The Sentient Machine as Character

Skynet. HAL 2000. The Cylons. A multitude of science fiction authors have engaged the idea of machines becoming self-aware and they have, almost without exception, portrayed this as varying degrees of catastrophic for the human race. Skynet and the Cylons committ near genocide on the human race. HAL 2000 tries to kill Dave. Etc, etc, al infintium. This is not a criticism; I enjoy Battlestar Galactica, 2001 and Terminator (especially BSG) a great deal. Nor do I have an issue with the assumption that the advent of artificial awareness will result in violence. Given our history, it's not a bad guess at who we'll react to just about any sudden dramatic change.

Robert Heinlein, aforementioned in the TANSTAFL post, offered up a different view. In several of his stories computers are portrayed as achieving sentience, but are sympathetic characters. The two books which most strongly embrace this feature are The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress and Time Enough For Love. In the first a government computer named Mike becomes self-aware and befriends Lunar revolutionaries out to establish a free and sovereign state on the Moon. In Time Enough For Love there are actually several, arguably, sentient computers, but the one that matters the most is the computer Minerva, who falls in love with her primary user and eventually transfers her consciousness to a biological body in order to marry him.

One can argue that this seems entirely too optimistic, but I find it even more fascinating than a doomsday scenario. Put it this way (for all you BSG nuts out there) the Cylons are an effective and terrifying bad guy when they nuke humanity and use their human appearance to deceive, seduce and betray mankind. They are fascinating, however, once you realize that Athena really, no bullshit, loves Helo, and that Caprica Six really, no bullshit, feels guilt for her part in the war. And so on, and so on. As each cylon becomes more and more human, the story gets more interesting and rises far above, no offense to Arnold, the simplicity of the Terminator.

The question that interests me is this; how would a society function in which artifical constructs with self awareness were legal citizens with similar or identical rights and priveleges to biological beings? How would division of labor work? What shape would relationships between the biologicals and the artificials take? This is assuming, of course, they've reached a stage of not trying to kill each other. No, Matrix scenarioes don't interest me either, nor any lesser extrapolaiton where humans have willingly or unwillingly given up their dignity to the machines. Us as pasty meat sacks playing endless virtual video games is not something I wish to write about.

It's an interesting thought, I think... wow. I'm going to leave that pun there. And there's nothing you can do about it.