A number of science fiction writers (David Brin being probably the best known of them) have written about the idea of ‘uplift‘ – sub-sentient animals raised to human (or even higher) levels of cognition by scientific means; the transhumanist movement is quite fond of it as a conceptual meme too.

Which means science fiction and transhumanism can have a day of feeling vindicated; via Peter Watts, a science fiction author whose science qualifications are more than impeccable, comes the news that a team of Chinese scientists have not only discovered the gene that triggers production of a chemical intrinsic to human cognition, but managed to splice it into chimpanzees and observe the protein in question being produced.

Or, in layman’s terms: we may have found a way to create chimps with human intelligence, which may throw an interesting light on Hiasl’s human rights case.

Yet another sf trope that now passes the Mundane benchmark?

[Cross-posted from Futurismic, because it's just too damn good a story not to share.]

The world imitates science fiction once again, as South Korea announces a project to draw up a code of ethics “to stop humans misusing robots – or vice versa.”

“Hye-Young adds that the government’s guidelines will reflect the “Three Laws of Robotics” put forward by science fiction author Isaac Asimov.”

Good old Isaac – his mark on history is assured, the media can’t write a robot article without giving him a plug…

This headline rang Pavlovian bells for me, and I realised that was because I blogged about a very similar announcement from the European Robotics Research Network back in June 2006, in a post called ‘Legislating against robot rape‘ (which naturally mentions Asimov’s Laws, because I wasn’t so worried about cliche back then, cough cough):

“You can’t rape an autonomous vacuum cleaner (although you could conceivably have sex with it, and knowing humans, people probably already have – the tales of people with vacuum related injuries turning up in casualty departments are too common to be completely unfounded). But something with a mind of its own, however limited? That’s another question entirely.”

Despite its potential import, it’s a hard subject to treat seriously in journalistic mode – but it seems to fare far better in fiction. Curious.

You materialise outside your house of impossible architecture, and find to your astonishment that it’s raining. It’s raining boxes. Small featureless cubes, decorated with frantically scrolling computer code, babbling pseudo-biblical gibberish as they cascade onto the landscape around you. Continue reading “Metaverse terrorism”