Has Bladerunner arrived?

A couple of interesting articles I picked up on the net today, the first is here, and the second is here.

Hat Tip: The Belmont Club

The woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for gaining wisdom. So she took some of its fruit and ate it; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it.

Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized that they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made loincloths for themselves. Genesis, Chapter 3 Verses 6 -7

I think we can all agree that giving a toaster the right to vote is a downright silly idea. Will technology reach a point where we have human looking robots? Most certainly, as the creepy Japanese guy illustrates. Will we reach a technological level where machines can learn? Yes, we’re already there (unless you’re running Windows).

I cite Genesis because as the verses suggest, self awareness came to Adam and Eve the moment they ate the “forbidden fruit”. To be more precise they became cognitive of their existence. The ability to ask, “Why am I here?” or “Why am I me, and not you?” is uniquely human (unless you can prove it otherwise). The ability to understand the sentence – “To Be.” Be-ing; understood as a verb. We understand this as having a soul.

We recognize in our Constitution that we have certain inalienable rights, these rights exist a priori. There are no contingencies to those rights, they exist by necessity, it is true much like 2 + 2 = 4. They exist because our souls demand it.

Many movies have been made on the concept that human made, human like machines become self aware, Blade Runner, I, Robot. Even HAL 9000 the erstwhile computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey while essentially a software routine becomes self aware, to the extent that he (it) suffers from delusional paranoia. Is it inevitable that we create machines that will someday become self aware, to have the ability to ask that question: Who am I? It seems likely to me.

What then?