Manufactured Sentient Life

[C5]

This thread being in the Star Trek Chat area, I consider it more like one of those (eventually) aimless but fun discussions, along the lines of "Why do the Klingons change appearances" or "Where did the whale probe come from ?".

And it's not mandatory to find them fun or take part in them either

[tonyg]

This is why I favor games like:

Klingons off the port bow!

Raise shields!

***BOOOM*** The doc goes flying over the bridge rails.


None of this complicated "what is sentience" definition stuff, nor any other such ideas, which inhabit and are poster children for the "Pandora's Box of Scenario Generation."

I don't need players thinking. I need them thinking on their feet.

Complicated philosophical scenarios have their place, to be sure, but I personally lost interest in them 20 years ago when they consisted of

"Are the offspring of the orcs inherently evil, thus requiring the party paladin to slay them out of hand?"

"The evil wizard's tower had a gem that he stole from the elves worth 25,000 Gold. Since we cut off his head, but were hired by dwarves, but the tower is under the charter of the local king of the human lands...who now rightfully owns the gem?"

"The Faerie Drake is a chaotic good creature. His hide will bring many thousands of gold in resale. What a dillema this is for a party that needs 4,000 gold to buy the ingredients for the sword that will save the village, thus attracting the Church of Good, whom we can't stand."


I'm all for challenges, and plot development, but not the follow-on arguments that get started with setups like that. I've seen them destroy groups, once positions get entrenched.

I've never seen a group broken up over an ingame philosophical discussion. I've also found that stuff like this does lead to some ver interesting situations in the game.

Balsting the Lingon ship doesn't usually require much "thinking" at all. Just run the nomal ship combat rules (CODA being the exception, since the Cpatains must actually pick tactics and that affects the course of the battle). Where the thinking prt comes in is when soemthing prevents the characters from just shooting thier way out of the crisis. For example, when the Klingon ship has stolen the medicines that are needed to fight the McGuffin plauge on Savefus III. This means that the PCs can't just destroy the ship, but must find a way to recover the vaccines.

The philosophical stuff comes up a lot in TOS episodes, too. What used to drive my group mad was that they had enough power at thier diposal to just brute force thier way through about half of the adventures, but were prevented from doing so due to Starfleet and Federation policy. Like when the vaccine needed to fight the McGuffin Plague actually belongs to the Klingons, but they don't want to give it up.

[Tobian]

With regards to Data disabling Lore, I generally regard this as coming under the purview of Starfleet captains operating under their own purview: it all happened on the edge of known space, so it was ultimatelly down to the Captain what happened. Disabling Lore was not 'death' (though in some ways just the same) So outside of outright murder, it was more 'shelving' the problem, much as they shelved Moiriarty untill they could best deal with him. Data dsabling Lore was also self defence: Ships can end up destroying crews of thousands in self defence, so one sentient android is neither here or there. Both Lore and Moiriarty are both Pandora's boxes waiting to be opened, for future games!

From what we've seen of Holograms, they do seem to be heavily neutered, in the sense that they are designed not to notice certain things: Like intership communications, the arch, or generally understand the world outside the holodeck actually exists - they have a blind spot to the real world. It wasn't entirelly obvious if Vic realised he was on board a station, or if he simply percieved the crew as 'regular customers' within the confines of his programming. The Fairhaven programme showed some of the logic behind that, when their 'perceptual subroutines broke down'. The EMH is a special case, and good candidate for pre-sentience in that regard, simply because he has no such perceptual filters, because he exists in the 'real world' and interacts with it daily - he has no 'blind spot'. I also agree the Gellpacks are a pandora's box in and of themselves, because they allow for more fuzzy logic - organic and naturalistic thought processes, so they are far more likelly to breed true sentients, than a regular computer. Characters like the EMH have a neccessary complexity, but most holodek characters lack any depth beyond the narative of the story, so they are fairly incapable of thought, but the danger lurks in how much depth they are given and how soon they start to develop a life of their own.. This is more or less why the Exocomps came to be: They had such a sophisticated brain, knowledge and toolset they were almost pre-designed for sentience!

[tonyg]

Yeah, I agree with you about the Lore situation. Essnetially a case of a Captain (and crew) being forced into tacking action in thier own self defense (not to mention the efense of the rest of the UFP). There was probably some sort of investigation by Starfleet JAG, but probably not that exhaustive. Disassembling Lore (witht he assumption that they could reassemble and rehabilitate him in some way-even if it is software or hardware related). was probably the most humane way deal with the situation.


With holograms, I get the impression that the typical holdeck character is simply prt of an interactive program, and is no more real than, say a character in an on-line RPG.

When the holograms become self-aware (truely self-aware, that is they know that they are more than whatever they are mimicing) is when the whle rights f sentients come into play. The EMH, in order to function, sort of has to be able to pecieve and interact with the "real" world, thus making it more susectiable to deveopling sentience. VOY's Doctor got a lot of use and so developed. That might also be why the old Mk 1 EMH's get used in the mining colony rather than simly being destroyed.

I am thinking that the UFP probably has restrictions on this sort of thing now, to limit the possible legal and moral problems that would otherwise crop up everyday. How useful can an AI be if you wind up spending the next 3 decades arguring with in in court? The whole point of the machine was to make things easier-not add complications.

[spyone]

If anyone is interested in adding non-canon info to their setting:

In the novel Immortal Coil it is mentioned that Data had stored Lore's parts with several safeguards to prevent him being accidentally reassembled and that the crash of the saucer of the Enterprise-D had triggered those safeguards: Lore is now permenantly dead, as his positronic brain was destroyed. Only his physical form remains.

If this topic if of great interest, the novel is a worthwhile read. It touches on nearly ever appearance of artifical life in TOS and TNG, from "What are little girls made of" to "Ship in a bottle", and tells us what Reg Barclay has been doing with his spare time.

[tonyg]

If anyone is interested in adding non-canon info to their setting:

In the novel Immortal Coil it is mentioned that Data had stored Lore's parts with several safeguards to prevent him being accidentally reassembled and that the crash of the saucer of the Enterprise-D had triggered those safeguards: Lore is now permenantly dead, as his positronic brain was destroyed. Only his physical form remains.

Dead dead or mostly dead? In other words was there a body, or is there a way for a clever writer to bring him back (something like - Lore faked the evidence to cover his escape)?

[black campbellq]

A lot of the issues C5 brought up are in our campaign. The Borg are used by many as the reason to stop machine intelligence from continuing to expand, especially since people can be infused with nanites to alow them to create a "personal area network" that can interface with the ship. You can upload your personality to an android body (one character was an "early adopter".) Many see this as the Borg having won by subterfuge, rathr than force (the android/starship parties would dispute this -- the Borg are coercive, they are no.)

The M5 was used to argue against sentient starships until it was realized that incidences like the Moriarty personality from Enterprise, and other ships that had been developing sentiency on their own. The android laws (beginning with Data's landmark case, then enhanced by others that brought up issues like the LOre incident, and [in our campaign] the Isis v. UFP case) had insured full sentient rights (how are they less sentient than Horta? Or Medusans?) Someone finally realized that preventing ships from becoming aware might be considered a violation of sentient rights, so they build one specifically aware to testbed the technology and start developing the rules of service.

Because they have to necessarily learn from the biologics (there's no "machine culture"...although the starships begin to develop a distinct one of their own), they are smarter, more adaptive...but still in many way human/Vulcan/whatever; they don't have the biological imperatives and hormonal problems of meat, but they still want to be useful, be loved, respected...and some want power.

I hadn't intended on the connection to the Old Ones, but its a good one. I always saw the UFP as a culture on the decline, even as Starfleet elites were pressing on to explore and learn. A mass culture of adult education, extreme confort and wealth would lead to spoiled, entitlement-oriented, competition-fearing, soft people...hey, now, that sound a bit familiar, actually.

Our campaign's headed for the point where the machines are beginning to move to -- if not sieze power, coopt it. They see a collapse coming due to these issues and imperial overreach (the UFP is HUGE in our 25TH C campaign, due to the rollout of transwarp and slipstream.) Some machines, true to Federation form, are blaming themselves -- they were made to make life easier, and now society is collapsing due to them. Others want to provide some kind of arificial struggle to keep the biologic engaged in their lives. They just haven't figured out how, since all of their solutions only work short-term (or so their analysis has suggested.)

I'm moving toward something like the Culture of Banks' books...

[spyone]

Dead dead or mostly dead? In other words was there a body, or is there a way for a clever writer to bring him back (something like - Lore faked the evidence to cover his escape)?

Well, if I may quote briefly a relevant passage (edited slightly), you can make up your own mind.

The following is an exchange between Data and Lt. Rhea McAdams:

"What about Lore, then?"
"As I explained earlier, that is not possible. Lore is dead."
"Are you sure about that?"
"Yes, Rhea, I am. I deactivated Lore permanently. He will not be coming back."
"Stranger things have happened."
"Not this time. After Lore was deactivated, I brought him to the Enterprise-D and disconnected his positronic brain to ensure that something like what you are suggesting would never happen. I kept it in a vault in my old lab, isolated from his body, and designed the vault to self-destruct in the event it was ever tampered with."
"What happened?"
"The Enterprise-D crashed on Veridian III. Lore's body was undamaged, but the vault containing his brain was compromised. The self-destruct system activated, and the brain was destroyed."


Data seems quite certain that Lore is really dead.

But, it's only one of the novels. (I mean, it's only canon if you want it to be.)
FWIW, I don't recall any specific cues as to whether it is pre-, during, or post- Dominon War. Enterprise-E era, certainly. Copyright 2002.

[tonyg]

Thanks spyone,

Yeah, I know it is just one of the novels, an means little, but I was curious. Somethines writers leave themselves little loopholes so they can bring a character back. I can sort of of see some signs that this could happen with Lore, especially as Data doesn't always account for deviousness very well. In theory someone cloud have stolen the positrobnic brain and then planted enough material to make it look like it was there when it was scanned.

For example, what if Dr. Soong had a program witten into Data so that he would save Lore's Brain if it were to be destroyed. The program could have kicked in, Data could have moved the brain someplace, and then "forgotten" the incident. We've seen this sort of "easter egg" thing in Data before.

Not saying that is what the author is planning, just an option.

[JALU3]

First Fully Automated plane.

[black campbellq]

Yeah, but that was Air France, so what did you expect?

(Apologies to the French on the board... )

[JALU3]

That does bring up a good question . . . what if your sentient ship becomes suicidle . . . or even worse homicidle? Imagine the scenarios!

Or take the instance where Planet-Express Ship fell in Love with Bender . . . and then Bender decided to break it up. That now becomes a possibility . . . unless you want to place some embeded programming . . . that gives it an ethical block from acting in certain ways . . . this is statistically bound to happen.

But would said ethical programming, like what Data has, not a form of restriction upon the sentience . . . by blocking certain emotions, or feelings?

[black campbellq]

That does bring up a good question . . . what if your sentient ship becomes suicidle . . . or even worse homicidle? Imagine the scenarios!

I have. It's coming up in the next episode...

...But would said ethical programming, like what Data has, not a form of restriction upon the sentience . . . by blocking certain emotions, or feelings?

I would say "yes." In our campaign, one of the reasons the machine intelligence rarely worked is traditional ideas of programming do not give rise to dynamic, adaptive systems; you give them the basic programming -- the drivers, if you will -- but they learn like people, through mimesis -- mimicing and learning from others and from information they can access. They go through a "childhood" period that is very short, but pronounced. So our machines are emotive (I think it's a necessity to sentience, myself) and occasionally irrational.

But as the hippies used to say -- you gotta let your kids be themselves, man...

[Tricky]

A long time ago, back when I used to play with my action figures (i think that would be yesterday..lol), we did alot of stuff with robots, androids and their rights as people. Eventually, androids and most other intelligent (sentient) mechanicals were given the same status as organic, intelligent beings (this included clones and geneticly created races, of which we had a couple). The androids, seeing that they didn't have a "culture" or homeworld of their own, set up shop on an uninhabital planet, and began to create a culture that was their own.

All this talk of manufactued sentients, and no one has brought up one of my favorite scenerios: Starfleet comes across V'ger's "machine planet! V'ger assumed that the ENT was a 'lifeform', so they might make the same mistake. Would the FED be ready to encounter a race that might consider them a 'infestation' and not a group of sentients? And how would living, thinking machines feel about seeing something as advanced as the ENT totally controlled by primative biological beings? (I see Data as the Ambasador to the machine world)

[tonyg]

I wonder if the machine species that rebuilt V'ger are the same ones who rebuilt Nomad?