As I continue to plow through ST: TNG episodes, much of the 1st and 2nd season are new to me. I got to say, "Measure of a Man" is one of my favorite episodes. Maybe it's the technological advances in AI in recent years; how far away are we from an android like Data, centuries, decades? Will we even last that long? Maybe it's the political climate and our orange god emperor, who doesn't even remember the context of the Civil War, but this episode gave me the feels. This interaction between Picard and Guinan that was the impetus for Picard's defense was great. Whoopi was fantastic.
"Consider that in the history of many worlds there have always been disposable creatures. They do the dirty work. They do the work that no one else wants to do, because it's too difficult or too hazardous. And an army of Datas, all disposable? You don't have to think about their welfare; you don't think about how they feel. Whole generations of disposable people."
"You're talking about slavery."
"I think that's a little harsh."
"I don't think that's a little harsh, I think that's the truth. But that's a truth that we have obscured behind a... comfortable, easy euphemism. 'Property'. But that's not the issue at all, is it?"
- Guinan and Picard
This episode is about identifying the worth of an android, meanwhile, we are still struggling with attaching worth to actual humans.
I actually never thought natural language processing will be in my lifetime. I was surprised that computer really does not "understand" but just "pattern match." But many devices will now pass the "Turing test."
ReplyDeleteTechnologies are moving faster than I thought. They may move faster than you are thinking. Singularity may happen in your life time, or Ender Junior.
Don't know if you've seen the movie "Ex Machina" but it's quite cool and explores AI in an interesting context. Microsoft and Google (?) already have something that is a first step toward a universal translator, real time language processing and translation! It's fun watching TNG and seeing things that was the stuff of sci-fi fantasy and how we are approaching it now.
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