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Human, machines, and the interpretation of formal systems

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Abstract

There are plenty of intelligent machines in our world today: digital computers and autonomous robots. At the heart of each of these machines there are automatic formal systems (programs running on a digital computer). Now, if the interpretation of a formal system does not belong to the formal system itself, if the interpretation has to be added, it is worth asking: in the case of these intelligent machines that are massively interspersed in our social interactions, where does the interpretation come from? In this paper, we analyse what we call the invisibility of interpretation. Dealing with various types of formal systems (computers, robots, formalist approaches to Economics), the human source of the interpretation of these systems is sometimes concealed by a formalist restriction. To show how the formalist restriction produces the invisibility of interpretation allows us to underline our responsibility, as human agents, for all this interpretative work—and its importance for us as human beings.

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Notes

  1. It is sometimes considered that a second condition must be respected in order to have a true PD, given by the inequality R > (S + T)/2, which means that cooperation would yield better results than the mutual agreement alternation between cooperation and defect.

  2. Matrices are structures for games presented in the strategic form. Trees are the structures for games presented in the extensive form, which we do not consider here.

  3. See http://www.robocup.org/.

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  1. Institute for Systems and Robotics, University of Lisbon, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1, 1049-001, Lisbon, Portugal

    Porfírio Silva

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  1. Porfírio Silva
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Silva, P. Human, machines, and the interpretation of formal systems. AI & Soc 31, 157–169 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-015-0637-0

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