Holodeck Marriage
I recently read a story by Tim Pratt called A Programmatic Approach to Perfect Happiness. I'm not sure whether to walk away from it with an overwhelming feeling of excitement, or a bit of a shiver (given the last few moments of the story).
However, reading this story also sparked another thought when watching the Star Trek:TNG episode "11001001". I won't give spoilers about the plot itself, but after an upgrade of the Enterprise's systems, the holodeck manages to generate a female character that is so real and believable that Riker falls in love with her. He mentions several times that she is unlike any holodeck character he's ever met before, because she's remarkably perceptive and has more spontaneous, human-style responses.
And then the thought occurred to me: if it's okay to marry sentient androids, why not someone from a holodeck? Obviously the holodeck isn't real in any physical sense, unlike embodied human-level AI, and I think that tends to make us dismissive of whether or not such a relationship could genuinely be real. Before reading the story mentioned above, I don't even think I would have considered it.
I know it's the classic Turing test, the "If it walks like a duck and looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, is it a duck?" question. But if an android can be credited with sentience, why can't an individual character on the holodeck also be sentient and capable of forming a human-style relationship?
What would such a relationship be like, I wonder? [And in the case of a female holodeck AI, it might even be possible to have holodeck children! Heck, the holodeck can simulate some pretty interesting physical experiences -- could a human female get the experience of being pregnant and have holodeck children as well?]
...Oh! Apparently the latter is possible: "Simulations can also be projected inside living organisms, including that of pregnancy." -- from Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki.
However, reading this story also sparked another thought when watching the Star Trek:TNG episode "11001001". I won't give spoilers about the plot itself, but after an upgrade of the Enterprise's systems, the holodeck manages to generate a female character that is so real and believable that Riker falls in love with her. He mentions several times that she is unlike any holodeck character he's ever met before, because she's remarkably perceptive and has more spontaneous, human-style responses.
And then the thought occurred to me: if it's okay to marry sentient androids, why not someone from a holodeck? Obviously the holodeck isn't real in any physical sense, unlike embodied human-level AI, and I think that tends to make us dismissive of whether or not such a relationship could genuinely be real. Before reading the story mentioned above, I don't even think I would have considered it.
I know it's the classic Turing test, the "If it walks like a duck and looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, is it a duck?" question. But if an android can be credited with sentience, why can't an individual character on the holodeck also be sentient and capable of forming a human-style relationship?
What would such a relationship be like, I wonder? [And in the case of a female holodeck AI, it might even be possible to have holodeck children! Heck, the holodeck can simulate some pretty interesting physical experiences -- could a human female get the experience of being pregnant and have holodeck children as well?]
...Oh! Apparently the latter is possible: "Simulations can also be projected inside living organisms, including that of pregnancy." -- from Memory Alpha, the Star Trek wiki.