This publish comprises primary spoilers for season two, episode seven of ‘Famous person Trek: Decrease Decks.’
Synthetic intelligence has been baked into the Famous person Trek universe because the unique collection. Kirk and his team once in a while confronted off towards computer systems long past amok, together with Nomad, Landru and the M-5. The one strategy to defeat those virtual villains used to be to outwit them the usage of common sense, which brought about them to self-destruct. However in The Subsequent Era, the franchise was extra serious about exploring the personhood of synthetic beings like Knowledge and his circle of relatives, Voyager’s holographic physician or the exocomps. This week, Decrease Decks dredges up the old-style megalomaniacal AI and asks, are you in point of fact positive about the ones rights?
The USS Cerritos is over again referred to as upon to assist out a civilization enslaved by way of an evil pc, this one referred to as Agimus (voiced by way of long-time Trek actor Jeffrey Combs). Disconnected from his community of drones, he’s in truth lovely pathetic, desperately begging the natural beings round him to simply hook him as much as a pc. All that’s left for Starfleet to do is to drop him off on the Daystrom Institute, which isn’t essentially the most glamorous of jobs, so after all Beckett Mariner and Bradward Boimler finally end up in this explicit babysitting gig.
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A gravimetric shear complicates issues for the pair, forcing their commute to crash on a barren global with most effective the pleading voice of Agimus to stay them corporate. The pc makes use of this chance to pit the 2 towards each and every different, proceeding a plot thread that we concept have been settled two episodes in the past. Beckett nonetheless doesn’t consider Brad’s talents in spite of all they’ve been thru. It looks like a regression or possibly even a mis-scheduled episode, aside from that we the target market nonetheless see his enlargement whilst his meant easiest pal doubts him. It’s a plot line not likely to depart after a couple of episodes, reaffirming this display’s dedication to character-driven storytelling.
On the other hand, that breadth of characterization doesn’t in point of fact practice to Agimus. He’s in point of fact simply… roughly a jerk, and he doesn’t be capable to without delay affect the rest because of his loss of legs and arms. Boimler and Mariner spend all the episode lugging his field round: a sentient MacGuffin. For those who’re now not accustomed to that time period, it way an merchandise (or individual) that strikes the plot ahead and motivates the characters, however isn’t in truth vital in itself. With Agimus’s reign over, he in point of fact simply serves right here to get Mariner and Boimler at each and every different’s throats.
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His standing as a sentient being isn’t in query, however the issue of what to do with him as his habits worsens is going in instructions that may by no means arise for an natural particular person. Mariner suggests burying him, a proposal became down by way of Boimler as a result of he’s a sentient being and that’s now not what Starfleet does. So it sort of feels we have now made some growth from the ol’ “ruin them with their very own common sense” days of TOS. However then the 2 ensigns finally end up burying him anyway, whilst Agamus protests that “he has rights!”
And but Famous person Trek has at all times been a little sketchy about what the ones rights are. Whilst episodes like “The Measure of a Guy” and “The Offspring” have reaffirmed Knowledge’s humanity, it’s been contradicted since by way of occasions on Voyager and Picard. The Physician asserted his authorial rights to a holonovel he created and received, however wasn’t in truth known as an individual. The query remained unanswered just about twenty years afterward Picard, with us most effective being proven holograms of restricted features, or the ones in accordance with the personalities of alternative sentient beings (Rios’ team). And completely artificial beings like Knowledge, ones with brains and our bodies, had been unlawful after the assault on Mars.
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Decrease Decks takes position a trifling 12 months after the tip of Voyager, so it’s loose to pick out up and discover a few of the ones plot threads with out that later luggage. However with out a artificial team member at the USS Cerritos it may most effective look off the topic. Agamus is dumped in a garage facility as simply any other “self-aware megalomaniacal pc,” now not too dissimilar from the warehouse the place the Ark of the Covenant is dumped on the finish of Raiders of the Misplaced Ark. Is it a jail? Did he get a tribulation? Are he and the opposite computer systems simply going to sit down there till the tip of the Federation? From a moral viewpoint it isn’t nice, however it’s not likely to ever be totally addressed, as a result of who in Starfleet is in point of fact going to combat for the personhood of a automatic fascist dictator?
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