Number of Androids on Spaceships

[Strato Incendus]

Whether Data in Star Trek, C3PO in Star Wars, Isaac in The Orville, or Arthur in Passengers: It seems to be a common trope that a spaceship always has “that one android character”. For Star Wars, in particular, C3PO is the only named humanoid droid in the main movies; R2-D2 and all the other smaller droids that aren’t capable of verbal communication (at least not one that’s directly intelligible to the audience), while certainly counting as “robots”, wouldn’t count as “androids” to me.

However, if androids became as omnipresent as other shows focussing on AI — say, “Real Humans” (both the Swedish original and the English remake) or “Westworld” would have you believe — then it would be plausible to me that such androids would also comprise a higher share of any spaceship crew.

For my generation-ship story, so far I went along with that “one android” trope. Coincidentally, his name is also Arthur — though this has nothing to do with the movie Passengers; I already chose this name before being aware of that movie. Much like the name of my ship computer’s AI, IRIS, is a mixture of Iron Man’s “Jarvis” and Siri read backwards (I reverse engineered the German novel “Blueprint”, in which protagonist Iris names her cloned daughter Siri), Arthur’s name was in part inspired by Isaac from The Orville (because of YouTuber Isaac Arthur), in part by Arthur Schopenhauer.

Aside from Arthur, there are a bunch of smaller droids with dedicated purposes. Primarily, the cleaning robots WHO2 and 2C, working in tandem with WHO2 vacuuming and 2C wiping. (And yes, their names are really terrible puns, though they do serve to explain why these two always clean the ship together.)

The question is whether the default assumption wouldn’t in fact be for the ship to have a lot more higher-level androids, like Arthur. This debate is part of the first prequel:
Given that the market leader in androids, Companion Industries, makes their fortune by building loverbots, some of the project organisers are worried that a high number of androids on board would disincentivise the human crew members from entering relationships with other human beings — that a significant share of the crew would prefer one of these highly developed androids instead — thereby sabotaging the core requirement of the mission of any generation ship.
(Of course, there’s also the usual concern about “What if the AI takes over and starts suppressing the humans?” But if people have been living among androids for a while now, even if only with loverbots, the concern of an AI takeover may have diminished over the years.)

If the pairbonding argument is convincing, it would allow me to have a 24th-century Earth with plenty of androids — while still having a spaceship with only one android. Note that Arthur looks closer to The Orville’s Isaac, combined with the real-world android Ameca — he does not resemble an actual human being, like the Arthur we see in Passenger, not even like Data. While he was built from a decommissioned Companion model, he’s deliberately designed not to look human anymore, precisely to prevent anyone from among the crew from preferring him as a partner over a fellow human.

This distinction is then also vital for the ending of the trilogy: If there’s a situation where one crew member would have to stay behind somewhere to sacrifice themselves for the others, given our human-owngroup preference, a lot of readers would consider it a plothole if a human chooses to sacrifice themselves when there’s a bunch of androids who could to the job instead. The primary way of circumventing this argument, of course, would be to assign at least some level of rights to these androids — one that would be sufficient to prevent them from being treated as second-class citizens.

(This would of course be the perfect opportunity to quote the Star Trek episode “The Measure of a Man”.
I’m not sure how much I want to make my story depend on knowledge of Star Trek, though. It would make sense for the crew to have access to a bunch of old movies from Earth, stored on the ship servers. Whether they would regard Star Trek as an inspirational tale that boosts the morale of the crew — or as a fairytale that lies to people about the real physics of space travel, especially considering the contrast to the much slower interstellar travelling speeds they’re experiencing on a daily basis — is a matter of each character’s personal opinion.

Anyways, if androids do have rights in the future — or end up getting them over the course of the story — the only permissible way would be for an android to volunteer to stay behind. Coincidentally, like in Star Trek: Nemesis.)


So, in short: If you got to put together a spaceship crew, how many androids would be among them, and why? :)

 

[.Scott]

It depends on the mission.

The primary purpose of the android(s) would be to physically operate as humans.
Most ship-board activities requiring automation would have no use for human form - for example, an exocomp (TNG Memory Alpha); backup systems; or autopilot/flight navigation systems.

Androids allow for on deck interaction - in contrast to interaction through a communication device (ex, computer workstation) or holodeck. They also allow for human like interactions outside of the main space ship.

If the mission does not include any of these activities, then it is worth asking
if people are needed as well.
People may:
1) have problem-solving skills that are not shared by the androids;
2) hold core values that are not well-communicated to machines;
3) be more trusted with critical corporate or national resources;
4) be part of the mission - for their entertainment, development of their skills, or to prepare them for critical military or political decisions.

Generally speaking, any one or two androids that are playing human-like roles would be able to upload any learning experiences they collected for incorporation in the memories of other (or future) androids.

 

[snorkack]

Do you think it likely that a ship might carry a number of carcinoids?
And not like dr. Zoidberg who´s supposedly "decapod" and yet shows just four limbs and stands bipedal.

 

[Vanadium 50]

First, a story about robots talking to other robots is unlikely to hold the interest of people.

Second, why do you need two? You start going down the path of needing lots to operate this and that, why do you make them human-shaped. Cut out the middleman and have things operated by computer.

Third, in most stories androids are rare and/or expensive. So there aren't many of them. An exception is Brin's Kiln People, where they are cheap and ubiquitous. In his world, your starrship would likely have plenty of them.

 

[snorkack]

The primary purpose of the android(s) would be to physically operate as humans.
Most ship-board activities requiring automation would have no use for human form - for example, an exocomp (TNG Memory Alpha); backup systems; or autopilot/flight navigation systems.

Androids allow for on deck interaction - in contrast to interaction through a communication device (ex, computer workstation) or holodeck. They also allow for human like interactions outside of the main space ship.

Androids can physically operate as humans, but so can gynoids.
Some automated systems can be "computers" physically affixed to the vehicle structure. An autopilot does not have to be android like Otto the autopilot.
However, there are tasks which favour flexibility in mobility, handling diverse artefacts and tools, and capability of communicating with people in natural language - theirs. Cleaning robots are a good example!
If your starship is cleaned by steward/esse/s, maids and lackeys, they may be able to communicate with their masters in a natural language - not a given, given the tendency to employ aliens in service roles! - but they face limitations of human body shape, intelligent adult body size, memory and attention capacity, bandwidth of communication with each other and trust issues due to having their own motives and wishes.
Human body shape is not actually optimal for machine locomotion. Just two legs specialized for walking... If your cleaning robot has to climb over piles of valuable stuff masters have left lying around, eight legged freaks might have rather less effort keeping balance than maids and lackeys, or gynoids and androids.
The ability to interact by human speech is important. "Hey, girl! Where is my...?" It is very useful if the hearer actually understands - or if the reference is ambiguous or not recognized, is able to respond efficiently with clarifying questions.
But a human would genuinely face limits of her attention and memory if she did not think the thing important. And the limits of bandwidth - if another maid moved it, would they have thought it relevant to tell each other? Plus the trust issues - if a maid tells "I never saw it", is she telling what she genuinely knows? Is she covering up for her blunder? Did she intentionally steal it for her own benefit? Did she discard or hide the item out of spite and malice for the master?
Apart from memory and reliability of anyone of eight legged freaks, they can have high bandwidth like wifi connections to each other and to stationary cameras fixed to the ship walls. So if you ask one of eight legged freaks about a mislaid item, she might promptly run a query across the memory of herself, all of the other seven legged freaks and the fixed cameras, locate the item and send the nearest legged freak to fetch it.
So, is it likely that a ship contains multiple independently mobile robots who are capable of communicating in human tongue to people, high bandwidth wi-fi to each other and stationary computers, but who are neither androids nor gynoids but eight legged carcinoids?

 

[sbrothy]

I've always been sceptical of androids. It seems to me to be a cheap plot device. A good example (of a cheap plot device) is Alien: Covenant 2017 or even Blade Runner. They're there so audiences can confuse them and be surprised (very mildly) when they turn out to be evil. There's are so far between stories where androids are driving a good story. A rare example is this one (which I'm aware I mentioned before):

High Quality Comic Featuring an Android Driving the Story (beware of a plethora of ads)

If you want to create an effective robot I can see no purpose in making it look human. I mean why would you even purposefully make that confusion? For educating children maybe? That's kinda the only reason can see, but it's still pretty creepy.

EDIT: OTOH I have no doubt it's gonna happen.

 

[Strato Incendus]

Thanks a lot for your ideas! :) I think these two are connected:

Third, in most stories androids are rare and/or expensive. So there aren't many of them. An exception is Brin's Kiln People, where they are cheap and ubiquitous. In his world, your starrship would likely have plenty of them.

If you want to create an effective robot I can see no purpose in making it look human. I mean why would you even purposefully make that confusion? For educating children maybe? That's kinda the only reason can see, but it's still pretty creepy.

There’s a simple reason to create a bunch of robots that are cheap to afford and look human: Sex sells. What drove the success of VHS and the internet will also apply to robotics. Rule 34 knows no exceptions.

(This was, btw, part of how the android-focused game NieR: Automata attempted to “justify” the aesthetics of its fetishised female androids with in-game reasoning. The androids were supposedly then repurposed to get aroused by combat instead.)

Regarding the educating children part: The “creepiness” factor — in other words, the uncanny valley — is useful for the debate in the prequel. I’ve found that a lot of the arguments relating to androids are similes to current hotbutton topics:

• I’ve always joked that the vegans of today will be the robots-rights activists of tomorrow: When lab-grown meat is the primary form of meat, the connection between meat consumption and animal suffering is severed via technology — much like the birth-control pill separated intimacy and pregnancy, and thereby kickstarted new political developments. So while meat is no longer a controversial topic in the future, androids are — namely, the more intelligent they become, potentially even self-aware, the higher the danger of reintroducing slavery through the backdoor (the “Measure of a Man” argument).
• As to what human beings “use” robots for: Those who prefer a robot to a human partner (robosexuals) would likely associate themselves with the LGBT community, leading to an expansion of the acronym in my version of the future (LGBTQIAVOR, with V for virtual, O for objectophile, R for robosexual). Some people then want their robot partners to be treated like humans — facing the conundrum that, if robots gain human rights, owning a loverbot would become slavery, indeed.
• Simultaneously, for more conservative types, the question of “who teaches my children and what do they teach them” remains relevant — and is amplified by the knowledge that the most popular android types are indeed still the loverbots. So the fear about “oversexualisation” remains alive and well.

 

[sbrothy]

[...]I’ve always joked that the vegans of today will be the robots-rights activists of tomorrow[...]

In which movie or comic does a character complain what it even means to be a vegan in a virtual world like The Matrix? I think it's Arcadia. (readcomicsonline.li, again sorry for the ads). Cool story actually. Contains some good ideas and a good premise, although it get's a bit much at the end...

"What It Is: When 99% of humankind is wiped out by a pandemic, four billion people are "saved" by being digitized at the brink of death and uploaded into Arcadia, a utopian simulation in the cloud. But when Arcadia begins to rapidly deplete the energy resources upon which the handful of survivors in the real world (aka "The Meat") depends, how long will The Meat be able-and willing-to help?"

Just for the record I'm not affiliated with that site, I just use it a lot. You'll need an ad-blocker and make sure you set it to show all pages as opposed to one page at the time.

 

[sbrothy]

I've always been sceptical of androids. It seems to me to be a cheap plot device. A good example (of a cheap plot device) is Alien: Covenant 2017 or even Blade Runner. They're there so audiences can confuse them and be surprised (very mildly) when they turn out to be evil. There's are so far between stories where androids are driving a good story. A rare example is this one (which I'm aware I mentioned before):

High Quality Comic Featuring an Android Driving the Story (beware of a plethora of ads)

If you want to create an effective robot I can see no purpose in making it look human. I mean why would you even purposefully make that confusion? For educating children maybe? That's kinda the only reason can see, but it's still pretty creepy.

EDIT: OTOH I have no doubt it's gonna happen.

Now I'm already endorsing this site to the point of nausea you should check out the story "Sentient". It also features a plot-driving robot/AI. Not an android but, in my opinion a very realistic take on how we would use robots "25 minutes into the future".

Oh, it's 20 minutes.

 

[snorkack]

Any comments about the likelyhood of carcinoids, or other therioids?

 

[ShadowKraz]

I've always been sceptical of androids. It seems to me to be a cheap plot device. A good example (of a cheap plot device) is Alien: Covenant 2017 or even Blade Runner. They're there so audiences can confuse them and be surprised (very mildly) when they turn out to be evil. There's are so far between stories where androids are driving a good story.

Are you sure you want to lump Blade Runner into this? The whole point of the movie was that the Nexus androids were human in every respect that truly matters. They were fully sentient beings that had been manufactured to be slaves, hence the short life time engineered into them. Just as with humans, they were not inherently evil or good, but driven by their dreams and survival instincts to the same extremes humans go to when threatened with death.

 

[sbrothy]

Are you sure you want to lump Blade Runner into this? The whole point of the movie was that the Nexus androids were human in every respect that truly matters. They were fully sentient beings that had been manufactured to be slaves, hence the short life time engineered into them. Just as with humans, they were not inherently evil or good, but driven by their dreams and survival instincts to the same extremes humans go to when threatened with death.

Yeh I know. It’s kinda the premise of the movie. I meant more in real life. But of course it’s gonna happen. The sex opportunities makes it a no-brainer alone. I meant just principally I’d like to know I’m talking to a machine and not a Human being. If you can’t tell then the difference becomes moot or downright academic.

 

[ShadowKraz]

Yeh I know. It’s kinda the premise of the movie. I meant more in real life. But of course it’s gonna happen. The sex opportunities makes it a no-brainer alone. I meant just principally I’d like to know I’m talking to a machine and not a Human being. If you can’t tell then the difference becomes moot or downright academic.

Gotcha, and precisely. I laughed at the vegan joke because I'm not a vegan by any stretch but am fully in favor of sentient rights no matter the form the sentience has. I even understand the possible hypocrisy of it, being an omnivore, but I am, after all, merely human...

 

[Strato Incendus]

I like how you’ve inadvertently demonstrated the relevance of this question in my story to present-day politics — without androids being such a direct allegory that it becomes too on-the-nose:

Yeh I know. It’s kinda the premise of the movie. I meant more in real life. But of course it’s gonna happen. The sex opportunities makes it a no-brainer alone. I meant just principally I’d like to know I’m talking to a machine and not a Human being. If you can’t tell then the difference becomes moot or downright academic.

Today, we’re arguing about the definition of “man” and “woman”.
In my version of the future, people on Earth are arguing about what separates an android from a human. :D

This becomes especially apparent when people with neural and other implants start self-identifying as androids, while others are clamouring for androids to be granted human rights.

Gotcha, and precisely. I laughed at the vegan joke because I'm not a vegan by any stretch but am fully in favor of sentient rights no matter the form the sentience has. I even understand the possible hypocrisy of it, being an omnivore, but I am, after all, merely human...

The extension from humans (and androids) to other sentient beings of course makes sense. In order to prevent the vegans from hijacking my story and derailing a debate that is at heart about bodily autonomy and freedom into one that is solely about animal rights — because it’s not as if that debate shouldn’t be included; on board my ship, mainly when it comes to lab animals for experiments — lab-grown meat is the standard in my future version of Earth. And therefore, also on board the ship that was built by this society.

Lab-grown meat separates the moral questions of meat consumption and animal rights, the same way that the birth-control pill separated our moral ideas about sex and procreation. Technological development precedes, or even single-handedly enables, what some more naive people would like to think of as “moral advancement”.

As such, the reason that lab-grown meat chased traditional meat out of the market in my version of the future is not because all of the world decided to become vegan and “treat animals as their ingroup”. Rather, lab-grown meat, once fully upscaled to industrial scales (which is what we’re currently still struggling with), simply became more resource-efficient to produce, and therefore much cheaper for the customers than the traditional alternative. And only then, in hindsight, did people rationalise this as supposed moral advancement. :D

With a lot of vegan food nowadays, it seems to be the opposite: It’s more expensive than cheap subsidised meat, and is therefore regarded as a luxury (and potential status / virtue symbol) for mostly upper-middle class progressive academics. Or conversely, it’s artificially made more expensive because the producers know that people from higher socioeconomic layers of society are their primary target audience.

Are you sure you want to lump Blade Runner into this? The whole point of the movie was that the Nexus androids were human in every respect that truly matters. They were fully sentient beings that had been manufactured to be slaves, hence the short life time engineered into them. Just as with humans, they were not inherently evil or good, but driven by their dreams and survival instincts to the same extremes humans go to when threatened with death.

In the TV show “Humans” (specifically the UK remake of the Swedish original), the androids were designed to be friends to the inventor’s son. So there, I found the explanation of someone intentionally making androids that are as human-like as possible to make sense. With the loverbots, that question becomes a little murkier already.

Once authors take the route of simply making androids as human-like as possible without any detailed explanation — once androids bleed, feel pain, have other emotions just like humans do, without anyone explaining how and why they developed these emotions in the first place without having biologically evolved, or without any hormones to cause these emotions — I consider that a rather lazy handwave. Worse, at that point I no longer see a reason for including androids in a setting in the first place.

Perhaps it’s due to having grown up with Star Trek, but after having witnessed Data’s perpetual quest to even have emotions in the first place — and often only for brief moments — androids that come with all of this built-in for no apparent reason to me just demonstrate that the author effectively only cares about writing about humans. Whether these humans are labelled “androids” or “vampires” doesn’t really make a difference anymore, especially if the few remaining differences to humans become less and less relevant as the story progresses.


Compare the early seasons of “Vampire Diaries”, where it was still a real concern where they got their food from in morally acceptable ways, and stealing blood bags from hospitals was their equivalent of lab-grown meat, to the later seasons, where this issue isn’t even talked about anymore. The audience just assumes they keep getting their blood bags from somewhere, while the story shifts to other external issues. Also, everyone has a ring to protect them against sunlight, and pretty much any former human character in the show has become a vampire for one reason or another. At this point, being a “vampire” no longer has any downside — it’s the new default in the setting, rather than being a source for conflict between vampires and humans. Now it just means you’ll stay young forever and can hook up with whomever you want without risk of pregnancy or STDs. The vampire as either a menacing predator, or a complex study on what separates a human from a beast, gets reduced to an excuse for hedonism.

At least vampires, being biological (albeit usually undead) organisms, still have a built-in explanation for why they have emotions: Because they at least used to be human. Androids however? Why build something human-like when you could build something better? Not even through additional effort, but by simply leaving out some of the evolved bugs of human nature that are no longer as suitable to the modern-to-futuristic societies androids tend to inhabit?

“Humans” / “Real Humans” fell into the same trap, when a female android starts developing maternal instincts when she sees a human baby. Why, exactly? Was the writer a social constructivist who believed that we are merely taught to appreciate children? (Perhaps not completely out of the question for the Swedish original.) :D Because on a biological level, I see no reason why an android without hormones would have maternal instincts. Is it just because the android looks female? :) That would be ironic for a social constructivist writer, if they themselves jump to conclusions about an android’s motivations based on gender roles and potential stereotypes.

That takes us back to the current debate of the definition of man and woman, because an android that looks the part still can’t perform all the same functions. “Fully functional” doesn’t mean Data can actually sire offspring, and artificial wombs are a separate technology altogether.


The worst offender to me in this regard is the constantly overhyped “NieR: Automata”. Aside from providing an in-world explanation for how and why saving the game works, there’s little reason why these characters couldn’t simply have been humans, potentially in a fantasy setting where reincarnation exists. While androids may provide a slightly more “hard science” explanation for why the characters’ consciousnesses keep recurring, this also renders a lot of the forced melodrama of NieR: Automata moot: When you see characters mourning for another who you know will be restored in a new body in a few minutes, it just doesn’t make sense.

Especially because, again, you don’t know the origins of their emotions, considering that you learn right at the beginning that “emotions are prohibited” (why then program these androids to have them in the first place?). Humans in a fantasy setting that features reincarnation do not require an explanation for their emotions; androids do not require an explanation for “reincarnation via data backup”, but they do require a much better explanation for the existence of their emotions. And even the “data backup” explanation, as convenient as it looks on the surface, actually comes with the inherent problem of effectively introducing immortality into your setting.

The only legitimate death scene in NieR: Automata happens once the backup server / base from which you used to start your missions goes away. But by the same token, you now also no longer have an in-world explanation for why saving the game (and returning there when your current player character dies) continues to work. Either death is final for these characters, or it is not.


I could apply the same criticism of robots having unexplained emotions to a setting I like much more — again, probably because of having grown up with it — which is Lego’s “Bionicle”. That story however kept it a mystery for the longest time whether these characters even are robots to begin with, just because they look the part. The big twist towards the end kind of implies a confirmation of this; however, there are definitely also still biological components to these characters (as the name “Bionicle” indeed suggests). Starting with the fact that they have lungs (otherwise, a “mask of waterbreathing” wouldn’t be necessary), and also need to eat (though the way that is explained in the setting could also be interpreted as them merely “recharging” on whatever food they hold in their hands).

 

[ShadowKraz]

I like how you’ve inadvertently demonstrated the relevance of this question in my story to present-day politics — without androids being such a direct allegory that it becomes too on-the-nose:

Quoting only a part because I want to make sure you read this.
I really, really want to read the novels after having read your ideas, your acceptance of feedback, and how well you write.

 

[Averagesupernova]

I'm sure most folks in this thread have watched Red Dwarf. If not, you need to spend some time watching it. Many things discussed here have been dealt with in Red Dwarf's Kryten. Sentience, rights, interaction with other androids, the belief in an electronic afterlife, physical attraction to other androids or even objects, etc. The first episode Kryten was in showed him watching a TV show called Androids that was like a soap opera for Droids.

 

[Strato Incendus]

Quoting only a part because I want to make sure you read this.
I really, really want to read the novels after having read your ideas, your acceptance of feedback, and how well you write.

Thanks for your kind words!

The thing is, the faster we can figure out a solution for the persisting issue discussed in several parallel threads (currently, the “Fire Onboard a Spaceship” thread) — namely, what midpoint catastrophe to throw at my crew to cause some serious casualties and up the stakes, but in a realistic manner that fits the rest of this fairly hard-sci-fi setting — the faster I can hopefully complete the first book as a whole.

 

[sbrothy]

Apropos not much really, Charles Stross has a “zombies in space” short story lying freely available online where the protagonist is a “female” sex-bot. Unfortunately humans are extinct so she has no puporse anymore. Then “bitrot” breaks out and it becomes, yeah, Zombies in Space!

Well worth a read. I’ll see if I can find the link….

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/fiction/bitrot.html

 

[ShadowKraz]

Thanks for your kind words!

The thing is, the faster we can figure out a solution for the persisting issue discussed in several parallel threads (currently, the “Fire Onboard a Spaceship” thread) — namely, what midpoint catastrophe to throw at my crew to cause some serious casualties and up the stakes, but in a realistic manner that fits the rest of this fairly hard-sci-fi setting — the faster I can hopefully complete the first book as a whole.

I haven't read the other threads fully... yet. Yet.
I take it neither sabotage nor a socio-political crisis are options, or the two combined. (makes note to spend some time today reading over the threads)

 

[Averagesupernova]

Interesting that I happened to stumble across the original Star Trek episode I, Mudd. The antagonist in this episode has created 500 female androids, operating in pairs, and one male named Norman. Strange why I didn't think of this episode at the start of this thread. Droid to human ratio around 100:1.
-
Hmmm. Harry Mudd himself claims 200,000 androids. Obviously we never see all of them.

 

[BillTre]

Harry Mudd was not someone to put a lot of belief in.

 

[Averagesupernova]

Harry Mudd was not someone to put a lot of belief in.

I didn't think it was necessary to mention it. Red Dwarf shouldn't be taken seriously either. Nor should scifi in general. It's entertaining, etc. That's it.