the idea of a new species evolving to sentience is discussed.
I believe that an engineered species is far more likely.
How long until this happens?
What will the purpose of creating this new species?
[ul]
[li]How long until this happens?[/li][li]What will the purpose of creating this new species?[/li][li]Hi Opal! [/li][li]Commercial?[/li][li]Entertainment?[/li][li]Military?[/li][li]What status will these creatures have?[/li][/ul]
I would hazard that the restriction you put in your OP of “Non-Human Ancestry” would make this very unlikely. But creating a creature with Human brain development genes is very likely as a supply of human brain material for study and possibly medical transplant usage. Also attemts to increase intelligence of allread highly developed working animals such as dogs and possibly dolphins seems likely to me. An improved guide-dog (seeing eye dog) would seem a valuable goal. Whilst dolphins that could be trained complex tasks would have military and civil applications.
The development of highly intelligent monkey army has allready been started by certain dopers, they will soon be used to hunt down people who still do “Hi Opal” and throw monkey poo at them when they are not looking.
The naturally evolved species that survive in this world are the product of the marvellous process of natural evolution and are precious, and should be allowed as much opportunity to continue to live the life they are evolved for as possible.
It might be necessary to remove humanity from the surface of the Earth to allow this to happen- not by killing them, but by building orbital habitats in the solar system; to live in these microgravity habitats it would be desirable to modify ourselves to avoid space sickness and radiogenic disease.
While we are at it we might as well modify other species as companions and assistants;
emphatically not as entertainment objects, freaks or subordinates.
Eventually, you see, these augmented species could develop their own societies, worlds, radically different from human examples.
Instead of engineering a future of carbon-copy human spacemen, the future of the blue galaxy could be more diverse than we can imagine right now.(not that some of us aren’t trying
Oh, yes, there will no doubt be wholly artificial lifeforms too, biological and otherwise.
I’m thinking 50-100 years.
Candidate species: squid or octopi, maybe even architeuthis
Purpose: deep sea mining, exploration, rescue, etc.
Why squid or octopi? They already have extremely useful grasping appendages, well-developed eyesight and a highly evolved nervous system. I suspect that rather than grafting in human neural structures wholesale, the tendency will be to magnify and build on existing neural structures, combined with extensive training and socialization.
There are a lot of deep sea mineral deposits that are difficult and expensive to extract that would get a lot easier if we had a “native” species that would happily work with us.
Would it necessarily have to be biological? Would you consider a self-replicating robot with advanced AI a species?
(high-jack apologies, but…)
Is AI sentience still believed to be a possibility by most scientists?If so, are we talking near future like hydrogen fuel or nanotechnology, or science fiction like warp drives and laser rifles?
I say skip the bio-engineering, just build some robot exoskeletons for dolphins with environmental support. The only thing holding them back is opposable thumbs. It’s high time we got a genuinely intelligent species in charge of the planet. And I don’t see how working as slave labor at the anchovy farm could be any worse than most of the jobs I’ve had so far.
What exactly makes you so sure that octopodii or whales or whathaveyou with sizable brains (and don’t get going on that silly brain to body ratio crap … big muscles take that much more cortex to control? huge chunks of our brains are devoted to the small muscles of our hands, little to the large masses of our thighs and trunks, after all) do not have sentience?
They certainly have intelligence if one defines intelligence intelligently … as the ability to solve salient (ethologically significant) problems. Not solving human type problems, but they aren’t evolved for human situations are they? (And I couldn’t solve the spatial problems whales solve or the tactile ones whilst controlling eight amorphous appendages that any actopus can do easily.) Not having developed as fully the trick of culture and its resultant ability to have a species function as a group intelligence accumulating knowledge over generations (like we all benefit from) … but that lack does not bear significantly on questions of sentience (or even individual intelligence) does it?
We have an anthrocentric concept of sentience and intelligence. Especially since humanity’s big trick is less superior brain power than the power of the group to function as a sort of uber-organism.
Uplift of non-human species (in that case dolphins, chimps, and gorillas, with dogs mentioned as a possibility) is the basic premise of David Brin’s Uplift double-trilogy.
We’d have to improve dogs, teach 'em to speak and reason, much much better seeing-eye dogs than the very good ones we have now. If blindness even exists, in a world in which we have talking bioengineered uberdogs. I think we’d give cats the power of speech, then take it right back from 'em. WE are the masters, thank you very much. Now clean your litter box!
Monkeys, apes, etc, certainly for warfare and manufacturing. It’s hard to beat hands for making stuff. Imagine a dog building a car? Now imagine a monkey with four hands. Yeah, that’s right. Now imagine all four of those hands with guns. Oh, relax, don’t blame me, some military dude’s WAY ahead of us on that one already.
I kinda think the octopi/squid/etc are already way smarter than we are. Ever seen a couple cuttlefish ‘talking’ to each other? Amazing!!! If we could learn their ‘language’, imagine what we could learn about the oceans.
Dolphins too, come to think of it.
How about intelligent ants? Imagine what kind of underground structures could be built, albeit slowly, by intelligent ants?
How about kangaroos? Yeah, I like Tank Girl too, that’s not the point. Kangaroos already have the upright body, the hands, the pouch… kangaroo shopkeepers? Kangaroo Nannys? Kangaroo couriers? Possibilities are endless.
{/flamebait} Why worry about treating them ‘properly’? Bioengineered animals are property, only HomoSapiens have souls! {/heeheehee}
Here’s another idea: bring back neanderthals or other proto-human types with cloning/genetic engineering. We get a whole stock of people perfect for low class manual labor, plus none of the weirdness of having to see giant talking rabbits or some such walking down the street.
Dont engineer ants! Or any kind of insect for that matter. Have you watched the nature shows? Where they talk about how there are BILLIONS of whatever species they’re talking about, and if they wanted to they could destroy all life on earth in days.
Well, if we gave them sentience, then they just might want to, now, wouldn’t they?
I’ll believe squid and octopi are human level smart when I see them playing the banjo or buidling fast food franchises or doing anything other than eating, fighting and screwing.
A year or so ago it was reported in the press that some geneticists had enigneered mice with larger brains. Don’t have the cite, but the deal is that some mice had been modified with a gene that regulates brain growth. For some reason, the mice were not allowed to mature beyond the embryonic stage, but they exhibited larger, more wrinkled brains.
Given the genetic similarity of humans and chimps, it would seem not too far out there to predict that a genetically modified chimp could be engineered to have increased, possibily even human, intelligence. But then, if such a creature were created, would it not actually be human? Or at least it would have the key feature which defines humanity.
