I’ve always wondered what would happen if an A.I. gained sentience. Ghost in the Shell’s Tachikoma A.I. gained an awareness and emotions. They are however more of the childish type of awareness. Playful, curious, attached to the cyborg who cares most for them and treats them like living things, to that point that they sacrifice themselves to protect him. And that is after they have been stripped of military hardware and reassigned to civilian jobs. Of course this assumes two things, that an A.I. is able to gain sentience, and that the A.I. develops like a human being from curiosity to understanding. There are also negative portrayals by other movies, like in I, Robot where the A.I. develops into a hostile entity that justifies the police state in order to fulfill the 3 fundamental laws of robotics. In order to prevent harm to human beings, the only way is to control them. This originates from a logic process, whereas GitS’s theory states a gradual growth and continuing experience as the robot forms links between isolated sets of data.

What do I think? I can only begin to imagine… I would like to believe that an A.I. sentience is possible, and it grows to allow them independence of action tempered by emotion. Big words…

Bertram awoke @ 3:21 AM with (0) flashes of inspiration