Artilect questions

[black campbellq]

Even more BC response...will he never stop typing?

...Remember when Geordi recreated Dr. Brahms? The computer used all the available data to create a realistic portrait of the good docter. We thought.

Then he met the real Leah...

My take on that at the time, and still, is that "Leah" was Enterprise . I figured the ship was developing sentiency, and that she was experiencing emotional responses to her crew. I always hoped that TNG would explore that, but that would have necessitated the kind of change in the show that they always avoid.

Love affair between Picard and Crusher? Shut that down. Worf has a lover? Kill her. His kid? Send him away. Klingons are our allies? We need some reason to have to get in a tussle with them. Exo-comps? Gone and forgotten.

Our campaign has seent he rise of sentient starships, which are covered under the Data v. Starfleet decision. You can't wipe their minds...so how do you control them or coerce them into service without looking like you are enslaving them? Could you, in good conscience, expect a starship to go into a fight if they aren't a willing member of Starfleet (this assumes that Starfleet personnel are contractually bound to follow the order given them.)? How much responsiblity should be given to them?

What would they be like, personality-wise? Their function is to carry a crew and follow their orders. Do they get a rank? Could they rise to command themselves? Are they property, or can a multi-billion credit ship just quit and go into business for itself? They interact with people every day, on duty, in the holodeck; they observe their crew's interactions...would they be child-like, or frightening intelligent and savvy; appearing omniscient (at least in the case of their crew and their lives)?

Thanks for starting the thread, Trick; I find it interesting

[Tobian]

This begs the question: what use are emotions & how do they develop? Once again, I'm increasingly convinced that emotional response is tied directly to two biologically-driven needs: self preservation and reproduction. Fear and anger responses seem to be reductive to self-preservation directives to protect the being; affection and the need for social interaction seems to be another survival response which doesn't always seem to occur in various species, whereas the first two seem ubiquitous.

Love, while blown into romantic and noble proportions by art, would seem to be intrinsically tied to reproduction. (An idea that has it's own implications for various sexual habits; make your own moral assumptions.)

These emotional responses drive behavior, which when coupled with the use of intelligence, create more adaptive and responsive behavior.

A more pop psychology response might be, emotions are learned behavior. I would think as they interacted with people, androids would by necessity mime emotions to improve that interaction...you could argue they simply imitate emotional responses, but how much behavior in animals/people is mimetic?

Interesting points but then without something akin to Data's fascination with humanity and his emulation as such artificial life forms don't have basic biological functions, they have only what they have been programmed to do: Which is likelly to be emulation of humanity: However if you created truly sentient machines, would they not choose to seek their own path away from their limitations, in exactly the way that Humans do, whom they are emulating?

This however would take them away from our path because they breed/mate differently, they don't eat in the same way and especially in the case of holographic sentient life forms can be radically altered rapidly, and far beyond the limitations of biological life.

While I admire you for taking on such challenging issues the more I think about it the more I realise that Starfleet would be very reticent to purposefully create such life forms, because not only did the issue of Data's right chose cause ripples, the mirror of that is the very right to self determination: Would Starfleet be so keen to actually go ahead with creating such life forms knowing the can of worms it would create for them: It would be the ethical reasoning that would stop them in their tracks, not technical constraints.

I'm not entirelly sure it is the hardware which is the problem, but the software. Data created a virtual copy of himself, but it did not function properly: In the same sense Illea presents the same problem. yes they might be able to replicate her down to the molecule with these scans (which I find tenuous at best) but was she actually... sentient, or merely a probe of V'Ger: Was there anything inside her, was she autonymous or merelly something to more closelly study the maker? And even if she was independant, again was she actually sentient: because it was almost as if the emotional aspect, the fuzzy logic, desire fear hate, the whole bag, which is exactly what the machines lacked and needed: which would be a massive problem for any Starfleet engineer to overcome... either build titanic computers the size of planets or try and simulate massive wierd transporter style mass energy displacements with starfleet crew, in the hopes of creating an emotionally aware machine.. right before it sails off into the sunset and ascends to a higher plain of existence Ultimatelly Machines in the same vein as Illea would start down the same path V'ger did: Assimilate all knowledge on the path to improve yourself, behave psychopathically allong the way, because, unlike Data they have no ethical and moral subroutines to protect anyone! yet fundamentally lack something, untill they turn themselves into Klingon Warbird eating machines, and ascending to a higher plane of existence

It's also an assumption, given that they are based on Illea, a child like entity, with only memories, Data, of a person, they would chose to emulate humans: yes they can learn one thing from humans (humanoids: Whatever ) they can't get elsewhere, emotions and effectivelly sentience, do they need Humans to do that, or do they just assimilate in a frightening borg / V'Ger like manner!

This is why I think Data was unique, allong with the many oddments of sentient computer technology, they were odd wrinkles that were either created by accident or by the design of someone incredibly brilliant, like Soong: Making highly sophisticated artificial humanoids in the shape of humans is one thing.. being sentient is another! Data is the goal for the designers not because of his technical sophistication, which in reality could be matched, but because of the feat of social engineering he represented: Self awareness, sentience, and limited emotions: And that is the unnatainable goal!

Simplistic androids such as Exo III and MUDD's Women were really just machines.. The android at Exo 3: It had millions of years and what did it do: Nothing, if it were really sentient would it not have got bored, found something else to do, built intergalactic civilisation etc: No it didn't; it just lurched around, looking like Lurch, and did nothing . Mudds Women were just clever automatons; Sophisticated animatronics, not much different from holodeck characters.

The Flip side to that is yes to simply make lifelike pupets to do as we whim: Such as the EMH, but then, if by twist of fate, they get like Voyagers,. then ethical questions arise: The Question is one of: do they make willing slaves, limiting their possible future development, in order to make their own lives easier: Something which most people in the Federation would be abhored by: Or do they irrensponsably breed a group of Frankensteins monsters, and set them lose and hope they don't kill us all

Apologies fo my grammer, it's crappy, but it's too late to edit all that down

[black campbellq]

All excellent points, Tob.

I agree that released from biological imperatives, the machine intelligence would developin different ways. For us, they "reproduce" by combining memories and personalities in new androids.

Starfleet, in our campaign, experimented with one sentient vessel. The others have been evloving sentience (ala the Brahms thing on Enterprise .) The sentient ship proved so useful as a force multiplier they've been considering more; the issue is precisely the morality of creating a self-aware machine to serve biological life.

[Tricky]

While not in a pen and paper campaign, we had similar things back in the day when i used to play with my various action figures.

Ok, this may sound uber-geeky, but my brother and I had what could be called a campaign, or running saga, that lasted until high school.

Anyway, androids and robots and sentient computers were a big part of this, while we didn't dwell on the metaphisics of the situation, it was basically becoming appartent that artificall life was becoming a 'new race'. They were becoming independant of their creators, and one android even pulled a Magneto and was our main nemisis, striking a blow for machine kind again and again.

Eventually, the heroes and their govt decided that his basic argument, that androids have rights, was correct, and the Androids were given a homeworld of their own!

Next came the ability to reproduce( and not in some big old factory either!)!!

[black campbellq]

If you've got the right players, the metaphysics really give a campiagn with this kind of storyline flavor.

[Tricky]

I figured that i would explain our concept of Android 'reproduction':

Basicly, each droid carries a program that contains all of it's tech spechs back ups of it core programing. When two droids decide that they wish to reproduce (most of them were sentient), the two droids 'mate' (connect in various ways; this might be just connecting cords, or doing the full on nasty, depending on the model), and another program randomly selects features from both parent's specks (for example, armor plating from a battle droid, but maybe enhanced sensors from it's other "parent").
These were then sent to a 'womb' where the droid would be built. In most droids, this was simply a large device where the materials were replicated and assembled into a working droid; but some of the more humanoid droids actually carried their offspring to term!

Not bad for a couple of sci-fi kids in 1987, eh?