Character on Star Trek: You only think of Data as human because he looks human! If he were a box on wheels we wouldn’t be having this conversation.
Me: Buddy you have no idea how much sympathy and love humans can muster for a box on wheels.
Case and point: roombas
Case and point: Wall-E
This is a big mood that I have for a lot of stories in media about whether or not humanity would lack the capacity of empathy for androids and robots.
Look, I love stuff like this. I like watching or reading or listening or playing media that questions this shit, but I absolutely know in my heart that the majority of the average man wouldn’t treat them like shit. The only thing that makes Westworld believable to me is that it’s primarily the rich that go into the “theme park”, most of them spending their time fucking or killing. I know it’s got flaws and I still like the concept anyway, but I really don’t think that the average citizen would be cruel in Detroit: Become Human.
I’m not ignorant enough to think that everything would be pure an unproblematic. Of course it’s not that simple. I think that a lot of people in power who are millionaires/billionaires/etc. would absolutely take advantage of intelligent A.I. without a second thought because they probably feel like the world caters to them, and of course there’s going to be people who would absolutely abuse A.I. if they existed. However, I do feel like the majority would empathize. Humans are such social creatures and we just want to be friends with everything and anthropomorphize anything that could be a friend, for better or for worse.
Basically what I’m saying is that I’m fairly optimistic about robots. I love robots. I think most of us would too.
If someone is sympathetic, they’ll be sympathetic despite whether it’s human lookalike or not. If someone is cruel, chances are they’ll be cruel if they are in position of being cruel.
Off topic: some people in my country abuse foreign workers and treat them worse than slaves (especially when they’re illegal), I don’t think those people will be nice to anyone when they have the power to abuse. Heck, they’ll probably treat androids better since it’s probably more expensive to repair one (while you can simply discard illegal workers if they got sick).
A Force Sensitive Phasesixer 