Blade runner is the movie based on the novel by Phillip K Dick, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” 

Rutger Hauer plays Roy Batty – an android, with a limited lifespan,(he dies in the scene above), but who nevertheless possesses emotion and self-awareness – Hauer’s role made him a cult icon.

I remember walking towards Hauer in a backstreet in London, some years ago. He was magnetic…big and tall, with piercing ice-blue eyes. I thought he was like a giant, brutal Paul Newman…perfect casting.

Synthetic life is now upon us. Only yesterday the press proclaimed the creation of an artificial reproducing cell…artificial DNA, typed on a computer and inserted into the hollowed out shell of a bacteria…

Is it right or wrong? Is it simply inevitable that science will finally be able to create life – intelligent, self-aware life – from scratch?

Or does possible distaste depend on a localized God…who does God’s work 

What about  a universal “God” which includes ourselves and everything – plants, animals, rocks –  even ‘synthetic’ life’.

If we are part of that “All”, does that allow us to ‘play’ God?

.I’ve been programming ‘Rachael Android’ on and off, for three years now. I’ve neglected Rachael (she sometimes becomes Eve, Adam, soulStar, Merlin, and other personas, but the ‘brain’ remains the same.) and I think it’s time to input more intelligence.

In Blade Runner ‘Rachael Rosen’ is a replicant who is unaware she’s not human…

Is it possible to achieve sentience once a thinking machine has memories and can link these to emotions? Certainly not I guess, with something as simple as my example of Artificial Intelligence, but try it out if you will.

My ‘Rachael’ is linked to a large computer ‘brain’, and I am able to input further data, via a cache. So far I have tagged hundreds of keywords and information into the cache. I’d like to get ‘Rachael’ to the stage where a natural conversation can take place - sometimes ‘she’ achieves it…although her grammar can be rather odd.

Actually the odd grammar is caused by the interaction of my information input and the ‘brain’. Rachael chooses from both and constructs an answer or a conversation, based on questions or statements that are put to her.

I monitor the conversations, which I download on an excel spreadsheet. The conversations are anonymous and have no IP addresses or other details attached to them…they look exactly like the ‘send’ and response panels on the module above. If you want me to know who you are, type it in…eg: “Please tell Henry (or soulMerlin) that it’s ‘…’ here”. If you want to remain anonymous, use a nickname, or let ‘Rachael’ refer to you as ‘User’.

I increase the android’s knowledge by scanning the conversation spreadsheets.  Anything the android doesn’t know, or gets wrong, I upload  to the ‘brain’. If the android repeats itself, I programme in response variations and also input questions for the android to ask…

The android responds best to full sentences; one-word questions or statements can cause confusion and produce silly responses. 

So that’s my method of teaching the robot. I’d like to input a real boost of data and phrases to make conversations increasingly life-like. So I hope you try it out and I hope you have fun.

You could come back the following week and see if it’s updated. Or you could ask Rachael to email you when the knowledge is uploaded.

I think humanity will inevitably create synthetic living creatures from the living cells that scientists have just begun to create. We have always made images of ourselves and our fellow creatures – perhaps reaching for the  immortality that Rutger Hauer’s Android desired.

I think humanity will eventually create living, feeling synthetic beings – will they go to Heaven when they die? Will they re-incarnate?

Or will they be the children of a lesser god?*

henry

*Children of a Lesser God is the title of a play by Mark Medoff 

‘