IIRC, what we saw of holo-Leah in "Galaxy's Child" was more just a playback than an interactive simulation. In present-day terms, real Leah wasn't playing the game so much as watching a playthrough video of Geordi's session.
When Geordi created the leah brahms hologram he created a sentient being
- Thread starter WildManWizard
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they ignored the fact that voyagers emh essentially created another one when he programmed a specialist to help treat torres in a voyager episode.
If that is true, I would submit that would also apply to the EMH as well, just a well programmed, interactive interface and not capable of true feeling.
As I already said, what makes AIs like Moriarty and the Doctor (and Data, for that matter) stand out as sentient is that they formulate and pursue their own goals rather than staying within the bounds of their programs. Expert programs like Leah Brahms or Crell Moset were able to convincingly mimic sentient beings because they were directly modeled on the recorded behavior of living people, but neither one did anything more than what they were programmed to do: express knowledge and opinions that were accurate simulations of the real person's. Moset did seem to display enough initiative to argue ethics with the Doctor, but that's because he was programmed to act as the real Moset would.
Now, when the Doctor started out, your description would be accurate. When first activated, he was just an ordinary EMH, a highly sophisticated interactive program but not truly sentient. It was because he was left active continuously for months, and encouraged by Kes to grow beyond his programmed limits as a medical advisory program, that his neural network was able to grow and gain complexity, like the way a human brain develops from infancy.
So basically you have to pursue career goals or you cease to count as sentient?
Since Vic and the EMH clearly have careers, though, we have to amend that to "you have to keep changing your career goals or you cease to count as sentient". That sort of strikes out folks like Christopher from the sentience list...
Timo Saloniemi
Since Vic and the EMH clearly have careers, though, we have to amend that to "you have to keep changing your career goals or you cease to count as sentient". That sort of strikes out folks like Christopher from the sentience list...
Timo Saloniemi
If Geordi's Leah hologram was sentient then are all the other characters in different holoprograms sentient?
For example, remember those Robin Hood characters from 'Qpid'? Were they sentient?
For example, remember those Robin Hood characters from 'Qpid'? Were they sentient?
I think the rule of thumb in Trek is they're all just holograms until you take the time to really get to know them. 
I believe that Vic is indeed sentient.
He is aware of his own existence (i.e. he knows he's a hologram), and can even activate and deactivate himself at will.
Another reason that Vic is sentient. Vic's program is left running continuously (unless, as I said, he doesn't want to be activated) and he is also learning and evolving in the same manner as the EMH.
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Uh, that's Hawking.
And this is another one of those rare occasions in which I am not only in complete agreement with Mr. Bennett on a general level, but in every last detail of what he has said on this thread. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Would this mean that any hologram could evolve into a sentient being if the program was left on for a long time?
Oops. Been watching too much Stranger Things
Censorship/modesty Safeties would included (after Holo Pursuits?) making sure that no one, especially children cannot do perverse things to holograms like sex and violence... That might mimic reality too closely. A 5 year old cannot go to the holodeck to behead their first grade teachers. If a 5 year old is trying to behead a simulacrum of their first grade teacher, the holodeck should send notifications to their parents, their teacher, security and councilor Troi.
An adult or a crewman with sufficient privileges should be able to turn their session's safeties off at least partially, since if you can't bang historical figures, what is the point of that box?
Stephen Hawking blew Data?
An adult or a crewman with sufficient privileges should be able to turn their session's safeties off at least partially, since if you can't bang historical figures, what is the point of that box?
Stephen Hawking blew Data?
No, because different holograms are programmed with different levels of complexity. "Hologram" is too generic a term here; it's a term for the image generated by a computer rather than the complexity of the program controlling that image. A hologram can be as simple as a playback of a recorded image, as in "Identity Crisis"; it has no more intelligence than a photograph. Or it can be a holonovel character just acting out a pre-written script, or it can be an interactive NPC with a limited range of preset responses. Most holodeck/holosuite characters aren't individual AIs, they're just puppets maneuvered by the ship's/station's computer. Only some programs are complex enough to have the potential to be more than that.
The EMH is different from most holograms we've seen in that he's not a game character but a medical expert program, required to have enormously sophisticated intelligence, problem-solving skills, and the ability to learn and adapt, in order to fulfill the functions of a living doctor in an emergency. There's no reason an NPC like an Old West cowboy or a pool player at Sandrine's or a fantasy lover in one of Quark's holosuites would need anything like that kind of sophistication.
Really, it's kind of a bad habit of Trek to talk about "holograms" as if it were a species name, rather than focusing on the AI underneath. It's mistaking the surface for the substance. The Doctor isn't "a hologram" -- he's an artificial intelligence existing within the ship's computer (or the portable emitter) and generating a humanlike hologram (or rather, a volumetric image) as a user interface.
Exactly. From which it sort of follows that sentience is also transient: the computer can choose to assign as much or little of it to a given character or feature at a given moment as it deems fit.
Might be a random extra at Sandrine's suddenly transforms into a cunning con man who knows all of Tom's weaknesses from "having observed him since last April", and launches an all-new subplot to the holotainment, merely because Harry thought they could use a bit more excitement. Might be Vic literally turns off his brain unless there's a customer inside - or whenever there is a customer inside, take your pick. Might be the average EMH has bedside-manner sentience only when the patients are in need of that, and otherwise shuts down types of thinking that are not essential for simply making a diagnosis or completing a treatment.
Timo Saloniemi
Might be a random extra at Sandrine's suddenly transforms into a cunning con man who knows all of Tom's weaknesses from "having observed him since last April", and launches an all-new subplot to the holotainment, merely because Harry thought they could use a bit more excitement. Might be Vic literally turns off his brain unless there's a customer inside - or whenever there is a customer inside, take your pick. Might be the average EMH has bedside-manner sentience only when the patients are in need of that, and otherwise shuts down types of thinking that are not essential for simply making a diagnosis or completing a treatment.
Timo Saloniemi
Here's another idea: CompuLeah is dependent on the Enterprise for its very survival. Does this mean CompuLeah is a fetus?
But she's still a simulation of known and predictable - yet incomplete - programmed prerequisites - Leah's logs. This is different to Moriarty, given enough verbiage by Geordi to differentiate as Moriarty was created to outmaneuver an opponent for which the Enterprise had no set of documentation available: Data. Moriarty still remained dependent on the ship not going boom-boom, however. Should sentience therefore include conditions that have no dependency or prerequisite on the host being tethered to it? This would confirm Data's sentience just as convincingly as anything put out in "The Measure of a Man". It also rules out the EMH, programmed to act like a Leonard McCoy knock-off, too.
But she's still a simulation of known and predictable - yet incomplete - programmed prerequisites - Leah's logs. This is different to Moriarty, given enough verbiage by Geordi to differentiate as Moriarty was created to outmaneuver an opponent for which the Enterprise had no set of documentation available: Data. Moriarty still remained dependent on the ship not going boom-boom, however. Should sentience therefore include conditions that have no dependency or prerequisite on the host being tethered to it? This would confirm Data's sentience just as convincingly as anything put out in "The Measure of a Man". It also rules out the EMH, programmed to act like a Leonard McCoy knock-off, too.
I'm not sure how that would be helpful, except as yet another take on "sentience can only be humans and things exactly like humans, because".
We're just as tethered to our hearts and lungs as Moriarty is to the E-D mainframe. Strike that - we're far more tethered, there not being precedent yet for one of us being placed in a jar that does not contain our hearts and lungs.
Timo Saloniemi
We're just as tethered to our hearts and lungs as Moriarty is to the E-D mainframe. Strike that - we're far more tethered, there not being precedent yet for one of us being placed in a jar that does not contain our hearts and lungs.
Timo Saloniemi
No more than Siri or Alexa or any other "virtual assistant" app. "She" is just a user interface for the ship's computer. It's still the computer drawing on Leah Brahms's engineering knowledge to compute possibilities, just filtered through the facade of a living Leah rather than the usual disembodied Majel voice.
If so, then we wouldn't qualify as sentient, because we're dependent on the Earth, or on whatever artificial shirtsleeve environment we build into a spacecraft to replicate Earth conditions. Everything has dependency on something.
For that matter, that definition would exclude conjoined twins from being considered human, which is obviously horrific.
Sentience is not about the substrate, it's about the organization. The human brain is made out of basically the same atoms and molecules as the soil in the ground; it's how they're put together that makes it a functioning mind. A sentient mind, by literal definition, is merely one that feels, that has awareness. It doesn't matter what platform it runs on or what its context is, only what it is in and of itself.
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