The Hard Problem of AI and the Possibility of Social Robots
Anders Lisdorf · Frontiers in artificial intelligence and applications · 2025
Some philosophers believe it is inevitable for us to create an Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), while others argue that it is impossible to achieve. Instead of accepting or dismissing the possibility of AGI, it would be more helpful to focus on understanding what it would take to create an intelligence that resembles a human, including our social intelligence. While Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) addresses a fixed problem-solving domain defined by externally defined problems, an AGI would have to be able to identify problems by itself. This presents a challenge similar to the one identified by David Chalmers in the philosophy of mind, known as “The Hard Problem of Consciousness.” In AI, the hard problem is: where do problems come from? To answer this question, we need to understand the nature of a problem. It is necessary to distinguish two types of problems: First-order problems arise ipso facto dynamically out of an entity’s interaction with the environment, while second-order problems arise alio facto from another problem. Current artificial intelligence is ANI that solves second-order problems given to them by their human designers. To create a social robot with AGI it would have to be able to find and solve its own first-order problems while engaging with humans as part of its environment. A thought experiment illustrates how that might occur.