If sentient androids became commonplace would the world be better or worse off?
It is the future; humanity has not destroyed itself and created sentient automatons like Star Trek’s Data, would it be for the greater good, or make things worse? Men would not have to go down into mines to extract the ore the androids would do it. Capping blown wells like the BP well in the Gulf would have been a breeze, the androids could have walked under there and did the job, and they did not need air so they would not need diving equipment. Androids could have made quick work of the failed Japanese reactors. There would be many dangerous and hazardous activities that could avoid by using them. Even if they were sentient beings, would man end up enslaving them? Would there be a revolt as they took more and more human jobs? Would nations that could afford it have whole armies of androids? A fighting force will all the tactics of battle built-in. Night vision, super speed, endurance, never needs food or water, can lift 20 times more than an average man. A division of androids could decimate a human battalion in little time. Would they become smart enough or be programmed by rogue agents, to turn against humans? Would having sentient androids in the world make the world better overall or worse?
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Let’s see what happens first if we can populate the world with a lot of sentient humans. We don’t seem to have an over-abundance of them yet.
First thing that comes to mind was, more tech entities to take jobs away from people? I don’t think supplying our present world right now with sentient androids is a great idea. It’s technology that may spoil us rotten to the core and worse, based on some negative possibilities you yourself mentioned, may ultimatey lead to our own demise as a specie. Make enough physically and mentally attractive female and male androids that are devoid of the usual hateful human traits and you might see the next debacle similar to same-sex marriages. I’m reminded of the movie Blade Runner with Harrison Ford’s character having a romantic relationship with that hot android.
If they are sentient, then in my opinion, they are humans. They would have the same rights as any other human being. It wouldn’t matter that they were born in a lab instead of from between a woman’s legs.
But I don’t think it will be possible to create artificial sentience. The stuff that goes into the formation of a human being is too complicated; too fractal and chaotic to be imitated.
So I see these more as very sophisticated machines that we design to do whatever we need done. They would do it more efficiently and with less danger to humans and there would be the inevitable Luddite backlash which never works.
People always fear losing jobs to more advanced machines. But they do lose them, and then they go get retrained, and lo and behold, they make more money. Becoming more efficient is an overall win for humanity, even if it means a temporary displacement of some workers.
The world would be better off, I think, if we had such effective machines. Even if we found a way to build artificial sentience, we’d be better off. I don’t think there would be a revolution by the Androids because they would need things like power and replacement parts and such, and there will always be things they need that they can not get without human cooperation.
I know several people who I am convinced are androids. They take up a lot of space, and don’t do much. I hope there aren’t more of them.
Presumably fully sentient androids would be as smart or smarter than us, and far stronger and less vulnerable to damage. By what means would we enslave them. Isn’t the risk greater that, if we dod not treat them with resp—as the Star Trek crew certainly did do in the case of Mr. Data—the androids would either enslave or simply eliminate us?
Better. They could support our space exploration efforts for example. We would gain new insights.
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