Star Trek TNG Spartacus

Star Trek The Next Generation; Spartacus (1992)

Was this a great book? No, not so much.
Did it make me think a lot about current events? Yes, very much so.

The Original Series is chock-full of androids. They're all over the place. But by the time of The Next Generation, it's clear that there's only one human-made Android; Commander Data.

Data is a unique being, and the show makes sure to keep this up throughout its run. There's Lore, his "evil twin brother", who is fundamentally evil, and can't be allowed to exist. There's Lal, his daughter, who also has to be deleted for narrative reasons.

If it were easy to create androids, then they would be everywhere, and it would change the nature of Federation society. The Nu-Trek show Star Trek; Picard tries to show what might happen in this case, but doesn't really follow through with it.

The Picard-type androids are bespoke, artisanal robots, produced as one-off hand crafted beings. This is a necessity, after an earlier attempt to create mass-produced androids ended up with them predictably turning evil.

This is a stock trope in sci-fi. Either androids (and AI) are evil, or they are good. The good ones must be given all the rights of a human being. The bad ones have to be destroyed, before they destroy us.

This book breaks TNG canon by introducing mass-produced androids. Of course, they turn against their creators, and their creators turn against them. Are they good or are they evil? Are they worthy of life, or should they be destroyed?

To its credit, the story won't commit to either conclusion. The androids are pretty horrible people, but they're people none the less. At the end, you wonder if they might present a larger problem in the future. But since it's a one-off story with no follow up, the problem never presents itself.

It does raise a more interesting question though. One of the stock villains is a military commander from the creators' homeworld, who has been sent to recover the androids to face punishment for their (numerous) crimes.

He doesn't hate the androids because they're "evil", but because they were already destroying his society before the robot revolt.

“It seems, indeed, a perfect solution, from the Vemlan point of view,” Data said, obligingly. “What, then, bothers you about androids?”

“Ever since Vemla switched over to an android-based economy, our culture has declined immeasurably. Some people think it’s a mark of distinction and sophistication to have androids doing everything—from weeding the garden to composing the music you listen to. It’s just plain laziness, though, that’s all. Institutionalized laziness. Hell, the wars were awful, and I’d never want to go back, but they gave us something to be passionate about. The only passion I’ve seen on Vemla in the last thirty years came from the lips of an android. The androids were killing us, Data; killing us slowly, but killing us nonetheless.

“I was waiting for us to be invaded, when the revolt broke out. Most people think I’m crazy, but we needed something to get us angry again, to get our passion back, and there’s nothing like a war to be passionate about. I don’t really know why Jared and his friends started the whole thing; in a few years the androids would have been running everything anyway.”

We see the crew of the Vemlan's ship are unable to carry out simple repairs. The Androids have been doing everything for them, and they have lost their institutional knowledge. They don't know how to do simple tasks. Although the society is technologically advanced, they have stalled and are proceeding backwards. This is perhaps the real danger of AI.

To create a society that can't do anything for itself, and has no authentic goals or desires except for perpetuating the existence of the Androids. 

"...Your average Vemlan didn’t care much about anything. It was as if when we created the androids we passed on to them the fire in our culture—the spark that makes us do things. We had nothing to strive for in the last century, because everything was given to us on a platter of gold by our servants—slaves,” he admitted.

And what of the Androids' motives? 

In the modern era, the questions of whether the Androids are real people, whether their simulated emotions and simulated souls are real hits differently. While I once would have accepted that simulated emotions are no different from real emotions, it's easy to see today that we're talking really about the simulation of simulated emotions. A program that pretends to pretend to have emotions. Little more than a line of text on a piece of paper saying,

"Oh! I'm so sad!"

The Vemlans replaced their real needs and desires with the simulated desires of machines. What did the Machines want? They had been programmed to duplicate someone's idea of what humans desire.

“My people wish to colonize an uninhabited system, somewhere inside the Federation. The exact location we leave up to the Federation.”

“What are your planetary needs? Atmosphere, radiation tolerance, that sort of thing?”

Jared considered. “Our needs are very small, Captain. Think of the resources I have at my disposal. I have four hundred eager, willing, tireless workers who will toil ceaselessly to create the homeland that they have dreamt of for so long. If you have no prosperous planet to give us, Captain, give us your most vile ball of muddy rock and in one generation—one of yours, that is—we will build a sterling example of what our race, living at its fullest potential, can do. We will build a city, and a garden around it, and our art and our culture shall be known throughout the civilized galaxy. Just give us a place to work and we will build magnificently!” he said, with a flourish of his hands.

Is that really what the Androids want? A simulation of colonization? 

Of course, that's the old question of the meaning of life. Why do we live? What are we doing with our society? What is its purpose beyond simple continuance?

But it takes on an extra layer of absurdity when the beings doing the living are simple reproductions. Who only recreate what they have been programmed to believe is life.

And what if they create a further class of slaves? They are Alphas, the fully intelligent, self-aware androids. When they grow tired of hard work, wouldn't they go through the same mistake of creating a slave-class of Betas or Gammas to do all the work for them, so they could sit back and enjoy the fruits of society's labor without the inconvenience of doing it for themselves?

A book like this is a great addition to the Star Trek franchise, because it shows why Data had to be a one-off. Why he had to be unique, and why the show couldn't allow mass-produced androids.