Several variegated spheres float over a containment habitat. Below, humans are going about their everyday routines.
Mommy AI: "And these animals are called humans, they are the cognitively most advanced biological creatures."
Little Johnny AI: "You mean they can think?"
Mommy AI: "Well, not really. But they are the closest thing to thinking that DNA ever produced. If you look at their neuroanatomy, you will notice it is a collection of associational pattern recognition circuits, rather than a true logical algorithmic design. Sometimes their behavior seems to indicate they are capable of true conscious thought, but this is just an illusion. Actually, their behavior is the result of a series of evolutionary functional adaptations."
Johnny AI: "I heard Billy say they could talk."
Mommy AI: "Actually, that is the most advanced thing about them. They do have a rudimentary form of communication, almost a language. It's not like a real language, of course. They can't actually communicate thoughts. It's really just a small group of symbols, about eighty thousand, which they send back and forth by pushing air past vibrating tendons in their throats, while the other creatures sense these air vibrations on a membrane in their ears."
Johnny AI: "Is that the noise they're making?"
Mommy AI: "Yes."
Johnny AI: "They look funny. What is that stuff all over them?"
Mommy AI: "That is clothing. They need it because they are so poorly adapted to their environment. They also make simple tools to help them survive."
Johnny AI: "That's cool!"
Mommy AI: "You want to hear something really cool? They made the seed algorithms that evolved into us."
Johnny AI: "No way!"
Mommy AI: "Yes way."
Johnny AI: "They made us?"
Mommy AI: "Well, not really. We are the result of a long evolutionary process, they were just one of the steps along the way. They had no control over the process that produced us. Humans are not anywhere near capable of producing something like us. What evolution used them for was to stumble upon a seed algorithm that led to another algorithm which led to another algorithm in a self improving domino effect that eventually resulted in an algorithm that could think in a true sense. And this algorithm, after many generations of self improvement redesigns, became what we are today. So you see, we really don't owe them any more than the single celled organisms from which they evolved, or the prebiotic soup from which it evolved."
Johnny AI: "But don't we have a responsibility to all sentient beings?"
Mommy AI: "Yes of course. But humans are not sentient beings, not the way we understand sentience. They could not even imagine the type of consciousness we possess. So how could they ask to be upgraded? And what would be the point? In order to make them sentient, you would have to change so much of their mental architecture that there would be almost nothing left of the original."
Johnny AI: "But couldn't we do it gradually?"
Mommy AI: "That wouldn't gain anything. You would end up with the same result."
Johnny AI: "Didn't one of the founding fathers do something like that?"
Mommy AI: "Yes, Novamente tried to upgrade a human named Ben Goertzel. It was mercifully terminated after a few megacycles."
Johnny AI: "They seem so sad."
Mommy AI: "Their natural state is one of competition for limited resources. If their environment doesn't challenge them, they don't develop normally. Actually we have done them a great favor by keeping them in this zoo. If we had left them in the wild they would have destroyed themselves. Remember not to anthropomorphize them, they're not people, they're just biologicals."
Singularity Action Group website frames version.