Data: the kinder, gentler A.I.

With big bad Control threatening the galaxy, we can assume that Starfleet walked back its work on artificial intelligence (in a sort of nBSG way) in the aftermath of what's going on in the current episodes. That could help explain why Noonien Soong is presented as kind of a fringe scientist later on in TNG, and also why he designed his A.I. to be contained within individual android bodies rather than across any kind of networks, and not able to be copied (beyond basic data transfers).

Throughout sci-fi, A.I. is often a threatening concept, but it's interesting that the main debate in TNG is whether Data is alive or a tool. Weaving all this together, Soong seemed to learn the lessons of the past - at least after the whole Lore thing happened - so that Data can be considered the poster-child for a kinder, gentler A.I. whose ambition is to have a good laugh and fully enjoy a chocolate sundae.

Do you see the possibility for scaling back technology to be a realistic scenario in our day? Google Glass is one example of a technology that was developed, worn, thrown on the ground and stomped on repeatedly. What do we see as those boundaries, and what tech do you foresee in the distant future that Discovery seems to be headed into?

 

Well, Google Glass failed because it was uncomfortable, looked weird, didn't do anything as cool as it claimed to do, and made people always think you were filming them.

We've already seen precedent for walking back technology when it becomes a threat. The line we have for the reason they stopped using holographic projection for communication, and Eugenics. Maybe work was officially stopped for that reason. Makes sense to me.

One of the things that made Data a success is he was able to process moral values in an unselfish way. And, it's also said repeatedly Control wouldn't be fully sentient until it received the sphere data. It's also an interesting theory for the reason Data and the EMH are built in a way they can't be copied and backed up.

 

Data is alive, but Lore is an utter tool.

 

In the tool debate, Commander Maddox would probably settle for that.

 

Wonder if Flint ever made a Rayna Kapec 2.0....or a different model.

 

EMHs can be backed up. That’s the entire reason we got Living Witness.

Data‘s brain is not binary ... well, data.
He has a positronic network that is hardwired, similar to a neural network in a brain.
That’s how I understand it anyway.

 

Off topic but: I love your new avatar Timelord. It's so exciting to finally have a real visual of a black hole!!!

 

This was just begging to be done, so I gave in.



In my mind, I hear Kirk in TUC: "We've never been this close...."

And then Khan, in TWOK: "No....you can't get away!"

 

Thanks.
It is a cool moment in history.

 

Yeah Voyager started with the idea that the EMH couldn't be backed up, then wobbled on it with Living Witness and by Life Line he's temporarily removing bits of his memory/personality so he can fit into Voyager's routine MIDAS call to the Alpha Quadrant and go save his creator.

The Measure Of A Man suggested Data's memories could be downloaded to a standard computer, but Data wasn't sure the "essence" wouldn't be lost once restored - similar to what happened to Ira Graves after purging himself from Data's mind in The Schizoid Man.

 

I feel like there is a joke involving metamucil and prunes in there somewhere.

 

You could in principle measure and record memories from a human brain, I guess, in the same sense how you could record a muscle movement from the brain. But then you‘d still don‘t have the moving muscle.
You would need the corresponding hardware for the recording to have meaning.

 

...the thing on the screen looks fake...resolution is too low/bad matte...

[Psst, yes, I know...It's a JOKE.]

 

Control is a magic Software AI.

Data is a more realistic Harware/Software AI.

Fact is nobody sane makes magic Software AI's, not just because they require magic to work, but because they inevitably go insane due to their ability to re-write themselves.

 

The "privacy" issue does stand out for that one (although some would say there's no such thing as privacy in the information age). When Edward Snowden got in trouble for his massive data breach and subsequent revelations that came out, a pollster took to the streets and found that most Americans didn't care about it a whole lot - until they were told that government agents might be able to access any "d" pics they might have on their phones. Suddenly, the same people cared about it a lot, and didn't want government to be able to see those pics.

So if not for privacy issues, certain technology might make inroads into our daily lives that wouldn't otherwise. Control's rise might depend on whether dudes feel that their phones (and unmentionables) are secure.

 

Data can rewrite himself, it’s established at one point his neural net forms new physical connections.

 

Clarke's third law seems to come to mind...

 

Yeah, that's why I didn't use the EMH as an example in the OP. Keeping with the nBSG analogy, the EMH might represent a slide back towards the technology that made Control possible, comparable to Baltar's work in early nBSG with networking and toying with A.I. It was controversial there for good reason. VOY explored many of the benefits and pitfalls of the EMH and holographic tech in general, even though it was often annoying. [I always have mixed feeling about VOY.] But Data represents a future that includes organics alongside a very lovable A.I. who seems to have some pretty well-defined boundaries. I'm sure he'd also pet-sit for you as well.

 

Data had blurted out technical specifications, relatable to what we know in an indirect way (hence more as being structured science fiction than outright fluffy scribbled fantasy). If positronics is possible and lives up to theory, then that's a start. So far, it's just po-faced sci-fi gobbeldygook, in a name taken from Asimov. Everything we do with technology and its development has revolved around electrons. At least that I'm currently aware of. And this doesn't count their use in the theory of antimatter.

In terms of character archetype or even allegory, since Trek has always been the latter, Data is just an analogue of an autistic person, as was Spock and everyone use utilizing the same mannerisms and personality traits.Data just had the innovation of robotic principles (both using real life and technobabble to remain "accessible".)

Even better, how does a non-sentient entity innately know it needs something to make it sentient at all, which almost demonstrates sentience and ironically better than Data's in "The Measure of a Man"? It's a warped catch-22. If people say cats are sentient, why aren't cats telling us they want teh brainz along with the cheezbooger? But I digress. Or is Control nothing more than a fourth-wall dig at Wesley Crusher? Or an entity that fights KAOS? Or is the scripting suggesting Control is sentient but needs to become more sentient (to grow) but making season one TNG seem less hackatronics by comparison?

The one that says "There's a sucker born every minute"?

Or the one that the Pied Piper kept fluting about?

 

His artificial neural network was hardware... Not software...

To use an analogy for why I call it magic, it's the programing equivalent of replacing a humans brain and having them magically stay the exact same person they were before the replacement.