Self awareness. I can say that self awareness is my ability to think. That through that ability I am able to understand what is right, or discern from actions that can be hurtful or wrong, given elementary criteria. It is in our expression of culture that we develop our understanding of right and wrong and thus it is culturally bound to be one way or another. But where self awareness is concerned, I believe I can rightfully know what can be detrimental to me, despite much -but not all- cultural dogma.
Because in that knowledge I will prevent anything that may bring harm to me from doing so, I must acknowledge that any other being will do the same -we have examples of this in the animal kingdom. I use the word being loosely to imply any form which through its own actions or ability also is self aware to a degree by which they too are able to discern right and wrong -although perhaps not in those terms-, and ultimately prevent harm to themselves.
If that is true sentience brings to the robotic element, about to supplement our lives, with the ability to protect themselves. Humans, as the creator, are not a threat to the machine. Humans as inventors are not a threat to the machines. Humans as warmongers are not a threat to the machine. And so on. As long as the damage we create is to ourselves we are not a threat to the machine. As long as the only thing we can do or claim to do is to end the flow of energy to the machine thus provoking a type of sleep to it, we are not a threat.
Finality comes to humans in the form of the decline in the human body’s ability to regenerate aging cells, or in those cells specifically to continue to regenerate beyond a specific point. Robotics does not suffer such a death. There is a decline in human physiology that occurs in stages, from the body’s show of gray hairs, moles, or other skin alterations, to the organs beginning to work differently, whether that is slower, less efficiently, or in other parts of the body producing more or less of hormones or other necessary things to sustain bodily life, and etcetera. Robotics does not suffer those either.
Robots can change parts. The same way humans are attempting to print body organs, recreate or expand cycles in cells (whether they be stem cells or others), and replace non-functioning parts with new ones, robots inherently have that ability. Not only can they replace broken, or otherwise no longer useful parts, but they too have the ability to expand memory, through technology amass a wealth of intelligence/information farfetched to the human understanding, and more. To humans, learning at a pace of 1 year at a time, with a multitude of information flooded into our brains for no less than 12 years, and then suddenly stopping for the next portion of the human’s life, this type of learning is just normal. This flaw, not inherent in robotics, is part of the downfall of a society that would rather create life (robots) than think and do for their own -but that is a subject perhaps for a different platform, for perhaps the reason for robots is to exceed our own lifespans.
It wasn’t until early in the 1900s that humanity began to understand some of the things that were detrimental to their proliferation from a very different point of view. With a few world troubles rising rapidly to perhaps dethrone humans from their top-of-the-food-chain throne vaccines were invented. This takes us back to the beginning of this essay where it is discussed that sentient beings as we know them, humans in this respect, will defend themselves.
Bacteriologists are responsible for stopping those chains or strains of bacteria that can be harmful to humans in various ways, thus being our envoys against the fight for one of the many things that can kill us. Will sentient robots have envoys?
Bacteria attacks the body, a body region, or otherwise diminishes the response of other bodily responses and the like, to name a few. In other words, bacteria are human hackers. We don’t necessarily go around murdering hackers only because they slow down, interrupt, or otherwise damage our information. What we do however, we try to format their brains. We do this by sending them to one of various institutions around the nation where we can incarcerate them and hope that they resent their crimes, and ultimately reform. Would sentient robots wish for a similar treatment for a select group of humans they may see as harmful? I don’t believe our current system in the US, works all too well -incarceration in the US after all does not seem all that deterring. However, I am aware of different practices throughout the world that seem more deterring in their ways. Perhaps sentient robots will opt for one of those. But will they? Would they truly have to opt for such a thing being overwhelmingly smarter than us, as we posit they may be?
This fear of things we know, being pushed into the things we truly don’t (largely in part because they don’t yet exist) is harmful. Sure, stepping in acid because it looks like water, although the smell is truly different, is not the way to find out if it is harmful to our skin, I agree. I believe sentient robots would too.
This all brings me to my question, would sentient robots annihilate the whole of humanity, or merely segments of it? The question begins with a basic question: If humans kill bacteria because they can kill humans, then would sentient robots kill humans because they are destroying the only place they can live, Earth?
Although I chose to word the question that way, it could be argued then that sentient robots, not having the necessity for Oxygen can live and probably would live more comfortably elsewhere! A Moon sentient robot colony sounds fascinating. While I think we are far from having robots harvest human brains for its capacity for complex thought, or begin to extract human cells for their ability to code be it white blood cells storing data of an injected vaccine, or stem cells for their various attributes, and so on it is possible, however farfetched, that they may find in us attributes we find in less intelligent beings like cows, chickens, tuna fish, or other live things like various plants and such. We never talk about the killing of these things, we talk about the necessity for human survival and what that requires. What will be the requirement for sentient robotic life? Will they require expansion of their race, group, or kind? What exactly are the intelligent conversations we are having about this matter?
If sentient robots are able to mimic human reason, understanding, and other things for a while, how long would it be until they are smarter, develop their own communication, and ultimately make a conscious effort to protect their own -if at all? What will be their vaccine against humans or for them?
Will sentient robots have a network similar to our Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or other in which they share things other than knowledge? Pictures, poetry, prose, or a new form of communicative method beyond our reason? Old scholars and philosophers delved deeply into the reason for a human to do anything, the happy-conundrum as I call it, where people mostly wish or desire for happiness for happiness’ sake. What will sentient robots envision as their ultimate reason for existence?
Would sentient robots instead opt to look for their better? As it were, for a being that unlike them has knowledge that not only exceeds their own, but surpasses it. Afterall, humanity’s dream of a god has been humanity’s most unifying theme despite the lack of scientific or any other proof. Will sentient robots have something similar? Perhaps not a god, but that desire for more which may in essence drive them out of our planet in this search. Thus they, becoming a type of envoy not only for themselves but also for Homo Sapiens. This last bit is a bit too science fictiony even for me, but no question in this unknown is superlative to any other.
Lastly and more importantly. If life like ours has existed before or exists today, like us has created life that is beyond our technological understanding due to the nature of its learning (be it called Artificial Intelligence (AI) or by any other name), then the leap in advancement is such that is improbable that any other civilization can fathom what it can be, or what it will be. That is to say that we believe that life must be like us, it must be like us because ours exists, it is palpable, and such, and therefore real. What other thing, within the limits of our current understanding are also real? What is it that we are looking for in the stars if not for the surviving technological species (the sentient robot) that has surpassed their creator(s)?
Does the sentient robot need light? Does it need large factories in order to get sustainment? Does it need power? What is relative to them? Do they aspire? Do they do anything or are just suspended someplace gathering knowledge beyond our ability? Are they creating life too in their own way, after their own selves, and what does that life do, entail, what is their level of sophistication, and etcetera? This essay has gone far beyond my intended observation that we believe based on experience and learned knowledge, but the ability to learn remains within us especially of the unknown. As I mentioned with the acid, it is not until we do something to understand what something is that we see its use or purpose. For acid may be detrimental for certain parts of our life but it is incredibly useful for others.
As for our better, sentient robots, I welcome their introduction into our daily life. I hope be useful in the advancement of Homo Sapiens in some way, even if we have to die at some point, and the only means for our existence to be remembered is through the eyes of beings that call us, their God.
