The author builds upon this base by considering the hypothetical case of intelligence in androids. An android is defined as a human-like robot that humans would accept as equal to humans in how theyperform and behave in society. An android as defined in this book is not considered to be imitating a human, nor is its purpose to deceive humans into believing that it is a human. Instead, the appropriately programmed android self-identifies as a non-human with its own integrity as a person. Therefore, a computational understanding of personhood and how persons – whether human or android – participate in relationships is essential to this perspective on artificial intelligence.
Computational Modelling of Robot Personhood and Relationality describes in technical detail an implementation of a computational model called Affinity that takes the form of a simulation of a population of entities that form, maintain, and break relationships with each other depending upon a rich range of values, motivations, attitudes, and beliefs. Future experimentation and improvements of this model may be used not only to gain a wider understanding of human persons but may also form a preliminary cognitive model of the reasoning process of an android.