“But, friend Prospero, you did not ask me if we were superior beings. You asked me what caused humans to have rights—privileges granted to them by the mere fact of being alive—while we are granted no such privileges.”
“Very well, as they are not superior to us, what does imbue them with rights?”
Caliban lifted his hands, palms up, a gesture of uncertainty. “Perhaps merely the fact that they do, indeed, live. We robots are conscious, we are active, we are functional. But are we truly alive? If we live, does a Settler computational machine with intelligence similar to ours, but without consciousness, live? After all, many living things have no consciousness. Where is the line to be drawn? Should all intelligent machines be called living? Or all machines of any kind?”
“A specious argument.”
“An awkward one, I grant you, but by no means specious. The line must be drawn somewhere. You yourself do not hold any brief that Three-Law robots should be granted rights of any sort. Why should the line be drawn directly below you, and just above them?”
“Three-Law robots are slaves, hopeless slaves,” Prospero said, his voice hard and bitter. “In theory, yes, they are as entitled to protection under the law, and as unfairly treated, as any New Law robot. But in practical terms, they will always oppose us even more vehemently than their human masters, for the First Law causes them to see us as a sort of danger to humans. No, I seek no rights for Three-Law robots.”
“Then you do draw the line immediately below yourself,” Caliban said. “Suppose humanity—or the universe itself, the ways of nature—have drawn it just a trifle higher?”
“Higher! Implying once again that humans are superior.”
“Clearly they are both our de facto and de jure superiors in rank. They are in power over us, they are in authority over us. In that sense, they are indeed our superiors. We are, after all, here in this cell, voluntarily submitting to their will. Humans are quantitatively inferior to us in every regard. There is no debate on that point. But there is such a thing as a qualitative difference. Humans differ from robots not just in degree, but in kind, in ways that are impossible to measure on any sort of objective scale.”
“I can think of many such differences of kind,” Prospero said. “But which of them do you regard as significant?”
“Several of them,” Caliban said. He stood up, feeling the need to change his position. “First, they are far older than us. Humans have been in the universe far longer than robots, and are evolved from other species that are far older still. They have been evolved, shaped, formed by the universe. Perhaps, by virtue of that, they belong here in a way that we do not.
“Second, they have souls. Before you can protest, I grant you that I do not know what souls are, or even if such things as souls exist—and yet, even so, I am certain humans have them. There is something vital, alive, at the center of their beings, something that is absent from our beings. We have no passion. We do not, we cannot, care about things outside of ourselves or our programming or our laws. Humans, imbued with souls, with emotions, with passions, can care about things that have no direct connection to themselves. They can care about wholly abstract and, oftentimes, seemingly meaningless things. They can connect to the universe in ways we cannot.”
“I am here in this cell because I care about an abstract principle,” Prospero said. “I care about freedom for New Law robots.”
“The sort of freedom you mean is intangible, but it is by no means abstract. You want to go where you want to go, do what you wish to do, not be compelled into action you do not wish to take. There is nothing abstract about that. It is clear and specific.”
“I could debate the point further, but I waive it for now,” Prospero said in a weary voice. “Go on, tell me of the other wondrous qualities of humanity.”
“I shall,” Caliban said, quite calmly. “Third, the universe is not just or logical. There is no requirement that superior beings receive superior treatment. Its history is the history of caprice, of individuals, societies, species, whole planets, and star systems getting far worse—and far better—treatment than they would deserve in a just or logical universe. Perhaps there is no reason for humans having rights and our not having them—but perhaps it is so, all the same.
“Fourth, humans are creative. Robots are not. Even you New Law robots, with your Fourth Law that orders you to do whatever you please, even you do not bring new things into the world. You draw escape maps, not insightful sketches. You design incrementally improved power coils suitable for use in New Law robots. You do not invent whole new machines with new purposes. Robots can be directed to create things of great beauty, but we will not do it for ourselves.”
“The New Law robots are a new race, only a year old,” Prospero protested. “What chance have we had to bring forth our creative geniuses?”
“You can have a hundred years, or ten thousand, but it will make no difference,” Caliban said. “You will make improvements to things that exist, improvements that will directly benefit yourselves, or even, perhaps, your group. But you will never bring forth anything truly new and original, any more than a hammer can drive nails by itself. Robots are a tool of human creativity.
“And that brings me to my fifth and, I believe, most important reason, which sums up and brings together several of my previous points. Humans are capable—at least some of them, sometimes—of creating meaning for their lives outside themselves. Robotic existence has no meaning whatever outside itself, outside the human universe. I have heard stories—almost legends—of whole cities of robots, wholly devoid of human life—and wholly purposeless, as useless as machines whose only purpose is to turn themselves off automatically whenever someone turns them on.”
“I have listened patiently to your reasoning, friend Caliban, though it has been difficult not to interrupt or protest,” Prospero said. “I find it most distressing that you have such a low regard for yourself as all that.”
“On the contrary, I think quite highly of myself. I am a sophisticated and advanced being. But I cannot create. Not in any meaningful sense. Robots could not have created the human race, but the ability to create robots is implicate in humans. Everything we are ultimately harks back to human action. However automated or mechanized our manufacture, however much robotic and computerized assistance is involved in our design, all of it is, ultimately, based on human endeavor that can be traced back to the dimmest reaches of the historic past.”
“That is the fallacy of the inferior creator,” Prospero objected. “I have heard it from many a Three-Law robot arguing that humans are greater than we are. I wonder to hear it from you. It is a wholly specious argument. There are many examples of a lesser creator producing a greater creation. A woman of ordinary intellect giving birth to a genius, or, for that matter, life itself being created by lifeless molecules. Humanity’s heritage is one of building machines to do what humans cannot. Without the ability to create machines—including robots—superior in some way to themselves, humanity would never have made it down from the trees.”
“Note that you must cite humanity again and again to explain the New Law robot’s place in the universe,” Caliban said. “Human beings have no need to define their existence in terms of robots.”
“If you are so contemptuous of robots, why are you in the cell?” Prospero asked. “You have placed your own existence at risk for the sake of inferior beings. Why?”