What is the point of creating an artificial human?

Great Debates
1

Not sure if this belongs in Cafe Society since it references film and movies, but I want to leave the discussion open to a real world hypothetical discussion.

A common trope in science fiction is that in the future, there will be artificial humans - A.I.s, androids, bioroids, clones, cyborgs, cylons, i-robots, mechas, replicants, whatever. Basically they are some combination of biological or mechanical entities that are built in factories or grown in tanks or whatever to more or less look and act like humans. They are often superior to humans in whatever specific task they were meant to perform.

The question is, what would be the point:

Does a galactic civilization spanning thousands of planets have a shortage of conscripts to use as cannon fodder?

In the future will there be a shortage of dumb laborers, prostitutes, and “kick murder squads” (whatever the F that is) that they need to be manufactured?

Can a household robot straighten up my house more cost effectively than say, some Mexican woman?

Do starships need a walking, talking computer wandering around the ship annoying everyone instead of just building it into the ship?

For that matter, why would a platoon of Space Marines need to be equiped with a squirrelly artificial person that doesn’t partake in combat but is qualifed to remote pilot a “dropship” that should really be equiped with its own AI to remote pilot itself.

The point being is, other than as a plot device, why would society need to manufacture more “people” (I mean other than the old fashioned way)? Humans are not exactly the ideal form for everything, there isn’t a shortage of us and a lot of things that would need to be done by an “artificial human” probably should be done by a purpose-build robot that specializes in that task. IOW, Ford wouldn’t create super-worker clones to build cars better. They would build robots specially designed to assemble cars.

Discuss
Oh, and I am excluding people who have themselves enhanced with cybernetics or bionics for professional or medical reasons. The topic isn’t improving existing humans, it’s creating new human-like entities.

2

Two main reasons - the robot might have greater capabilities than the human (strength, dexterity, calculation, memory, obedience), and if it’s not a real human we can totally deny it any shred of human rights or moral consideration. Basically we offload our problems onto them.

There are occasionally other more specific considerations, clones for organ harvesting in The Island, for instance - though note that even that relies on the second consideration above.

3

As said; they could be declared to have no rights and therefore be more exploitable.

Probably. It won’t demand wages. And it won’t sleep with your husband either.

I believe that the computer in such scenarios usually IS built into the ship, and the body just an avatar.

Besides exploitation and avatars, a few reasons come to mind. First, just because they can. And second, as eventual replacements for humanity ( either as an improvement on the species, or as a more docile replacement depending on the creator’s purposes ). And third, because if someone builds one, it may well decide to build others.

4

Well, the thing is, you wouldn’t need Mexican women to clean your house and ‘dumb labourers’ anymore if those tasks were to be fulfilled by robots. Now, would those need to look human? Probably not, and I’d imagine most actually wouldn’t. But, if only for convenience’s sake, I could easily envision us giving at least those automatons we’d interact with daily a face to speak to.

However, things also depend a bit on how you want to define ‘artificial human’. If it’s absolutely indistinguishable from an actual human being, then yeah, we can make them now rather easily, so there wouldn’t really be any great incentive to start fabricating; however, even slight (so as to be near imperceptible) differences could easily make the whole endeavour worthwhile – somewhat cynically, think about having a near inexhaustible supply of tailor made humans lacking personhood and the associated rights (perhaps by virtue of them not having any internal conscious experience, or whatever metric you’d wish to use), and obeying your every command. I mean, people actually buy blow-up dolls today…

5

Because building an artificial human would necessarily provide tremendous insight into real humans.

Besides that, because it would be an amazing accomplishment.

6

To me, building an artificial human shows a lack of ambition.:wink:

7

Look how well that worked with the Cylons!

8

One reason why I think artificial humans will be created: to allow us to perform medical experiments with them that would be impossible or unethical to do with human beings.

Even better when one considers that inside them the embedded sensors and processing units will allow **them **to tell us what is wrong and even to propose solutions or remedies that could take decades to develop with the current systems.

Just to be clear, the artificial human I propose here is a combination of natural and artificial components.

9

Why? Why?

Cherry 2000.

That’s all you need to know.

10

You win, but isn’t a robot by definition smarter and more interesting than Melanie Griffith? Why would one one dump the hotter and smarter of for a human who has never demonstrated the intelligence or acting skills of a TOMY Omnibot?

Unless you’re Antonio Banderas and need a beard who doesn’t realize she’s acting.

11

A three-or-four-limb creature is naturally stable. Jointed limbs both provide a means of motion by extension and contraction of a muscle/hydraulic/pneumatic/motorized joint (and contraction against a static spring, in all cases, means that force need only go one way, simplifying the design). Two, three/four-limbed creatures with jointed limbs can move more efficiently over rough ground. Bipedalness means energy efficiency at speed–running can become a controlled form of falling down. Bipedalness frees up the front limbs, which can be used to manipulate objects. Bipedalness also requires the fewest number of limbs (from one to several), economizing on the design. Though a tail would be helpful–we apparently substitute our butts.

12

Why do it? Because you can. It is a challenge and is just another test of your knowledge and skills.

13

Nerd.

I mean, your point is valid from a geekish standpoint, but I’ll side with the Luddites on this one. :wink:

14

Maybe they’ve got their baser breeding urges under control? Thousands of planets, 100 000 people per planet. Oh, and a million robots.(See Asimov’s The Naked Sun for a good example, or Pratchett’s Strata)

Maybe. Or maybe it’s a post-scarcity future, where no-one needs to be a labourer or a prostitute if they don’t want to.

If the robot is cheap enough, yes, it can. All it needs is power and cleaning supplies - no housing, no transport, no mouths to feed, and it can work 24/7

A lot of people like inetracting with other people more than they like talking to a console, I think.

Maybe they tried self-guided ships, and it didn’t work out so good (I’m thinking of an Outer Limits episode here). Or maybe it’s just vanity of the part of Weyland-Yutani to always have a copy of their founder about the place.

You’re assuming that robot manufacture is necessarily always going to be a slow and expensive process, but if the tech exists to make them both cheaply and quickly, then they will certainly be more cost-effective for some jobs, no?

I disagree: Humans are an ideal form for everything, just not for doing everything best.
But if you’re in a situation where increased flexibility, multitasking and adaptability are desirable, like a spaceship or a colony planet, you wouldn’t want to have your robot labour too specialised. The human form is pretty good for a lot of different things, after all - we’re not the animal kingdom’s *greatest *runners, fighters or swimmers, but we do OK at all of these things, and that doesn’t even include the help of our tools. So think of a human-shaped robot as a muti-purpose plug-in command module for every other machine (pretty much the same as a human is, really). This doesn’t say that other shapes might not also be useful (the R2 or Wall-E shapes on a spaceship, for instance), but it does mean the human shape isn’t useless.

15

stupid duplicate

16

Ha! That’s what I would say to my robot clone too!

(Oh, you meant duplicate post… ) :smiley:

17

Throughout history, the Upper Class has always shown an eager willingness to exterminate the Lower Class.

The artificials are a replacement for the Lower Class, & they don’t backtalk, either.

Solves the sevant problem.

18

Right, but humans evolved as sort of an “all purpose” creature. Because we are stuck in our human shape, we design tools to adapt ourselves to performing various tasks. Ultimately form follows function. You wouldn’t make a bunch of John Henry clones humanoid robots with pick-axes to be miners. You would build a robot that looks something like this.

Due to population growth it is unlikely that such a future would ever exist. Especially if you are creating additional people artificially.

I am operating under the assumption that a device that is flawlessly able to mimic a human being would be very expensive, even if mass produced. More expensive than just paying someone to do it.

19

Why would it be ethical to do medical experiments on an artificial human?

We just declare them to be slaves with no rights, and therefore it’s ethical? Why not just skip a step and declare certain types of human beings to be slaves with no rights, and do the experiments on them?

20

Because it will be created for that purpose.

I don’t think you have realized how hard it is to create an advanced AI. We are bound to have a long period of time where AI will appear and evolve. IMHO part of that evolution will be done by research done with these artificial beings.

Maybe you are missing that I’m talking about artificial humans that combine artificial and natural components, if it was a “bioroid” a being created from cells that grow to a full human being, then I would agree with you.

As they are still our tools it makes no sense to assume that a created artificial human has rights, like Asimov pointed in one of his tales, we will consider it only when they stand up and demand their rights and their creators have no explanation of where they came with that idea.