It has been shown that you can read brainwaves and interpret limb movements and other kinds of physical control of the human body into a computer, as of right now, that's the extent. Maybe later they'll be able to interpret more of the brain. Regardless, I'm not sure how helpful it will be to creating an android. In order to create robots with genuine "opinions" of their own, you will need to give them 2 things: Natural taste, and Creativity. Natural taste is the easier of the two to accomplish. Creativity, however, is the problem. No program that exists can take information and without guidance make something out of it. Computers never make their own tools. With regards to a computer, there is no "it", it is merely a machine. The human body is a machine, but who you are, that is your mind, and for a computer to use what it takes for the human body to possses a mind would put it beyond the definition of a machine, thus making it no longer a computer, and thus making it no longer the regular definition of an "android".megamanenm said:I'm not a programmer here, but can't you model a computer off the human brain?zehydra said:No, obviously, but I understand what an android IS and what how a computer works, and if I'm correct in saying that an Android is a basically a humanoid operated by a computer, then it's not possible. You'd need something more than a computer. Any creativity created by a machine would either be self-damaging, useless or totally dangerous.megamanenm said:And how do you know that? Are you from the future?zehydra said:No, because a computer never has any original thought. In fact, it has NO THOUGHTS. Anybody who knows how to program will vouch for me with this. It can only be programmed to LOOK like it has thoughts.
Very true, but I don't see them taking these experiments into mass production as they serve no purpose. Sure if it turns out to be possible we might have the odd android running around, but they'd hardly be commonplace as the OP describes.megamanenm said:Not every machine is created to help humans, I'm sure someone will try and create androids just because they can. It has already started actually, look at Japan.fletch_talon said:I think the question is why are we mass producing intelligent android human replicas which are no stronger or smarter than us?
Machines exist to make our lives easier, seems to me that if we wanted to make machines that are going to do all the work (I assume that is the androids' purpose) then it would be smarter to make them specifically for certain tasks.
A labouring robot should be strong and equipped with tools it requires, it shouldn't be as smart as a human, it should be programmed to do what it has to do.
Basically, no, I don't think robots should have the same rights as humans, but this is largely because I don't believe they'll ever reach human levels of intelligence/emotion/creativity and even if they could, we'd have no reason to create them as such.