[why_at]

I'm a big fan of Star Trek but I recently rewatched this one in the context of recent AI developments and it's not as good as I remember it.

They barely touch on the issues of consciousness, Picard basically says "What if Data is conscious?" and then goes off on a tangent. The judge eventually rules in Data's favor but doesn't give much of a justification IMO.

It's still a good episode, but it doesn't add much to the conversation on consciousness. It's a hugely complicated topic which people have devoted their entire careers to.

[jordanb]

The fact that they sent Data to starfleet academy, gave him a commission in the starfleet, let him attain the rank of Lieutenant Commander, and then decide that actually he's a machine that can be dismantled seems like quite a turn.

Does the ship's computer have a commission?

It was a good episode but it had some elements of Star Trek tropes in it, like the evil admirals and Picard can talk his way out of anything.

[krapp]

>The fact that they sent Data to starfleet academy, gave him a commission in the starfleet, let him attain the rank of Lieutenant Commander, and then decide that actually he's a machine that can be dismantled seems like quite a turn.

Data is basically an Isaac Asimov android (down to the positronic brain) and Measure of a Man is an Asimov-type story whose tropes don't entirely fit within in the Trek universe.

It makes no sense within the context of the Trek universe that Data is unable to use contractions for instance - but it makes sense in the context of how a robot might have been conceived of in the 1940s.

[jordanb]

Interestingly there are other episodes where starfleet officers are weirdly prejudiced against Data. For instance in the episode Redemption II when Data takes command of a starship and the crew doesn't want to serve under him.

There are also a few early episodes of Voyager where the crew treat the doctor badly.

It seems odd in a universe where these people are having relationships and children with aliens from another planet, that they'd be weird about computerized people.

My retconn is that there must have been a lot of stochastic parrot/AI psychosis in the Star Trek universe when they first started making Majel Barrett-voice computers.

Maybe lots of people got confused and thought they were talking to a person when they started having conversations with the computer, and this lead to an over-correction where people were highly disposed to say "this machine isn't a person" even when it presents like one.

[krapp]

My personal headcanon is that every Star Trek series takes place in its own universe, parallel to the others. That's the only way it makes sense that Data as an android is viewed as a unique being when in TOS Harry Mudd was grifting an entire planet of fembots and no one batted an eye.

[jordanb]

Roddenberry did not want TNG or even the original-cast movies to maintain tight continuity with TOS because he thought a lot of stuff in TOS was hokey and campy. He wanted the movies and TNG to set a more serious tone in a more believable universe.

TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT and the movies were all fairly explicitly in the same universe and with characters referencing things that happen in other series and a reasonable effort at continuity.

A example of this is the ENT episode where they meet the Ferengi. It had been established as cannon already that Picard made first contact with the Ferengi on USS Stargazer like 150 years later, so they just added this scene where the ENT characters memories of the event was wiped, so that the "official first contact" could still be Stargazer.

The Neutrek stuff isn't in the TNG universe for a variety of reasons, although I think part of it is they didn't want to put the work in to maintaing continuity. None of the TNG era producers or show runners were involved and nobody they wanted to hire really knew the lore.

That being said I don't think there's really a continuity problem with Mudd's androids because he didn't make them they were from another galaxy, and the fembots weren't really implied to be sentient except when they had a human brain put in them.

TNG kept "accidentally" making sentient machines from Data/Lore to the drilling robots, the nanites, and Professor Moriarty. It does seem strange after all that they still considered Data unique.

[soraki_soladead]

I think you're misremembering or misunderstanding Picard's argument. It isn't a tangent. Here's the transcript[0].

TL;DR Picard's initial arguments are pretty weak, even admitting that Riker as opposing counsel almost had him convinced. During a recess Picard talks to Guinan where she alludes to the future subjugation of many Datas which Picard connects to slavery. Back in the courtroom Picard calls Maddox as a hostile witness and gets him to define sentience--intelligence, self-awareness, consciousness--then walks him into conceding Data meets the first two. Picard's closing boils down to, "we don't know if he meets the third--you can call Data a toaster and rule he is property--_but what if you're wrong_". The judge rules on the basis of erroring on the side of caution due to that uncertainty. It's really a great scene.

We're not there yet, obviously. No LLM brings Data's level of awareness but it's as relevant a story as ever because it isn't really about AI but othering for the purpose of subjugation.

[0] http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/135.htm

[Izkata]

> Picard's closing boils down to, "we don't know if he meets the third

A little piece of in-universe lore for anyone unaware or who had forgotten: At this point in the series, Data's positronic brain is new technology no one understands. His creator is missing/presumed dead, the "positronic" basis isn't how Federation technology works, and apparently so far they hadn't done a whole lot of direct experimentation (hence why the trial is happening). So not knowing if he's conscious is a lot more reasonable a stance than with real-life LLMs where we do know roughly how they work.

Also later in the series we meet a character whose brain was copied into a positronic brain, and does imply that technology is at least capable of consciousness, whether or not it applies in Data's case.

[dragonwriter]

> They barely touch on the issues of consciousness

I would argue that is a strength, rather than a weakness. Consciousness is unobservable in any entity other than the observer, and its existence in others is pure conjecture, and irreducibly so.

Making it a criteria in a decision involves either acting on fantasy, or, more likely, acting on some unstated basis and using “consciousness” as a dishonest (perhaps to oneself most of all) rationalization.

Debating AI consciousness a real modern equivalent of the cliché (but purely fictional, invented later as a form of hostile mockery grounded in large part in sectarian bigotry) medieval scholastic debates over how many angels could dance on the head of a pin.

[DiogenesKynikos]

> invented later as a form of hostile mockery grounded in large part in sectarian bigotry

When you read about the theological questions that led Christians to kill and excommunicate one another, "angels dancing on the head of a pin" is not far off. The Homoousion, Monophysitism, the Filioque controversy... It's all so arcane and poorly defined. It almost makes one wish Positivism had been invented 2000 years earlier.

The current AI debate about consciousness does remind me of that in one respect: no one can even clearly define what consciousness is.

[lupire]

It asks important questions. It's not so presumptuous as to try to answer them conclusively.

[Waterluvian]

In fact I think the conclusion it comes to is the one that people, especially the smart ones, so easily miss: we don't know the answer. It might be that we can't know the answer. But ignorance is not a defense.

[zahlman]

> it's not as good as I remember it. They barely touch on the issues of consciousness, Picard basically says "What if Data is conscious?" and then goes off on a tangent.

ST:TNG writing is generally like this. The show required considerable suspension of disbelief and a willingness to accept the kayfabe that deep concepts are being presented when for the most part they're just not that deep. (But it can be very enjoyable when you make those accommodations.)