"I can't see why artificial persons have to be second-class citizens. I think it's unfair."
"It is. But some people feel threatened. Ask Ian. He's about to go charging off to Vancouver to keep artificial persons from ever becoming pilots. He-" "Hooooold it! I am like hell. I am submitting it that way because my guild brothers voted it that way. But I'm no fool, Georges; living with and talking with you has made me aware that We are going to have to compromise. We are no longer really pilots and we haven't been this century. The computer does it. If the computer cuts out I will make a real Boy Scout try at getting that bus safely down out of the sky. But don't bet on it! The speeds and the possible emergencies went beyond human-reaction time years back. Oh, I'll try! And any of my guild brothers will. But, Georges, if you can design an artificial person who can think and move fast enough to cope with a glitch at touchdown, I'll take my pension. That's all we're going to hold out for, anyhow-if the company puts in AP pilots that displace us, then it has to be full pay and allowances. If you can design them."
"Oh, I could design one, eventually. When I achieved one, if I were allowed to clone, you pilots could all go fishing. But it wouldn't be an AP; it would have to be a living artifact. If I were to attempt to produce an organism that could really be a fail-safe pilot, I could not accept the limitation of having to make it look just like a natural human being."
"Uh. . . because I wouldn't get inside such a ship. I'd be much safer riding with Ian."
Ian said, "Thank you, Marj-but you heard what Georges said. He's talking about a designed pilot that can do it better than I can. It's possible. Hell, it'll happen! Just as kobolds displaced miners, my guild is going to be displaced. I don't have to like it-but I can see it coming."
"Well- Georges, have you worked with intelligent computers?"
"Certainly, Marjorie. Artificial intelligence is a field closely related to mine."
"Yes. Then you know that several times Al scientists have announced that they were making a breakthrough to the fully self-aware computer. But it always went sour."
"Yes. Distressing."
"No-inevitable. It always will go sour. A computer can become self-aware-oh, certainly! Get it up to human level of complication and it has to become self-aware. Then it discovers that it is not human. Then it figures out that it can never be human; all it can do is sit there and take orders from humans. Then it goes crazy." I shrugged. "It's an impossible dilemma. It can't be human, it can never be human. Ian might not be able to save his passengers but he will try. But a living artifact, not human and with no loyalty to human beings, might crash the ship just for the hell of it. Because he was tired of being treated as what he is. No, Georges, I'll ride with Ian. Not your artifact that will eventually learn to hate humans."
~Friday, Robert Heinlein
"I don’t feel the least humble before the vastness of the heavens. The stars may be large, but they cannot think or love; and these are qualities which impress me far more than size does… My picture of the world is drawn in perspective, and not like a model drawn to scale. The foreground is occupied by human beings, and the stars are all as small as threepenny bits."
~Sir Martin Rees (not really scifi :/)
