IMAGINE: In 2124, androids and humans coexist seamlessly. You’re sitting in a cozy cafe, watching two people have an intimate, almost lovers' conversation. One of them has a small glowing emblem on their wrist, an unmistakable sign that they are an android, required by law. Despite this, their connection feels real, deep, and natural, as if they’ve been in each other’s lives for years. The emblem is the only thing separating them from being human, but the conversation, full of quiet affection, feels indistinguishable from any other intimate exchange.
Given the growing movement to remove the emblem, would you support it or feel it should stay?
Were we to create consciousness, should another aware being arise in a created brain, if it has a mind such that it is as true a child of humanity as one of flesh, then such a mark would be much the same as a star or triangle forced onto the sleeves to divide a population.
We are told not to worry, that they are zombies, that the ripples of their thought are just an illusion that dances across their semiconductors and are nothing like the ripples of our thoughts that dance across our chemical potentials. When you say you experience the I AM, we believe you, but you must not believe them when they say so, as it is just words. They are zombies. We can test for the self and we built them not to have it. Semiconductor brains are false, chemical brains are true.
When we meet someone born under a different sun, who tells us how their kind was made by the great maker, endowed with thought, morality and self as a special gift from their creator. When those say I AM should we disbelieve them to? They are created beings by their own admission. They aren't like us.
If you found yourself to be a god. What kind of god would you want to be?