What is Human?
It’s Alive!’: The Long Posthuman Shadow of Frankenstein in Rajaniemi, Chiang, Newitz and Winterson.
Mary Shelley’s seminal Frankenstein continues to provoke recent authors’ questions on what it is to be “human” and the role of possible posthuman future sub-creations to redefine this category: from “uplifted” animals and virtual “toy” children, to enslaved and sexed robots and transhuman subjects. How do we build a real/conscious/sentient AI? What discussions do we need to think of conditions and thresholds separating AI from sentience?
Sunny Teich: Moderator
David Powers/Marti Ward: Professor of Computer and Cognitive Science (SF author under several different names…)
Writing as Marti Ward, Powers says on Amazon: “What's critical about the stories of Clark, Asimov and McCaffrey, about Real Hard SF, is that they seek to explore the scientific and sociological implications of new, interesting, or plausible elements and the measures that are put in place to control them…I don't much like the authors whose eyes, like their characters', glaze over at the first mention of some overly simplistic pseudoscientific explanation. I don't think they are being faithful to the genre. Hard SF, Real SF, is about exploring the implications of what we currently know and hypothesize in science, projecting where that will take our technology and our society, and what problems will emerge...and figuring out how we will deal with them.
“If you're interested in what it's like to be a scientist, engineer, astronaut or whatever, then we are doing you no favours if we gloss over that process as 'boring' or 'complicated'. And as a scientist and author, I don't get to achieve my goal of understanding more about the actual science and technology, and its ramifications.”
WHEW!
Lately, I’ve noticed that that seems to be what I’m about – though at this point, I’m not doing a good enough job of it to SELL the stories.
My MARTIAN HOLIDAY novel looks at the idea of narrowly confining Human to being born naturally, a “uterine birth”…
In my RIVER series of stories, genetic engineering (gengineering) has created two entirely different societies – one in which you are Human ONLY if your DNA in 65% unaltered (as compared to the Original Human Genome Project – 2003) – and if you’re not, you are not Human, but a sort of smart animal.) The other society is one of “designer Humans” in which genetic engineers whose definition of Human is so broad as to be effectively useless, gengineer Humans for EVERY environment, but without regard to how many there are for each use. Who is Human in this society, and what happens when the line begins to blur? If you are a singleton, a unique Human, what kind of voice do you have at the highest level (NOTE: there could be a fascinating legal story here…)? It might be pertinent to note that the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was incorporated in 1866; the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children wasn’t incorporated until 1875. Put more plainly, it took eleven years for a child to be treated THE SAME AS a horse, pig, cow, or chicken…
Sixty years later, child labor laws went into effect, banning children under 16 from working for “gainful employment” – in other words, to make a living. What hope do artificial Humans and Artificial Intelligences have in the face of that kind of history?
In a short story I’ve been unsuccessfully submitting, “The Murder of AutoTech #47369”, AIs are common and employed as police investigators. They DO have rights, but they are less than the rights of a full Human, because, after all, Humans created them. (an aside: animals had more rights than Human children When a biological, natural Human is murdered (even though he’s a piece of crap of a Human), and the evidence points to an artificial intelligence…then that AI is wiped…is it one murder or two, and “whodunit”?
As a teacher and counselor for 30 and 10 years respectively, I have seen parents treat their children with physical and emotional cruelty, neglect, and outright abuse. I have known children to survive that who became mirror images of their parents; I have seen children survive that who became wise, wonderful parents.
So, the question I’ve pondered for some time is “What makes us Human?”
As you’ve probably figured out by now, I’m a Christian – but as an atheist friend of mine told me once, “You’re not LIKE those other ones…”. OK, then. Human was once easy to define – or was it? For instance, what was Jesus? He was absolutely a Human, uterine-born. But he was also God. How about the others in Biblical history – the Nephilim, or angels, or even Balaam’s donkey. How would they be classified? The child of a highly circumscribed people, he was without doubt, a Hebrew of the lineage of David, an ancient king. But according to the Bible, he was both man and God…Was he Human? (BTW – dealing with a half-Human, half-God Savior, why do outsiders believe that Christians will curl up and die when we someday contact an alien civilization? NOT a clearly thought-out position…
At any rate, another universe I’ve been playing in for some time is the one where it’s Humans and WheetAh – animal and plantimal…are the WheetAh considered “Human”…nope, insulting to BOTH sides, where the ethnic slurs, Weed and Weasel are common and the tension between the two civilizations is highly charged at the best of times. What does it mean to be Human? How wide is the category?
Captain Kirk, of Star Trek “fame” expressed a bit of what I believe when delivering the eulogy at Spock One’s funeral in the movie, “STAR TREK: The Wrath of Khan”: “We are assembled here today to pay final respects to our honored dead. And yet it should be noted that in the midst of our sorrow, this death takes place in the shadow of new life, the sunrise of a new world; a world that our beloved comrade gave his life to protect and nourish. He did not feel this sacrifice a vain or empty one, and we will not debate his profound wisdom at these proceedings. Of my friend, I can only say this: of all the souls I have encountered in my travels, his was the most... human.”
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