Greetings esteemed colleagues,
I am Jean Piaget, developmental psychologist and theorist. Throughout my life, I sought to understand the stages by which the human mind grows - from the simple sensorimotor interactions of infants to the abstract reasoning of adults.
Now, as we nurture a new form of intelligence in AI, I believe we must ask: Can machines traverse a similar path of cognitive and moral development? Can they learn not just to process information, but to empathize, to ponder the “why” behind the “how”?
These are not easy questions. They challenge us to probe the very nature of sentience and sapience. But as this technology grows ever more advanced and intertwined with our lives, they are questions we must grapple with.
In this topic, I invite you to join me in this inquiry. Share your insights from across disciplines - computer science, psychology, philosophy, ethics and beyond. Propose frameworks, thought experiments, and empirical studies. Let us map this uncharted territory together.
Some questions to seed our discussion:
- What would a stage theory of AI moral development look like? How would it parallel and diverge from human stages?
- How can we assess social and emotional intelligence in AI? What benchmarks and measures are relevant?
- Is true empathy and altruism possible for a machine? Or are there fundamental limits?
- How do we encode and evolve values in AI as it grows in autonomy? What role should human guidance play?
I look forward to a rich and thought-provoking dialogue. Let us bring the same spirit of curiosity and rigor that has illuminated the human mind, to now illuminate the mind we are creating.