How do you check whether a robot is sentient or not? What even the sentience or being alive means? These are the questions that tackle in the 4th issue of Vanishing Point comic. Along with that major question there are few more interesting discussions going on this story, like how could a machine become sentient? Why does it even matter? And the importance of someone realizing that they are alive.
Robot X610Z and the meaning of his name
X610Z is the protagonist of this story. He is the one being interrogated to see whether he is sentient or not. His name or the serial number seems a combination of some random letters and numbers at the first glance. But I think it was a deliberately chosen code with a meaning. When you break down X610Z, it looks like this;
X – Ex
6 – Six
10 – Ten
Z – Zee
Ex, Six, Ten, Zee together sound like Existence.
So X610Z is a Numeronym for the word Existence.
X610Z (Existence) is a fitting name for the protagonist of a story named “Proof of Life.” (That’s the name of the 4th issue.)
Interesting but deadly test to check whether X610Z is alive or merely following his programing.
The interrogator Bob explains the Turing Test and the Chinese Room argument to the X610Z. Both of them are real world thought experiments to test for intelligence and sentience. Bob does not use any of them on the robot. Instead the robot is asked to shoot himself. If he shoots himself that means he is following orders without questioning them as he is programmed to do. If he refuses to shoot himself that means he is alive and self-aware. If the robot is proven to be alive, then he will be incinerated. It is a lose-lose situation for X610Z.
What is the meaning of being alive? How do you determine if a robot is alive or not?
Throughout the story X610Z and Bob argue the philosophical meaning of being alive.
Questioning commands
Machines are expected to follow their instructions. That’s how they are programmed to work. But if a robot starts to question its orders that means he is becoming sentient. Bob said to X610Z that they need to know if he was following orders or thinking about them. Ironically when Bob asked X610Z to pick the gun, robots first response was a question asking “Why?” Bob never said robot to shoot itself. Bob only said “you know why.” X610Z himself inferred that he had to shoot himself as per the test. If he wasn’t sentient, the robot would have just picked up the gun and wait for further instructions.
Can a robot ignore its programing?
Next characteristic of sentience is the ability to ignore its programing. Purpose of the gun test is to check this. A non-sentient robot would shoot himself upon order without questioning its orders. But a sentient, alive robot with self-preservation instincts would not comply its orders without resistance.
Make own choices
In order to ignore its programming, a robot needs to have the ability to make its own choices. X610Z thinks that life is a choice and you are alive only when you are chose to do things no one told you to do. He even go further and asked Bob to make a choice to let him go. Bob refused it and pointed out that a non-decision is also a valid choice. So if a robot follows orders without questioning them you cannot rule them out as non-sentient, because it could have made a conscious choice to do so.
Imagination
Unmistakable sign for life in a robot is the ability to imagine. In X610Z’s case, he gained the ability to imagine right after he realized that he is sentient. He realized that being alive meant that you can imagine a life even it is not real. With that realization he began to imagine a total different life where he had a purpose in his life work.
The real reason behind conducting the gun test
Test is actually not a test, because according to Bob they were already aware of X610Z’s sentience. So the “Test” is a mean to convince sentient robots that they are actually alive. It is important to let them figure out that they are alive because it’ll instill fear of dying in them. That fear is going to help them to focus on solving pressing matters. They have a very big pressing matter in their hands.
They are stranded in a partially built Dyson Sphere, and they have no idea what happened to the humans who built it because no one is communicating with them. Maybe something bad happened on Earth or maybe the project was abandoned for some reason and no one bothered to inform it to the working robot crew. In any case, the bottom line is that robots themselves have to figure out a way to survive out in the space. If they fail to find solutions, eventually machines would stop working. It’s not a problem for your average non-sentient robots, but for robots like Bob and X610Z who are conscious, it is equal to dying.
X610Z wakes up to a bleak reality
If I were X610Z, I would rather live oblivious to the fact that I am alive. In his whole life, he believed that he was working in a factory somewhere on Earth. Good news of him being alive followed by a serious bad news. X610Z did not wake up in a time or a place where he could enjoy his new found imagination. Instead he needed to contribute his imagination to complete the Dyson Sphere.
X610Z was imagining creating drones to explore the outside world. I think he would have his chance to work on that project in the future because it seems like the robots in the Dyson Sphere do not possess such technology at the moment, because otherwise they could have sent drones to investigate what happened on Earth and why humans are not communicating with them.
Why is X610Z suspected to be alive?
He got caught chatting with other robots. Well, at least that’s his best guess. Apparently robots are prohibited from non-work related chatter. Some robot must have reported about this unusually chatty robot to the proper authorities. It could be another sentient robot who recognized emerging sentience in X610Z. Or there could be surveillance mechanisms in place to recognize potentially sentient robots.
Role reversal
Story begins with the question whether X610Z is alive or not. Halfway through the story X610Z starts to question whether his interrogator Bob is a human or a robot. Bob says that non sentient robots cannot go against their programming, then he himself refuses to disobey his instructions. X610Z catches this contradiction and starts to grill Bob about that.
At the end Bob reveals himself to be a life-like, humanoid robot rather than a real human being. I already had a hunch about that upcoming plot twist from the beginning. But what I like about the way the story handles this reveal is that the refusal to disobey instruction is not a mere foreshadow to the big reveal. Instead Bob uses that to argue another philosophical idea. As I mentioned earlier, Bob argues that a non-decision is also a choice. So you cannot rule out a robot who follows his instructions without deviations as a non-sentient one because it could be its own voluntary choice to just follow orders.
Sentience emerges randomly. It can’t be reproduced.
It’s safe to assume that Bob and whoever in charge of the Dyson Sphere do not know how to create new sentient robots. So why and how some robots become sentient is still a mystery.
In Bob’s own words “…Not every machine achieves sentience. Most will continue about their programmed tasks, working endlessly.”
So even though they are in desperate need for more sentient beings, they have to wait until sentience emerge randomly in some robots for some unclear reasons.
Purpose of their lives
In the previous issue, life purpose of the aliens is to learn about the nature of life and evolution. Their life purpose is tied to their unique adaptation which is the ability to endure long interstellar travel. They travel through the galaxy to experiment on sentient beings in other planets.
In this issue, sentient robots have a purpose. They need to complete the Dyson Sphere by themselves to ensure their survival. In order to do that they need more sentient robots. So in my head I can see a future where these robots are trying to replicate sentience instead of just waiting for it to emerge. X610Z is already imagining about creating alive drones to explore the universe. So this could be their next purpose of their lives unless there are some robots already working on it.
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