This episode blessedly deals a deathblow to the idiotic declaring of AI-endowed machines to be lifeforms.
Ridiculous discussions defending a smart-bomb's right to exist. A bad joke.
Even when the mechanically simulated "being" is discovered to be nothing other than a bomb, the crew continues to implore it to abandon its programmed function to live a "meaningful life" in a holodeck.
So absurd, it is pitiful.
The same level of intelligence in a well-produced video game can be placed in a robot that looks human --- this does not make him any more human and sentient than the computer game --- except to ignorant people who are fooled by their emotions.
Sentience is NOT a well-written artificial computer intelligence program, since such a program contains NO identity or feeling being. It is no more real and feeling than an actor playing a pre-written role, who leaves the studio to resume his actual self, unmoved in any permanent way by his performance.
The AI programmed robot may ACT OUT a more varied set of reactions and computed thoughts than the actor, but it is nonetheless ONLY computing its reactions electronically within a limited programmed methodology written by human beings, and utterly mechanically regimented.
These episodes, though entertaining, are frighteningly naive and misleading. And they breed erroneous ideas and misplaced values.
Ridiculous discussions defending a smart-bomb's right to exist. A bad joke.
Even when the mechanically simulated "being" is discovered to be nothing other than a bomb, the crew continues to implore it to abandon its programmed function to live a "meaningful life" in a holodeck.
So absurd, it is pitiful.
The same level of intelligence in a well-produced video game can be placed in a robot that looks human --- this does not make him any more human and sentient than the computer game --- except to ignorant people who are fooled by their emotions.
Sentience is NOT a well-written artificial computer intelligence program, since such a program contains NO identity or feeling being. It is no more real and feeling than an actor playing a pre-written role, who leaves the studio to resume his actual self, unmoved in any permanent way by his performance.
The AI programmed robot may ACT OUT a more varied set of reactions and computed thoughts than the actor, but it is nonetheless ONLY computing its reactions electronically within a limited programmed methodology written by human beings, and utterly mechanically regimented.
These episodes, though entertaining, are frighteningly naive and misleading. And they breed erroneous ideas and misplaced values.