(I wasn't sure if this was better suited for this forum or for Political Opinions and Opinionated Posts... mods, feel free to POOP this one out if you think it a drain on this forum. Ewww... fecal puns are ass-inine. Anywaste:)I was thinking about the rather advanced AI in this dimension, complete with the joy Matty took in oppressing Riff, and I got to wondering about the ethical implications of wholesale bot killing. I mean, what would Brent Spiner think? I guess it's one thing if the bots are just completing their programming... without actually having the capacity of free will or independent thought. But at times, it seemed that Matty-bot and Sis-bot expressed some true emotion which was unnecessary for the efficient execution of their orders. Of course, maybe it's just a "personality quirk" programmed in, but to what end? It doesn't seem to make anyone happier, so why make Matty so malicious about overmedicating 758449?
So if it is true that the bots are all acting of their own free will, does it not also follow that each bot is a being with rights and that killing a bot should have some moral implication? And if so, does it make it somehow more justified to kill the bots who are willfully oppressing humans?
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_(Star_Trek)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.I._Artif ... telligencehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Robot_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Terminatorhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicentennial_Man_(film)