synths vs androids

[O'Dib]

Are we meant to assume the rebel worker bots on Mars are humanoid merely as a personnel interface aid, while underneath not being truly sentient, thus getting around the oft-mentioned "we dislike slavery" canon violation? If that were the case perhaps the EMH looking mining holos are a stripped-down version of the software as well.

 

[Christopher]

According to the tie-in novel The Last Best Hope (written in consultation with the showrunners and thus presumably consistent with their intentions), the Utopia Planitia synths were indeed non-sentient. The Federation still hadn't cracked Soong's secret to creating sentient positronic androids, which is why Maddox was pursuing fractal neuronic cloning in hopes of getting around that problem (and that part is from canon).

As for EMHs, it was always a given that they're normally nonsentient. Voyager's Doctor developed sentience because he was kept running indefinitely in a situation that challenged him to learn and grow, and because Kes and eventually the rest of the crew encouraged him to develop as a person. Presumably none of that is true for most EMHs. (And I just ignore that whole "mining holos" tag because not one thing about it makes any damn sense. Surely they have mining machines or phaser drills that are a million times more efficient than bloomin' holodocs with pickaxes.)

Of course, Trek has yet to address the obvious contradiction here. Given that we have seen holographic AIs achieve sentience on multiple occasions, and given that the hologram part is just a physical interface for a disembodied AI existing in a computer somewhere... why not just stick that computer inside an android body? Why should it need a positronic brain? If the Doctor's program can fit in the mobile emitter, it could easily fit inside an android's skull.

 

[Sci]

Are we meant to assume the rebel worker bots on Mars are humanoid merely as a personnel interface aid, while underneath not being truly sentient, thus getting around the oft-mentioned "we dislike slavery" canon violation?

Seems to me that there are two possible interpretations of that scene from "Maps and Legends." Either:

1) The androids on Mars in 2385 were not sentient, and the HoloDoc's crusade for the rights of sentient holograms begun in 2377 was successful by 2385; sentient holograms were not used for non-consensual labor; or,

2) The androids on Mars in 2385 were sentient or were in the process of becoming sentient, and the HoloDoc's fight for sentient holograms' rights was still ongoing as of 2385.

If that were the case perhaps the EMH looking mining holos are a stripped-down version of the software as well.

I mean, those EMH M1s at the end of "Author, Author" must have been sentient, because non-sentient programs would not be interested in the political message behind Photons Be Free they way they were.

According to the tie-in novel The Last Best Hope (written in consultation with the showrunners and thus presumably consistent with their intentions), the Utopia Planitia synths were indeed non-sentient. The Federation still hadn't cracked Soong's secret to creating sentient positronic androids, which is why Maddox was pursuing fractal neuronic cloning in hopes of getting around that problem (and that part is from canon).

I would probably go with Option 1 then.

As for EMHs, it was always a given that they're normally nonsentient. Voyager's Doctor developed sentience because he was kept running indefinitely in a situation that challenged him to learn and grow, and because Kes and eventually the rest of the crew encouraged him to develop as a person. Presumably none of that is true for most EMHs.

I don't know that I agree. As I recall, the EMHes basically worked by copying a humanoid brain's engrams and combining those with a medical database; that and the fact that EMHes are apparently capable of creative problem-solving and subjective data interpretation from the first time they're activated, to me strongly suggests that EMHes are inherently sentient and the Federation didn't recognize that because the idea a machine they built could become sentient is a cultural blind spot.

(And I just ignore that whole "mining holos" tag because not one thing about it makes any damn sense. Surely they have mining machines or phaser drills that are a million times more efficient than bloomin' holodocs with pickaxes.)

Maybe there's some inherent property of dilithium that prevents automated mining at a macro scale and requires the presence of an intelligent mind to determine how to mine it at micro scale. That might have the virtue of explaining why there had to be entire mining colonies full of miners in "The Devil in the Dark" and "Mudd's Women."

Of course, Trek has yet to address the obvious contradiction here. Given that we have seen holographic AIs achieve sentience on multiple occasions, and given that the hologram part is just a physical interface for a disembodied AI existing in a computer somewhere... why not just stick that computer inside an android body? Why should it need a positronic brain? If the Doctor's program can fit in the mobile emitter, it could easily fit inside an android's skull.

I think the goal with a positronic brain is that the creator wants that brain to become sentient and develop its own personality independent of any pre-existing humanoid brains, the way real humanoid children do; whereas EMHes achieve sentience by virtue of being essentially enhanced copies of existing humanoid brains. Hence why the HoloDoc and Lewis Zimmerman had identical personalities: the HoloDoc was literally a copy of Zimmerman. (Presumably, somewhere out there, there's a Dr. Andy Dick that the EMH Mk II was a copy of.) Whereas Data, Lore, and B4 are many things, but none of their minds were copies of Noonien Soong. And, similarly, none of the androids we saw on Coppelius were mere copies of Data or of Alton Soong or Bruce Maddux.

 

[Christopher]

It's not correct that the EMH is simply a copy of Zimmerman. He drew on a lot of aspects of himself in programming the personality interface, but there were other influences too; for instance, I think "Projections" established that Reg Barclay had been in charge of programming his social skills (which explained a lot). We also know he was programmed with the experience of 47 of the Federation's finest doctors, including McCoy.

There are also the various La Sirena Emergency ____ Holograms seen in Picard. Those all have distinct personalities, though their appearance is modeled on Captain Rios because that was the default setting when he got the ship and he didn't bother to change it. So a copy of a person's physical appearance or outward manner should not be mistaken for a copy of their entire neural architecture.

Besides, Moriarty and the Countess achieved sentience without being based on any real humans. And Vic Fontaine may or may not be sentient. Holographic sentience has happened independently several different times, not just in the EMH program. That's why it's so implausible that stories about androids still insist that their sentience is a problem that hasn't been cracked. Just build androids with the same kind of brain that holomatrices are based on, rather than positronic brains.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I got big season one Data vibes from F8, and surely it doesn't make sense that the Romulans would ensure their banning unless they were sentient? They let their world die to make sure the Synths wouldn't evolve to the point where they summon the extragalactic AI. You wouldn't do that for a humanoid automaton.

 

[Llywela]

There are also the various La Sirena Emergency ____ Holograms seen in Picard. Those all have distinct personalities, though their appearance is modeled on Captain Rios because that was the default setting when he got the ship and he didn't bother to change it. So a copy of a person's physical appearance or outward manner should not be mistaken for a copy of their entire neural architecture.

I thought it was implied that La Sirena's holograms were also based at least in part off Rios's personality and memories, that more than just his physical appearance was scanned in their set-up, otherwise they couldn't have known enough about his mysterious past for Raffi to coax out of them in that team meeting. If that information had been available on file, she wouldn't have needed to talk to the holos at all, but she did - and they knew enough for her to put the pieces together. It sounded as if a brain scan was involved in their set-up, not just a physical scan, which was why Rios went in later and deleted a bunch of stuff (apparently simply reverting them to the non-self-scanned option either never occurred to him or was no longer possible at that point).

 

[Timo]

Whether the workers at Mars should be considered sapient, sentient or clever is not obvious from the episode itself. We can collect pros and cons for the argument elsewhere, as nothing explicit was said on screen.

- Sure, F-8 acts like a mentally handicapped human. But only with respect to aspects of human life that would be utterly superfluous to the job at hand. A supergenius might have zero patience with silly jokes and socializing, too.
- F-8 and his pals like to spend the nights sitting down. So probably they are speaking politics all that time!
- Picard pressed the machines into the job because this was the most expedient approach: the Synth-type androids are the very definition of cheap labor. But we don't quite learn whether they under- or outperform their human colleagues. May be they do all the planning, while humans just get the repetitive wrench-turning for which their more sensitive hands are better suited. Might be the other way around.
- When the Synths "malfunction", they accomplish complex tasks. Is this innate complexity, or something imposed on them by Oh's cohorts? Did Oh simply tell F-8 and the rest that it would make sense for them to kill their masters, at which point the Synths made the informed personal and collective choice to rebel? Or did she tamper with root programming somehow? Seems the machines wouldn't be a threat of any sort if the latter were possible.

Of course, since the whole business with the Synths is based on Data's mind not being a countable but rather a fractal-like something that extends to infinity if need be, judging the Synths as individuals may be fallacy. Perhaps they are sapient and sentient collectively but not as individuals? Or sapient and sentient individually but not in the highly efficient collective they use for accomplishing Picard's goals? Trek has precedent for both sorts...

As for why the Synths are human-shaped:

- Might be putting Data's mind into a body is best accomplished if one doesn't alter too many variables.
- Might be building starships with human tools is not easily achieved if one is shaped like a spider or a walrus.
- Might be cheap labor should look like stupid people in order to be accepted.

But the last argument doesn't appear all that likely. Why would Picard care about acceptance when he's replacing dead people? Those objecting would be among the dead. OTOH, Picard would be the last person to use caricatures for political gain, and in fact has the exact opposite agenda.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

I thought it was implied that La Sirena's holograms were also based at least in part off Rios's personality and memories, that more than just his physical appearance was scanned in their set-up, otherwise they couldn't have known enough about his mysterious past for Raffi to coax out of them in that team meeting. If that information had been available on file, she wouldn't have needed to talk to the holos at all, but she did - and they knew enough for her to put the pieces together. It sounded as if a brain scan was involved in their set-up, not just a physical scan, which was why Rios went in later and deleted a bunch of stuff (apparently simply reverting them to the non-self-scanned option either never occurred to him or was no longer possible at that point).

Maybe so, but that's just a veneer on top of their basic programming for engineering, piloting, hospitality, etc. The EHs are a standard part of the ship's equipment, pre-programmed to adapt to the pilot's appearance and personality if the default setting is used -- no matter who the pilot is. So they did not require a single specific person's brain in order to be created in the first place, which is the point.

 

[Charles Phipps]

While an unsatisfactory answer, I think that the people of the 25th century can certainly make artificial intelligence. We have the hologram on the ship to show that as well as the Doctor. It's just that they haven't replicated Data's positronic brain, which is an entirely different fish.

 

[TRON JA307020]

According to the tie-in novel The Last Best Hope (written in consultation with the showrunners and thus presumably consistent with their intentions), the Utopia Planitia synths were indeed non-sentient. The Federation still hadn't cracked Soong's secret to creating sentient positronic androids, which is why Maddox was pursuing fractal neuronic cloning in hopes of getting around that problem (and that part is from canon).

As for EMHs, it was always a given that they're normally nonsentient. Voyager's Doctor developed sentience because he was kept running indefinitely in a situation that challenged him to learn and grow, and because Kes and eventually the rest of the crew encouraged him to develop as a person. Presumably none of that is true for most EMHs. (And I just ignore that whole "mining holos" tag because not one thing about it makes any damn sense. Surely they have mining machines or phaser drills that are a million times more efficient than bloomin' holodocs with pickaxes.)

Of course, Trek has yet to address the obvious contradiction here. Given that we have seen holographic AIs achieve sentience on multiple occasions, and given that the hologram part is just a physical interface for a disembodied AI existing in a computer somewhere... why not just stick that computer inside an android body? Why should it need a positronic brain? If the Doctor's program can fit in the mobile emitter, it could easily fit inside an android's skull.

I’ve thought of that myself. The doctors sentience could easily be recreated. He even had emotions. In some ways he was far advanced of data

 

[Dukhat]

Are we meant to assume the rebel worker bots on Mars are humanoid merely as a personnel interface aid, while underneath not being truly sentient, thus getting around the oft-mentioned "we dislike slavery" canon violation? If that were the case perhaps the EMH looking mining holos are a stripped-down version of the software as well.

The inherent problem is exactly that the synths at Utopia Planitia are not sentient; therefore they are never viewed as 'slaves' in the show. Some viewers might interpret them as slaves, but not a single person in the show acted that way, nor did the writers and producers give any indication of that. They were nothing more than talking automatons, and once the synth ban was lifted I'm sure the Federation went right back to using them like before without any qualms.

Now compare that to nuBSG Cylons, who were built by humans to do manual labor and became virtual slaves in the process, but were sentient and rebelled against their masters. That was pretty much what I thought was going to happen in PIC when we saw the 'rogue synths' attack Mars in 'Children of Mars'...except they only went rogue because somebody reprogrammed them, not because they consciously wanted to rebel.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

I guess the difference between Synths vs Androids would come down to:

Synths = BiPaB's <Bi(Pedal & Brachial)-oids> Artificial robotic constructs created specifically to do what most BiPaB's can do without any Sentience or Sapience in their programming. Ergo a very clever Automaton.

Soong Type Androids = Artificial Robotic constructs programmed with Sentience & Sapience to become as close to human like as possible without actually being human.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Again, the Romulans wouldn't sacrifice their homeworlds over non-sentient androids. The synths on Mars have to be sentient lifeforms for the story to work, regardless of the tie-in novel.

 

[Christopher]

I guess the difference between Synths vs Androids would come down to:

I figured it was just evolving terminology -- as AIs and androids became more common, a new term (or slur?) came into use to encompass them.

Again, the Romulans wouldn't sacrifice their homeworlds over non-sentient androids. The synths on Mars have to be sentient lifeforms for the story to work, regardless of the tie-in novel.

No, the Zhat Vash merely have to fear that they could become sentient and draw the attention of the destroyers. Fear does not have to be rooted in actual fact.

Also, there are two different groups of synths, the ones on Mars and the ones on the colony planet. The latter are sentient, but that doesn't require the former to be.

 

[valkyrie013]

Well, is there a difference with the main computer core of say a starship? making trillions of calcuations a second. It runs all the hollodeck characters, interacting with the people. So is Minuet sentient? or is she just a computer program that is run by the main computer?
Would the use of the main computer constitute slavery? It is capable of being sentient Like Disco's main computer?

 

[Christopher]

Well, is there a difference with the main computer core of say a starship? making trillions of calcuations a second. It runs all the hollodeck characters, interacting with the people. So is Minuet sentient? or is she just a computer program that is run by the main computer?

Sentience/sapience isn't about brute-force calculation. It's a specific type of cognition defined by self-awareness, by feedback loops that make a brain capable of perceiving and understanding its own existence, experiencing qualia, learning, imagining, making choices, etc. Just piling on more mindless computations won't make a mind magically appear any more than just dumping a bunch of scrap into a pile will make a car magically appear. You have to put them together in the right way. True, it is theoretically possible for a large enough non-sentient computer to simulate a sentient mind as a subroutine within itself (whole brain emulation), as we saw the Enterprise computer do with Moriarty. But it has to simulate that specific kind of neural-network architecture capable of recursive, self-modifying processes.

As for holodeck characters, just because something can create the illusion of acting like a person, that doesn't mean it actually is a conscious mind. We already have game NPCs and chatbots that can mimic intelligent behavior, but they're not actually thinking for themselves. There's a myth that the Turing test is some kind of proof of consciousness, but that was never its intent. Turing himself merely called it an "imitation game," and the idea was that if a computer could successfully imitate intelligent behavior, that might make it a useful tool for studying the processes underlying real intelligence -- a model representing the real thing, like an orrery represents the movements of the planets, but not in any way being the genuine article.

Minuet was just there to respond to real people in a way that they would find enticing, based on analysis of their own psychologies. Take the people away and she would just go inert, with nothing to react to, no initiative or will of her own. Moriarty was different because he thought and acted independently, formulated his own desires and goals and made choices that weren't in response to anyone but himself.

 

[valkyrie013]

@Christopher
Correct, and maybe the F8 androids were just programed like a EMH with what they need to know, and basic interaction sub routines. So basically "Physical Holograms" of a sort. Like a computer program that is programed to interact with people and do a programed job, but no will of there own to lets say, play poker, get a cat, etc. It only does what it is programed to do. There may be the occasional one that may make a leap like the ExoComps did, like self preservation, but on whole, just a sophisticated tool.

The Zhat Vash seen an opportunity to get rid of the problem by making them illegal to make, and in effect hunted down.

 

[Timo]

There doesn't appear to be any story logic in making the Synths "lesser beings".

- They are Data's kids. If they were merely toasters, there would be no story point in them being Data's kids. Anybody can build toasters, and Picard doesn't care about toasters. Picard cares about the Synths.
- They are android. There is no ban on androids when the Synths get banned: every holodeck seen is teeming with androids, most of them devoid of sapience beyond the meaningless ability to pass the irrelevant Turing test. So the distinction must lie elsewhere anyway, now that "body shape" and "cleverness" are ruled out as factors.
- The bad guys clearly equate the Synths with the Advanced Synths they later try to wipe out. Sure, the bad guys are mad as hatters, but still.

Any claim that we could "tell" whether a Synth is sapient or not is bullshit to begin with. F-8 was played by a human being. None of the makeup or CGI augmentation altered that fact. Everything F-8 did was within the human mental range, by inescapable default. We, the shining yardsticks of sentience, are innately capable of being dumb as rocks, or silly as clowns, or beastly as wolves. We can't tell shit about Synths, or Minuet, or Moriarty, apart from "a human could do that".

So it falls fully on the characters to tell us whether X is sentient or not, because they might well have ways of telling. We only see the facade; they can see behind it. And even they struggle with it, but ultimately feel capable of passing said judgement - such as in "Flesh and Blood". We in the audience could never have told whether two human-looking guys sprouting dull, repetitive phrases were stupid but sentient, or nonsentient. Only B'Elanna Torres could, because she could look directly into their minds, rather than the mere output of the minds.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Sci]

Again, the Romulans wouldn't sacrifice their homeworlds over non-sentient androids.

The Romulans won't, because there are multiple Romulan factions with conflicting agendas. The Zhat Vash, however, will do just that, if their goal is to broadly scare the Federation away from further developing synthetic lifeforms and artificial intelligences in the name of preventing sapient synthetic lifeforms from summoning the Admonition-Makers. The Zhat Vash hate synthetics more than they love Romulus.