Writer's Block: Humans and Cylons
Intelligence & Anatomy.
We, humans, now have the complete capablities to create artificial intelligence that is better, faster, stronger. We could create robots that can learn encyclopedias in miliseconds, predict the weather to near 100% accuracy, withstand harsh climate change and space travel, have fully functioning emotions, and most importantly - freewill. We haven't created anything yet - but the resources and the knowledge are there to be able to do so. So is a machine considered human if we give it human intelligence times one thousand? Is this enhanced humanity, or something totally seperate from us?
If your arguement is that a robot could never be considered human because their anatomy would never be human, then you are at a loss. With the discovery of nanotechnology - machines that function at the molecular and atomic level - one can now literally grow machines from biological matter. What if a machine looks like a human, has the bodily functions of a human, and posseses human intelligence? What then?
To me, that machine would have to have rights. If we were to ever create such a machine - we would have basically figured out how to be God. If the hypothetical God allows humans to create this machine, then it is no longer a machine. It too, must be considered a product of God. If it's programming allows the machine to be ambitous and rational, to want to better themselves, to care, to want to learn more - to love - to be born, live and die - then what seperates artificial intelligence and human intelligence? The only thing would be how it entered this world.
As scientists work to study nanotechnology more, they are begining to see the benfits of this microrobots. Some scientists even highlight the benefits of implating these tiny robots into our brain - to fuse them there to enhance our own intelligence. As humans come closer to articificial intelligence, and robots come closer to humans, perhaps the question, when do machines have rights will become irrelevant - because we will all have machines in us on the molecular level.
I don't know about you, but it seems that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. I find it extremely interesting, and vaguely creepy, that humans can (but haven't yet) create other beings thousands or millions of times more intelligent than themselves.
Your thoughts?