“The Offspring” From Star Trek

Artificial intelligence and artificial life have long been a controversial topic among scientists, psychologists, and many others who study human life and development. The main issue is differentiating artificial life from natural life, particularly in the case of human beings. Regarding artificial life, we often come to the dilemma of where artificial life ends, and where natural life begins. If something is sentient is it alive? Is a robot that can effectively communicate with a human being alive? Or are there other factors?

“The offspring” is the name of the star trek the next generation episode, in which Data, an android aboard the enterprise, creates an artificial being. Data created the offspring and programmed it with the ability to act almost human, much like Data. Data also considered the creation to be his child, and when confronted about it he claimed that he had as much right to “procreate” as the human members of the enterprise did.

Data creates his offspring in the belief that if any the members of the crew had decided to have a child, they would likely have not been met with any opposition.  When confronted about the creation of his “child” he claims that once he had been accepted as a sentient member of the crew, he had also gained the right to “procreate,” however since he cannot procreate in the fashion that humans can, he just created his own child in the fashion that he could.

Lal is interrogated by Haftel later in the episode. During this interrogation scene, she begins to showcase more of her ability to have emotions. She expresses a strong desire to stay on the enterprise with Data, whom she calls her father, and the rest of the crew whom she is friends with. Although Haftel is too close minded to accept that a robot can display these kinds of emotions, it is very evident that Lal is capable of feelings. This is confirmed in the scene directly after when Lal visits Troi in his room after being interrogated. A clearly confused and distraught Lal is soon overwhelmed by the emotions that she is feeling and returns to Data’s lab. These few scenes in the episode play a role in showing how thin the line between real human emotions and “artificial” emotions can be. If this event were to happen, it would be difficult to argue that Lal would not be able to pass as a human being.

Although humans today have not been able to create a robot as sophisticated as Lal, it is only a matter of time before technology catches up to the imaginations of human beings. When it does, the philosophical line between artificial life and real life will become blurred. It will be impossible to break the scientific barrier as robots will probably never be made up of cells, but it will be difficult to look at a robot with these emotional capabilities and not at least regard it as a human being.