Adam, Golem, Robot

Based on a talk presented by Ken Goldberg in 1993 at a Hillel Faculty lunch at the University of Southern California organized by Susan Laemmle and with Tamara Eskenazi, Professor of Biblical Studies, Hebrew Union College, and a follow-up conversation between Ken Goldberg and Ovid Jacob in San Francisco in 1995.

Ken:
Let's reconsider the archetype of The Creature in Western literature by examining the potential linkage between Adam, Golem and Robot. The well-known story of Adam and Eve is told in chapter 2 and 3 of Genesis. Initially Adam and Eve live in a state of innocent bliss in the Garden. God tells them that they can eat from any tree with the pointed exception of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. The serpent suggests to Eve that eating from this Tree will open her eyes and make her wise. After she and Adam cast aside caution and eat, God appears and they hide. He asks why are they wearing fig leaves and Eve confesses, blaming the serpent. Then Adam confesses, blaming Eve, "the woman You gave me": in effect blaming God. God responds with a threefold punishment: women will experience pain during childbirth, men and women will no longer be pampered but must work, and they become mortal.

Ovid:
Joseph Campbell points out that before the Biblical myth of creation, there were other competing myths in that region, with different interpretations of the Garden, the Tree and the Serpent. His Occidental Mythologies has some of this. Check out also some of my thoughts The Tree, The Ladder, The Chariot and the Self. One interesting thing I want to mention is that though we "lost" the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge after we were expelled from the Garden, subsequently Kabbalists figured out a way to "get back in"! Thus, Moses Cordovero, in his Garden of Pomegranates (Pardes Rimonim) in the 1500's explores this - see Scholem's Kabbalah for more details.

Ken:
When we consider these conditions, Pain, Work and the recognition of Mortality, we realize that they define the condition of being an adult. In effect, the consequences of their act of disobedience (rebellion) facilitates their maturing into full human beings. Their expression of free will transforms them from passive innocence to responsible leaders. What about God's reaction? Was God so angry? Or was God secretly pleased by the inevitable consequence of his creations? (I've been told about an essay on this but can't find it: "Did They Fall or Were They Pushed?" ): I propose the following thesis:

The event wherein the creator loses control of the creature is a necessary step towards the development of the creature.

This reading of Creation story runs counter to the traditional Christian view of "Fall/Original Sin" advocated by St. Augustine and Milton ("Paradise Lost"). But I think it's somewhat consistent with Jewish readings of the story, which do not agonize over the events in the garden.

Ovid:
A very interesting thesis and an interesting point regarding "evil." Indeed, in Kabbalah, "evil" has its place. The complications which come with loss of control seem part of the process, as you point out.

Ken:
Let's now look at the next component of this linkage, the "Golem." I used this term as a shorthand to refer to a story that arises, with variations, in many cultures' mythology and folklore: Prometheus, Icarus, Faust, the Sorcerer's Apprentice, Frankenstein, the Hasidic tale of the Golem. The archetype generally describes a human who creates a creature that comes to life. Initially the creator takes great pride and delight in the creature, until at some point the creature takes a life of its own and runs amok, and in the end the creator pays the consequences for this act of hubris.

Ovid:
There is the book by Gustav Meyrink, "Der Golem," published in 1925 or so. There is an English translation of this, and I also have a Romanian translation I got in 1991. Plus, of course, the great 1925 Expressionist German film. Interestingly, it is rarely a woman who plays this role; for a feminist perspective on this subject, see Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto, as well as Jenny Cool's essay on it.

Ken:
Each variant of this story has the same basic message: it is a mistake to overreach, especially in the realm of science: Don't mess with Mother Nature. During the Middle Ages this edict was enforced by the Church: only the mystical and secretive alchemists persisted in trying to create homunculi: artificial men. As a vivid example, recall the response of the Manhattan physicists when they witnessed the awesome potential of their creation. By then it had gotten away from them and Oppenheimer suffered a Promethean downfall.

Ovid:
I have a different take on this: in the story of the Golem, the Rabbi brought the Creature to life only when it was a clear need, to defend the Prague Jewish community from expulsion. It was meant to be a short-lived measure, which it is in Meyrink's version. So is tempering the power of creation, but in a very circumscribed way.

The Manhattan Project physicists, on the other hand, did not seem to have as much understanding (and compassion), compared with Rabbi Loew, of the dimensions involved in building such an awesome instrument of destruction as the atomic bomb. Oppenheimer, one of the few in the group who did worry about the implications of the atomic bomb work, realizes some of the implications, but too late to affect the decision of whether to drop the bomb, or where to do that. The creators have lost control of the creature , the bomb, but this has had grave consequences. Maybe necessary, but grave nonetheless. Perhaps the lessons we might learn from this is to temper our learning with compassion and wisdom, otherwise we will destroy ourselves.

Ken:
Let's reconsider the particulars of the Jewish version of this story. After the Golem saves the small Jewish community from the consequences of a accusation of a blood libel, Rabbi Loew asks the creature to fetch water from the well. The Rabbi goes upstairs to sleep and awakens to discover that the entire house is filled with water! The Golem continues dutifully fetch water until the Rabbi tricks it into leaning close enough that the Rabbi can erase the first letter inscribed on its forehead, thus changing Emet (Truth, or Life) to Met (Death), whereupon the Golem turns into a lifeless mass of clay which crushes the Rabbi to death. Again, harsh consequences for the creator. The rabbi's forgot to specify what computer scientist's call a "termination condition". The Golem went into an infinite loop due to a programming error.

This suggests a subtle point: the loss of control is often traced back to some 'mistake' on the part of the creator. Consider the case of the Cornell graduate student Robert Morris, who in 1990 experimented with a program that could replicate itself over the Internet. After such viruses (technically, worms) are detected, one way to prevent further spread is to 'inoculate' an uninfected machine so that it appears to be infected. To counter such defenses, Morris added a feature to his program that would, with some small probability, re-infect a machine which appeared to be already infected. Morris set that probability at 5% not anticipating the exponential spread of his program. It soon replicated to that point where many computers on the Internet were jammed with thousands of copies of this program. Morris was arrested and expelled from Cornell. Although many embarrassed system operators advocated chaining Morris to a rock and arranging for an eagle to eat out his liver every day, he is reportedly now working quietly for the NSA.

Ovid:
I do think it is hubris, the hubris of rationality, which believes it will be able to foresee all the possible contingencies and prepare for them all. yet, it is only a part of the whole mind. It usually works along linear modes of thinking, and misses non-linear or synergetic effects, like Robert Morris did. I feel this is a source of many difficulties.

Ken:
This brings us to the final component of the linkage, the Robot. I'd like to differentiate it from the Golem by defining the Robot as a purely mechanical and logical creature who's animation does not derive from spiritual, magical, or alchemical sources as is the case with the Golem. I characterize the motivation behind creating a Robot as pragmatic: to do work, in contrast to the motivation behind creating a Golem, which is to some degree to demonstrate virtuosity.

Ovid:
But I would also like to point out that the Golem is "Emet", alive! The Robot is not. Even Frankenstein's monster is made of flesh from other (formerly) living creature.

Ken:
Consider the origin of the term "robot" in Karel Capek's 1923 play, 'R.U.R., Rossum's Universal Robots.' "Robot" derives from the Slavic word for 'work'. Consider the consonant German German "arbeit", which appeared as a grim example of Nazi humor on the gates of Auschwitz - "Arbeit Macht Frei" , Work will me you free. The etymology of this word suggests that the robot is a utilitarian creature whose primary purpose is to serve its human master. This role is emphasized in Asimov's science fiction stories. The contemporary science of Robotics also emphasizes the utilitarian, although it carries a persistent thread on interest in virtuosic demonstrations of modern automata.

Ovid:
By the way, Capek was from Prague. I wondered if he is Jewish, and familiar with the Golem story? Anyway, I like you connecting "rabotai" in Czech and "arbeit" in German.

Ken:
Is the goal of Robotics to create obedient slaves?

Ovid:
That is an excellent question.

Ken:
This raises some subtle issues. Certainly we want robots that do what they are told. But to lessen the burden of programming (and the consequences of making software errors!), we want to pradmine the robot with some ability to make decisions: to act "intelligently". But this capability opens a Pandora's box: once we give the robot some latitude, we may not be able to anticipate all logical consequences. In Artificial Intelligence, success is often declared at the moment when the program or robot is capable of surprising its creator.

In the 1950's a computer scientist named Samuels wrote a program to play checkers that was able to evolve its decision tables based on past games. Eventually it was able to beat Samuels regularly! Similarly, a team of grad students at Carnegie Mellon University developed a chess-playing program that also evolved based on past games. It soon outstripped its developers and beat a few chess masters. The grad students were hired by IBM which is putting its corporate resources behind the development of Deep Blue, which will take on the world champion Gary Kasparov. [It did and succeeded.]

In closing let's return to the conjecture:

The event wherein the creator loses control of the creature is a necessary step toward the development of the creature.

"Come on, leap cheerfully, even if it means a lighthearted leap, so long as it is decisive. If you are capable of being a true human, then danger and the harsh judgement of existence on your thoughtlessness will help you become one." - S. Kirkegaard, The Present Age.

goldberg@berkeley.edu
http://goldberg.berkeley.edu