robots. And perhaps if these robots don't turn against us, it will simply make the world we live in that much richer.

I think I'm prepared to think this over and go to my chambers and then come back with a decision. Please rise as Judge Sean Hodgman retires to his chambers to consider his decision. You may be seated. Zach, you brought this complaint. How do you feel about your chances as Judge John Hodgman mulls over his decision? I would say I feel fairly confident in a victory. I think the extension of robot hood to this vast group of machines and tools is just one more adding,

adding strength to them and something that judge John Hodgman would certainly be wise to, to not do. It sounds like you see this as much as an issue of almost a policy issue as it is a legal issue. Well, certainly. I mean, there are, the law must be considered in the ramifications it has on society. And that's what makes policy. So I think it is very much a policy issue. Josh, you face some pretty withering questions from Judge John Hodgman.

How do you feel like you stood up? I feel like I handled myself pretty well in there and that the judge is a wise man. He'll know that the right thing to do is to make a machine gun a robot and perhaps even if that makes an outboard motor a robot too he will he'll do what's right well please rise because here comes judge hodgman back into the chamber you may be seated thank you stand up again please and now sit down. Thank you. Halfway in between. Hold it. Hold it. Side to side.

Now down. Go ahead, Judge Hodgman. Thank you, Jesse. I have some sympathy for Mr. Feingold's provocative argument, I must confess. I think an argument could very well be made that a robotic arm, as it is so called, that works on a line in an auto plant or a bear manufacturing facility, might not technically be a robot in that it is essentially a remote control tool controlled by a computer and ultimately by humans. However, I think there can be no conclusion. A machine gun, while perhaps as fearsome as a bear or a snake, and maybe even as fearsome as a very angry or mean robot, is not a robot by any definition that I think any common sense human would agree with. What the robots think, I don't care because they are subhuman.

don't care because they are subhuman but there is no absolutely assured definition of robot that everyone agrees on even people who work with robots even people who befriend robots and try to convince them not to kill humans but i find uh josh's very personalized definition it performs repetitive uh drudgery which is another root form of the word robota from the Czech that means drudgery as well as serfdom. That I feel okay about, that it is programmable. Okay, I certainly agree with that. Any robot has something you just pop off Data's head and you can put some buttons in and he becomes a bad guy.

That's obviously true. Programmable, that's for sure. But that you're afraid to fight it, at that point, it could be anything in the world. And I find that in my life, language matters very much. And to extend a very specific word, robot, which is a little fuzzy and hard to define, to any sort of tool would not only increase the likelihood of a robotic uprising, but would simply be confusing for everyone in the world. And eventually something worse would happen. Language would cease to have meaning, which is indeed probably what the robots want.

So is an outboard motor a robot? No. so is an outboard motor a robot no here's my definition and this is what i think has to stand for any common sense person in the world one it's got to be mechanical in nature does not necessarily have to be shaped like a human but it's got to be programmable the type of work that it performs to me is immaterial though it is often and traditionally used to perform some hard work that humans did not want to do, like killing other Cylons. And then I do think that it needs to have some ability to sense the environment around it, which a machine gun obviously does not. And it has to use that sense in order to perform tasks with some measure of autonomy. And I frankly don't feel that

the purely mechanical action of moving the gun from one setting to another counts as either a program sensing its surroundings or acting in an autonomous nature. If anything, it is altogether mechanical and tool-like to me. So that is my ruling. I would also say that robots for now are our friends. But looking forward to the time they might be enemies, we do not want to bring machine guns into their ranks. That is my ruling. I put my hand down hard against the table to indicate that it is done.

We'll now move on to the sentencing phase. Judge Hodgman? I can't prevent you, Josh, from believing this. And I admire your ability to argue a point as fantastical as this one. Keep dreaming, my friend. But please, I really worry why you know so much about machine guns. So please stay out of the Park Slope area for the next three months. That's all I can ask. I'll do my best, Judge. Judgment has been rendered. Please rise as Judge Hodgman exits the courtroom. Here I go again.

Josh, the decision was against you. You argued vociferously and passionately, but it felt like the judge was against you the whole way through. Do you accept the decision, or are you prepared to change the way that you live your life? I suppose I am, but I am a little worried that when the robot revolution comes, we will all have egg on our face when machine guns have us up against the wall. Zach, you were the victor here. You finally settled a years old dispute. How do you feel? I feel like justice has been served and that we've narrowly avoided diluting the word robot into meaningless gibberish. May I just ask one last question of Josh before you guys take off?

Judge Sean Hodgman has returned from his chambers. I was just curious, Josh, has anyone ever agreed with you? Yes, people have agreed with me on the grounds that it's a much more interesting point to have. It certainly is an interesting point. I could also see people agreeing with you on the grounds of, oh, God, can we just talk about something else now? Ryan, fine, you're right. Certainly, Zach has ended arguments that way before. That's also certainly how his wife has argued about about it i'm just frankly excited that someone who has had this argument and feels so vociferously about this particular issue is married to a lady and she was

aware that i uh contested the robot status of a machine gun before she married me well i i if i understand correctly you worked it into your vows. It was a footnote, but yes, it was there. Sure, sure. It was printed on the announcement. Please join us for the happy occasion of Josh's wedding to a human woman on the 9th of May, 2002. Please note that machine guns are robots. Black tie required. Please note that machine guns are robots.

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