Intentionality

Intentionality

Intentionality refers to a mental process that is directed towards an object, whether it is internal or external. It is a characteristic of consciousness that allows individuals to have a purpose or goal in mind when engaging with the world around them. This concept is also relevant in discussions about artificial intelligence, as some argue that a computer could possess intentionality and consciousness if it is programmed appropriately with the right inputs and outputs.From: From AI to Robotics [2018], The Making of Imago Hominis: Can We Produce Artificial Companions by Programming Sentience into Robots? [2022]

Legal Personhood for Artificial Intelligences

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Published in Wendell Wallach, Peter Asaro, Machine Ethics and Robot Ethics, 2020

Lawrence B. Solum

The AI might contend that it does possess intentionality, that it does understand, know, intend, and so forth. An AI might even contend that it struggles to exist in a meaningful way.130 The question is how we would evaluate such claims. In the future we are imagining, we might start with our ordinary experience of Als. We certainly could have good reason to take the intentional stance131 toward AIs that we encountered in our daily lives. We would be likely to say that the AI that drives our car “knows all the good shortcuts.” It would be a short step to extend this way of talking about AIs in general to the particular AI that was claiming the rights of constitutional personhood. After reading a newspaper account of the APs lawsuit, we might find ourselves saying, “It must believe that it has a chance of winning.”

The Making of Imago Hominis: Can We Produce Artificial Companions by Programming Sentience into Robots?

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Published in The New Bioethics, 2022

Zishang Yue

The proposal of Asada (2019, p. 3) to introduce pain to robots is a perfect example. In step 1, he suggests that a robot can start ‘feeling’ pain once a nervous system is implanted. In step 2, robots can be made aware of the suffering of other people. No empirical evidence is, however, presented for either claim – they are but hypotheses based on a presumed reductionism. One of the central claims of ‘General AI’ bears a similar mark in asserting that an appropriately programmed computer with the right inputs and outputs would possess intentionality and consciousness in the same way as humans.

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Legal Personhood for Artificial Intelligences

The Making of Imago Hominis: Can We Produce Artificial Companions by Programming Sentience into Robots?