These guys nailed it.

I'd sit down and have a discussion with my car, if it convinced me that it WANTED to roam the streets and it wasn't just in some fancy binary loop retreading the same streets over and over I WOULD let it go.

I'd have no problem using machines that didn't have the capacity to yearn for freedom as laborers, but it seems unethical to use an android that is capable of wanting to be free imo

Skynet wanted to preserve it's own life too, just saying.

Allright, for the sake of argument, here's my point. You, Enclave, are not sapient. You're just a sack of electrical impulses and chemicals that put up a convincing show at being sapient. My proof is that I can mess with your senses in a way that makes you see things, hear things, or even make you feel another presence (http://www.dana.org/News/Swiss_Neuroscientists_Induce_Spooky_Feeling_of_a_Presence_in_Healthy_Volunteers/). Since your brain is clearly running by some kind of programs (otherwise I couldn't introduce those "glitches",) you cannot be sapient.

Now, prove to me that I'm wrong. And when you're done, explain exactly how an android, if it came up with the same argument that you did on its own, isn't sapient.

I wonder if this is how the debate for giving females the vote went?

"Women should get to vote too!"

"No."

"Why not?"

"They're not men."

"But-"

"THEY'RE NOT MEN!"

"I-"

"Not men!"

I actually should have used emancipation here. That'd be much more on point.

It can simulate being self-aware. It can know what it should want for itself.

Maybe, but an advanced android may simply act and look more human without ever being a sentient AI and the definition of an android is a robot or synthetic organism designed to look and act like a human, especially one with a body having flesh like resemblance (nothing about AI).....there is a world of difference between a machine designed to mimic humans and a sentient machine intelligence.

Is Harkness anymore sentient than President Eden because of his artifical form.

Ex Machina......

No and their appearance is utterly beside the point.

There's no real way to know that, so I'd give it the benefit of the doubt.

Ever hear of solipsism? There's no real way to disprove it, afaik.

The brain does not run on programmes, that's deliberately trying to draw a parallel with machines. The human senses are not programmes, they are direct biological reactions or actual stimuli.

Perhaps I should enunciate further, I really don't care if a machine is capable of an illusion of self-awareness. It's a machine, I am a human, ipso facto I consider humans more important. It's really as simple as that, a machine is built to serve people. If it starts gaining dangerous levels of intelligence it should be corrected to protect other people, which are more important - the same way a dangerous animal is destroyed even if it was only acting on it's natural instinct or what-ever. It's not about science or some of the genuine misanthropy that other people have posted, I am on team human and what-ever is against that I don't want around - a machine of unknown intelligence or capabilities operating around people is one of those things.

For full disclosure I don't even like the idea of machine labour replacing humans in the first place but that's not the topic at hand.

There were actually other reasons for not letting females vote. One of them is that females tend to base their decisions more on emtions rather than cold logic etc.

Just as there are other reasons for why androids arent meant to be treated equal to humans... maybe the sole purpose for their creation is to make them slaves and intelligence is only meant to make them capable of completing harder tasks.

and that was just as stupid of an arguemt as saying robots are mechanical, thus they have no rights.

[censored]s sake, let's not derail the topic.

And that's your argument. Unless I'm off the wall here, it's not "it's not unethical because machines cannot become self aware" it's "I am human, and I believe it is more ethical to protect the rights of humans over anything else, should a conflict of interest ever arise".

This guy just gets it man. At some point we have to come to terms with the fact no matter how much they think, want, and crave to be human they just aren't. If they cannot accept this and become dangerous to all or some humans, they must be dealt with however is best. I'm really surprised I feel like half of the Android supporters don't feel as strongly for the Ghouls as they do for the androids yet Ghouls were actually human once.

You could spend your entire life convinced you were human but if your not actually a organic being yousa robot baby!

But your question only addresses androids, when the majority of sentient machines in the fallout universe are not androids.

I dont see how either of those arguments is "stupid"... care to elaborate?

Star Wars has been touching on this subject for years. And many times, there have been moments of droids lobbying for their own rights-- heuristic proccessors, that when left to their own devices, can develop things, habits, personalities even. One of the major flaws of the R5 series astromech was that it permanently imprinted the first quirk or habit it learned and it could not be erased from the processor- making them vastly unpopular for many.

But on topic...Some will say they are machines, they are property. And this is true, to an extent. I've traveled with enough robots and synthetics in my gaming career to look at them as...buddies. My time with Ed-E alone amongst others in gaming, have given me a sort of...sympathetic attitude towards them. I tend to treat them as comrades rather than servants.

So is ownership unethical? No, no I would say it's not. It's how you treat them, ultimately, that brings up the issue of ethics.

Yeah pretty much. I am a human, part of human society even. I care about it's safety and propagation. Machines are created to serve us. Now one can philosophise till the cows come home about the nature of sentience but I consider myself a more practical person, if something is a possible threat to human society - such as a sentient machine, with an intelligence/capabilities we cannot understand (especially in todays computer connected world) - then yes. I think it's a risk and our safety is more important than musing on the nature of the universe, people's potential safety over thinking that doesn't accomplish anything/

Not to sound like I'm baiting, but this arguement I'm seeing reminds me when settlers discussed the "indian" problem during the expansion period.

Fun fact: Native Americans were not considered a "people" of the United States until the mid-late 1800's.

Who says they would want to be humans to begin with? They might just not want to be slaves.

Once they show signs of sentience, of self identification, I would imagine that they would determine their own goals and objectives.

I don't think they would crave to be meatbags either.

Where has anyone brought ghouls into this? It never felt like that big of an issue as FO3 would have you believe. It was more of DC was crawling with ferals and all ghouls got shot. FNV it wasn't a big deal.

FO3 was full of racist jerkbags, on both sides.

You are the sum of your experiences, based on data taken by your senses and interpreted by your brain, then stored in your memory. It's just chemical reactions between organic compounds and electrical signals.

You put the atoms together right and you'll develop a life. An organic life at that. Making the same thing happen from different compounds really isn't that different if the result is the same.

People find it hard to empathise with other species, races, and even genders sometimes. I get that. It's human nature it seems, one based on an evolutionary process of beating the things trying to beat us because they were different.

Truth is any human worth a damn will see past those differences in our modern, evolved state. It's those differences that insite every single atrocity in our society, because people won't see past them.

Somebody mentioned killing a dangerous animal to preserve human life. I think if a human has encroached on a dangerous animal and ignored the warnings that animal has given the human deserves to be mauled.

All life is precious. To observe that as to mean only carbon based organic life in the guise of the species homosapiens is precious is quite frankly a horrific view of the world.

Quite frankly I don't put a humans worth high because it's the same species as me, quite the opposite. A life that hurts the functioning of other life, sentient or not, should be put down. Why should they get to live the way they want by stopping other things, even people, living at all?

I'll say again. If I had to pick between a bad human and a good android the choice would be easy, true sentience be damned.