In 1989, Star Trek: The Next Generation asked a question that no longer feels quite like science fiction: What makes a person a person?
In “The Measure of a Man,” Commander Data is forced to confront an unsettling possibility. Is he a free being with the right to choose his own fate—or simply a remarkably sophisticated machine that belongs to Starfleet?
Expanding on today’s Daybreak: The Soul of the Machine, we take a deeper look at one of Star Trek’s finest episodes: Picard and Riker’s courtroom battle, Guinan’s chilling warning about slavery, the mystery of consciousness, Chesterton on machines and progress, the Christian understanding of human dignity, and what all of this might mean in the age of artificial intelligence.
Perhaps the most important question isn’t whether we will someday mistake a machine for a person.
What if we begin mistaking persons for machines?
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