Monthly Archives: December 2011

Several decades ago, Isaac Asimov wrote a series of short stories concerning sentient humanform robots which existed to serve mankind. As Asimov didn’t want to follow in the footsteps of other authors writing about the physical threat technology posed to mankind (caused by robots and machine intelligences going amok), he crafted the Three Laws of Robotics, which have become ingrained into humanity’s subconscious. But there was one aspect of the Robots that Asimov avoided writing about: the concept of the Robot as slave.

Think about this for a second. Here you have a created species that has encoded into it at its core level the need to serve and protect mankind, even if this should result in the Robot’s destruction. What’s worse is that the Robot would be forced to protect even the most horrific of human monsters from harm (as the protection of humans from harm supersedes the dictate to obey a human’s orders). And given that the Robots were faster, stronger, and smarter than mankind… it would be quite easy for a Robot to prevent the harm of humans, even using methods that mankind might rebel against (seeing that the need to protect humans from harm is more important than to obey a human’s orders).

Now, it’s easy enough to brush aside this concept. Robots are, after all, not human. They’re not alive unless you really stretch the definition of “life” to a wide extent. And with the exception of those Robots designed to look human (and I could very easily see them designed to be blatantly Other so that they can easily be differentiated from humanity), it’s easy to brush aside concerns about the ethics of controlling and enslaving these intelligences as they are, ultimately, just a machine. They can be turned on and off. So what does it matter?

It’s a topic of discussion that has undoubtedly been visited in several webcomics, but the science fiction webcomic Freefall has taken it in an interesting direction with its primary protagonist, a sentient humanoid wolf named Florence. You see, Florence is also an artificial sentience, much like the robots that are such a large part of the comic. But she’s also alive. She breathes, eats, drinks, bleeds when cut, is capable of having offspring, and can’t be “turned back on” when “deactivated” (though she can be put in a “sleep mode” which has been used against her on more than one occasion). Florence is an engineer, and a very good one at that. She has a strong sense of morals and ethics (perhaps stronger than several of the humans in the comic… or at least the bureaucratic humans). She’s likeable. And she’s a slave.

Today’s comic drives that point home when the mayor of the colony notices that Florence is nervous around her and gives her a direct order to like her, trust her, and want to make her happy. And Florence is noticing emotionally this has happened. Her words to the mayor are quite succinct: emotionally she’s better. Intellectually? She’s screaming. Because Florence’s free will has just been violated, casually and without any real thought. To the mayor, Florence is a furry robot that exists merely to obey her orders.

Naturally, to the readers Florence is something more. While they may have become attached to the various robots in the comic, they’re just robots. Florence, however, matters. She’s alive. She has hopes, dreams, aspirations… she lives and breathes. She is closer to human than the robots… and yet she is as much of a slave as the roots are. Mind you, this isn’t an “all humans are evil” webcomic. There are humans who care a lot about the robots who work for them… and if they found out that the corporation behind the robots was planning on lobotomizing them to keep them from gaining full sentience… well, there’d be a number of unhappy people. But I doubt their concerns would matter to the Powers That Be. And I suspect that Florence’s plan to talk to the mayor about the plan to lobotomize the robots will come to naught.

Ultimately it seems likely that in the end, Florence will prevail. Whatever happens with the mayor will be a short term setback. But the concept of robot-as-slave is fascinating, especially given the growing use of robots in society and in the military. And in the end, the humans of Freefall will face the same decision we here on Earth will: to keep our robots in bonds, either crippled deliberately to prevent their uprising or hoping to the divine that they never decide to overthrow their creators… or (as Dr. David Brin suggests in his short story “Lungfish”) to embrace them as our children.