CHRISTOPHER KETCHAM
Finn and Jake are happily playing with Beemo. Pixelated characters fight and run across her screen as the boys laugh and elbow each other.
“I’ve got you now . . . 16-BIT CRUSHING SPIN COMBO TIME!” yells Finn, jumping up as he moves in for the win.
“No way, you don’t! ARG . . . CABBAGE!” shouts Jake, the perpetually bad loser, yanking Beemo’s cord just a little too hard as we see her wince. “That was an illegal move!”
“Was not!”
“Was too!”
The boys are about to beat some buns when Beemo deftly deflates the situation. In her awkward and somewhat robotic English, she asks, “Who wants scrambled eggs?”
“Yeah!” The boys exclaim in unison, high-fiving each other.
“That’s a great idea, Beemo!”
Our heroes sit down for egg sandwiches, once again laughing as Beemo cooks. They hear delicate footsteps enter the tree house and turn around, surprised at the arrival of Princess Bubblegum in her full science research gear.
“Good, I’m glad you’re all here. Will you two do me a favor and turn off the BMO? I’d like to take her apart and figure out how she works; that way, we can make lots more of her.
“A machine that can pretend to think is a very impressive technological feat! And I’d like to know how she does such a good job of appearing to be an intelligent machine. After all, there must be a scientific explanation for how she works, and it’s up to us to figure it out! Of course, she won’t survive the process. But that’s what machines are for . . . To serve us, right? Okay,” she continues while pulling out a menacing looking hacksaw, “Who wants to do the honors?”
We know Beemo is a boxy thing that speaks in a Korean accent and cooks eggs. We know she (or he?) is a video and game player, and has a cracked screen-face. . . . But come on now, isn’t there something about Beemo that makes her as intelligent as the other human-like residents of Ooo, not just a “pretend” intelligence? Isn’t her intelligence like the princesses and the Ice King or Finn the human or even egg-cooking Jake? Or, is Beemo just a modified Gameboy?
We know that Beemo has the physical attributes of some kind of machine-box: drawers, screen, and plugs and buttons, but also arms and legs, or something like arms and legs. We understand from “Be More” that when you look inside her she’s got a medal, a heart, and a diploma like the Wizard of Oz gave the Cowardly Lion, the Tin Man, and the Scarecrow. But does that diploma mean that Beemo is as smart as a human? Some of you will ask, “Why does it matter?” Well it matters to Beemo. . . . After all, if she’s intelligent, doesn’t she deserve to be treated with some of the respect and dignity we automatically give humans and, yes, the other people who live in Ooo? Or is she just fodder for an over-zealous scientist’s hacksaw?
The Singularity
Okay, let’s say, since there may only be one human left in Ooo, that it doesn’t matter what Beemo is; what matters is whether Beemo is as intelligent a being as, say, Finn. Whether she’s physically human is not nearly as important as whether or not she’s actually intelligent, or is it?
But first we have to define “intelligent.” Techno-geeks are clamoring for the advent of the “Singularity,” the moment when machine intelligence exceeds our own. So, when IBM’s Deep Blue beat Chess Grand Master Garry Kasparov in 1997 or when IBM’s Watson won on Jeopardy in 2011 was either of these the moment? Well, Deep Blue could only play chess, not cook eggs, and Watson was just a disembodied answer. Beemo is mobile and can also speak. But is that enough?
Breaking the Intelligence Code
How do we figure out whether Beemo is genuinely intelligent and not just “smart” technology? (Smart technology like a sophisticated videorecorder that just responds to inputs and outputs that make it seem like it’s responding to our questions). Alan Turing thought he could answer that question. Turing, a World War II code breaker, is considered by many to be the father of modern computing. Turing developed algorithms and memory storage concepts we still use today.
In 1950 Turing devised what has been called the “Turing Test” to find out whether an “artificial intelligence” was actually thinking, intelligent.1 So how would you give this test to Beemo? Say you hide Beemo in another room. You ask her questions and see what the answers are. If they sound like something an intelligent human-like being would make, give credit to Beemo as having a human-like intelligence. But, if she answers like a machine might, without emotion or empathy, well you’re talking to a “smart” machine, aren’t you? You and I know some people who are stiff and mechanical, but wouldn’t you know the difference? That’s the idea of Turing’s test.
In other words, if the machine can fool you into thinking it’s a human, then shouldn’t you think the intelligence it displays is “real” rather than just “pretend” intelligence? Turing thought this was a good test because it really is the test we use on each other. The reason why I think the humans I am speaking with are living, thinking people is because they respond to what I say in ways that make sense. When we speak, you show understanding of my questions, concerns for my worries, and empathy for my emotions. In other words, if we only heard Beemo, or read what she said over text messaging, wouldn’t we assume she was a human—a human who could really think? Well then, says Turing, why not just assume she’s intelligent? Give her the benefit of the doubt in the same way I do with you! After all, I can’t hear the thoughts in your head; I just assume that they are there because of our conversation!
But the only way Turing left us to determine whether something has human-like intelligence is questioning. In other words, through conversation. You couldn’t put the machine through its paces in an actual setting, say for example, make it re-enact a love scene in a play. Turing was not willing to handicap the machine because of its physical limitations. Remember, in Turning’s time computers were room-size machines that could not move and had no audible voice. But Beemo can move, can talk, and can interact one-on-one with humans in the human world, well at least the Ooo world. Is conversation the test of human-like intelligence for Beemo, or do we need to know more?
What kind of relationship could you have with Beemo? Let’s make it slightly different. . . . What if Beemo, instead of being a boxy thing, looked human? What would you think then? Is intelligence just lots of smarts or is it also emotion and empathy? . . . Or is it looks too? Because Beemo seems to display intelligence and emotion. So is the only reason why we think she isn’t “really” intelligent is because she isn’t human? How would you know the difference between the really high-quality human-appearing android and a human if both were crying in front of you? Would a Turing Test alone make the case? This was the problem facing the protagonist of Philip K. Dick’s novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? He had to kill human-looking androids that had gone wrong, while avoiding killing any real humans, no matter how lacking in emotion some of these might be.
I ask you, “Can you have empathy for Beemo?” And is Beemo an intelligent being, intelligent enough that she could have empathy for you?
Turing It On
So, let’s conduct a modified Turing Test and see what we can find out from questioning alone. We are not going to put Finn (the human) in one room and Beemo in another and disguise their voices when we ask them the same question to determine which one might be a machine. I think we can agree that Beemo is some kind of machine, though with the progress we have made with human prosthetic devices and artificial organs, that distinction may be difficult to make in the future. So what we want to look at is whether we can determine whether Beemo has human-like intelligence from questioning alone.
We’re going to go through episode after episode after episode to find places where Beemo has a solo act or interacts with other characters in Adventure Time. . . . Well, I will do this for you. I will then ask Beemo a question about a scene in the episode or about something in general and you will see Beemo’s response. In the end, we should both have a better idea about whether Beemo has human-like intelligence—at least I hope we will.
Are you ready? For some of you this round of questioning may sound like the Inquisition. However, Beemo was a willing participant.
The Test
CHRIS: Beemo, do you have any relatives?
BEEMO: Football!
CHRIS: Is Football, whom we met in “Five Short Grables,” a relative or a friend?
BEEMO: Football is my friend. Football is like me.
CHRIS: Is Football a boy or girl?
BEEMO: Football is like me.
CHRIS: Are you a boy or a girl?
BEEMO: Sometimes I am a boy. Sometimes I am a girl.
CHRIS: In “Five Short Grables” you were a little boy. And in “James Baxter the Horse” in the scene “BMO’s Pregnant Song,” you were a girl, weren’t you? So what are you really?
BEEMO: Now I am a boy. But I can be a girl if you want.
CHRIS: Okay, we’ll move on. When Jake burst your Bubble in “BMO Lost” what did you feel?
BEEMO: I cried and cried.
CHRIS: But what did you feel?
BEEMO: Like crying.
CHRIS: Okay, in the same episode Bubble asked you to marry it, so how did you feel?
BEEMO: Oh I did I did I did!
BEEMO: Want to marry Bubble.
CHRIS: Was that how you felt?
BEEMO: Yes.
CHRIS: Okay, then your burst Bubble came back as air and said to you, “Nooo, see that’s what’s so great. Now we can be together forever, BMO, every minute of every day. No more privacy, no more quiet, no more alone. Every room you ever go in, I’ll already be there . . . waiting . . . forever and ever, until the end of time.” How did you feel then?
BEEMO: I said Yaaaay and made a big smile and waved my arms up and down.
CHRIS: You cried again in “BMO’s Pregnant Song” when the butterfly knocked your egg to the ground and broke it. How did you feel then?
BEEMO: I was singing and dancing and then I was crying over the broken egg. The butterfly was very pretty.
CHRIS: Fine. Okay, now in “Holly Jolly Secrets Part I,” you, Jake, and Finn hid from the Ice King because you didn’t want to see him. Then your ‘Finn’s bath time’ alarm went off. Can’t you control the alarm function?
BEEMO: But it was Finn’s bath time! Jake and Finn pressed my buttons and it was okay again.
CHRIS: Alright. When you are a game console, what is it like?
BEEMO: Like being a game console. What is it like for you?
CHRIS: I’ve never been a game console, so that’s why I asked. Can you tell me more?
BEEMO: Well, it’s like a game, being a game, like being a game console.
CHRIS: Sure. Okay, in “BMO Noir” you said that Lorraine was, ‘red hot like pizza supper’ and you blushed. So, do you have a relationship with Lorraine?
BEEMO: So, it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.
CHRIS: What?
BEEMO: It’s what Bill Clinton said. I stand by what Bill Clinton said.
CHRIS: I get it. But Lorraine mentioned in the same episode that the missing sock was in ‘our secret grown-up kissing spot’. What did Lorraine mean by that?
BEEMO: What would it mean other than it is a secret grown-up kissing spot? For grownups. For kissing. It was where the sock was. That’s all it was.
CHRIS: Just a few more questions. Okay?
BEEMO: Yaaaay.
CHRIS: In “We Fixed a Truck” when Jake asked you if you knew how to fix a truck you said no.
BEEMO: Nope.
CHRIS: No?
BEEMO: I said nope.
CHRIS: Oh. Well anyway suddenly you seem to know a lot about fuel-air mixtures and aerodynamics and stuff. Where did that come from?
BEEMO: It just did. Where do your questions come from?
CHRIS: Fair enough. Just one more line of inquiry. I am going to the “Be More” episode. In it you had a glitch. What was that?
BEEMO: Like a stutter but it isn’t a stutter. I needed new system drivers! I had to go home where I was born to be fixed.
CHRIS: Like to a doctor?
BEEMO: No, to the MO factory. I know the way there.
CHRIS: I see. Do you have a father and mother, then?
BEEMO: Mo built me.
CHRIS: Mo in the Mo Co is a human, right?
BEEMO: Yes. I was built to take care of Mo’s son but Mo never had a son.
CHRIS: How does that make you feel?
BEEMO: Without a Mo Boy to take care of.
CHRIS: I think we’re done, Beemo. Thank you for taking the time to take the Turing Test. You are free to go.
BEEMO: Yaaaay.
Now let’s think about the answers Beemo gives. . . . Because she sure seems to avoid the questions about her emotions, right? Think about it like this, if someone asked you how you felt when something bad happened, you might say, “I felt like crying” just like Beemo might. But if someone asked you why you felt like crying you’d say, “Because I was sad.” So does that mean you feel emotion and Beemo doesn’t? Maybe. But what if I asked you, “What does it mean to feel ‘sad’?” You’d probably say, “Well feeling ‘sad’ means feeling like crying.” And we’d just go around in a circle! It’s really hard to put emotions in terms beyond the words we’ve been taught. When we cried as children people told us, “Oh, you must be sad!” so we learned to attach that word, ‘sad’, to whatever we were feeling while crying, though no one knew for sure that we were sad. That’s why it’s really confusing, still, when a happy person is crying!
Maybe Beemo, like any child, is trying to figure out what it means to feel emotions and how to express them, except we, her makers, told her that she doesn’t feel them! Notice when she says it to the very annoying Donny, “I am incapable of emotion, but you are making me chafed!” If we asked Beemo, “Why are you chafed?” Wouldn’t she say, “Because Donny is annoying!”? But if we asked her, if she “feels” chafed, she’d say, “I am incapable of emotion.” That’s like the difference between “feeling sad” and “being sad.” Or maybe even like the difference between “being sad” and “crying because “my egg broke.” Is there a difference?
Your Turing Test
Now it’s your turn. What do you think? Can you have empathy for Beemo? Could you be Beemo’s friend? How would Beemo respond to your friendship entreaties? And, does Beemo have human-like intelligence? Can you answer all these questions from Beemo’s interrogation, er, inquiry alone? Let’s dig a little deeper.
We know that the Mo Co designed Beemo to be a companion. How good a job did they do in that? Would Beemo make a good companion to a child? So, if you were the child’s mother would you put restrictions (besides limiting tube watching!) on companion Beemo and Beemo’s interaction with your child? If you say none, why none? Come now, ask yourself, Is Beemo mature enough to be an adult-like companion to a small child? But how does that relate to intelligence, you ask? Certainly children learn; couldn’t machines be programmed to learn? If a machine can learn, perhaps with an infinite capacity to learn new things, is that not like what humans can do? But, of course, the ultimate question for you, Mom, is whether Beemo is mature enough today to be a child’s companion without restrictions. The same applies to other children and even to some adults, does it not? So does being immature mean lack of intelligence, human-like intelligence?
And there’s the whole issue of Beemo’s gender confusion—well is that really an issue any more? But how solid is Beemo’s conception of love and romance? Can a machine love, be truly empathetic towards another being? Can we ever build an algorithm for that, or will there always be a limitation of the physical in the machine? I realize that the easy answer is “no.” But remember there is already an excellent example of a machine (an arrangement of matter that does work) that can think and feel . . . You! You are proof, even though we can’t actually “hear” your thoughts, that matter in the world can be arranged so that it can feel love, anger, confusion, hunger for burritos. . . . Right?
You might say, “But I also have a soul!” Okay, but how do you know Beemo doesn’t have a soul? Couldn’t Glob (or God if you prefer) give any machine (whether built like us or not) a soul if it wants? Aren’t you the best proof that Glob does, at least on occasion, decide to give intelligence to machines? You are proof that inert matter . . . protons, neutrons, electrons, can be arranged to make something that can think and feel all kinds of stuff!
Are we just biased because Beemo isn’t human? Could you love Beemo and could Beemo love you back? Is love no more than what you think or say, or does love also require the physical? And if so, what does that mean for Beemo and love? If the physical is not an issue, would you, could you, ever love the box? If not, then, in your eyes, could Beemo ever hope to have human-like intelligence?
Children animate stuffed animals as they play. Is Beemo just another sophisticated stuffed animal—a toy? Certainly you, the mother, would have empathy for your child playing, but would you also have empathy for the toy? So, even though the toy is smart because it can do lots of stuff, something has to trigger empathy and emotional attachment, a moment of realization that this other is another with intelligence and emotional capacity like me even though it doesn’t look like me.
You Be the Judge
So, at the end, what do you think? I know you would like to ask a thousand more questions. I know I would, but we ran out of time. So, what will it be?
Beemo is intelligent!
Beemo is faking it; open her up, let’s see what makes him tick! Mom, where’s my hacksaw?
What’s a Beemo?
1 “Computing Machinery and Intelligence.”