That's basically what dogs are, for some people/groups. Are dogs used in this way unethical? (real question, not implied judgement)

I think about it all the time. Love my beagle, but I've concluded that the ownership of an animal is unethical. I'm not exactly doing anything about that because I simultaneously hold the usual line of thinking (despite the obvious conflict) that hey, he gets treated better by me than nature would probably treat him.

I feel fairly uneasy about my ownership of my cat. I live alone (besides the cat) and am probably gone 12/16 waking hours per day and obviously asleep the other 8. During the remaining 4, I’m probably cooking, showering, or recreating (not involving the cat). Add all this up and the cat probably gets about 5-10 min of attention from me each day. That’s the entirety of her interaction with any other living thing. Day in, day out.

I’m not an expert but my guess is that that feelings of boredom/loneliness that humans feel are relatively primal and experienced similarly (at some level) in most other mammals. If that’s true at all, it comes to a rough life for domesticated cats.

That’s ignoring the fact that cats usually have large territories that they patrol in the wild while my apartment is 700 sqft as well :\

Oh man, now that is a can of worms.

My gift to industry is the genetically engineered worker, or Genejack. Specially designed for labor, the Genejack's muscles and nerves are ideal for his task, and the cerebral cortex has been atrophied so that he can desire nothing except to perform his duties. Tyranny, you say? How can you tyrannize someone who cannot feel pain?

Chairman Sheng-ji Yang "Essays on Mind and Matter"

That game (Alpha Centauri) had an amazing number of insightful quotes, both from real individuals and from in-game individuals. That was one of those visionary games where so many things were artfully done.

It seems unethical if you do it by gene drive. But what if you add some natural randomness to the process and other desirable objectives. Imagine a dating service with a DNA database and you can match up people whose offspring could potentially be very subservient.

What if the full effect is expected after matching 5 generations of people?

What if the real goal is to create a fraction of people more attentive to minding about the environment and total blissful subservience is just a bi-product? For the good of the human race!

1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2019/dec/16/dating-app-g...

2] https://www.dnaromance.com/

Well, there are many already.

It's speculated in [1], that agriculture selected evolved humanity towards both long term planning and docility

[1]Cochran, Gregory, and Henry Harpending. The 10,000 year explosion: How civilization accelerated human evolution. Basic Books, 2009.

You've basically described Brave New World.

More people need to read this book. It seems like a lot of people read 1984 in school but not so many read Brave New World! The two books are good companions for comparison with real world trends. Sometimes one seems more plausible than the other, and then it shifts back again.

Brave New World changed my entire outlook on consumerism and mass media. I recommend it to everyone!

I don't think this scenario is realistic. It would almost certainly be easier and cheaper to use mechanical automation over human slaves.

Well, people do enjoy being served by other human beings. I'm not making any moral judgment about that, just noting that it is a fact.

Compare the service in a fast food joint to the service in a four-star restaurant. Certainly, the fast food joint is cheaper, but price is not the only factor here. The same applies to seeing a live band compared to listening to a recording, or getting a manicure compared to just cutting your own nails, or... any number of things, up to and including sex work.

Android robots will be a reality before your scenario has a chance at reality.

People will opt for the dependable, low maintenance ethics-free option.

In the described case robots are indistinguishable from biorobots. Does type of hardware make any difference for ethic problems?

Btw, the original robots [0] from which the name originates were made of flesh and blood, not mechanical parts.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R.

From the wikipedia link:

> In Czech, robota means forced labour of the kind that serfs had to perform on their masters' lands and is derived from rab, meaning "slave".

Well, 'robota' means 'labour' (see German 'Arbeit', it's the same word), 'rab' (slave) is just one of derivatives from it. Another is 'rebenok' (child, baby), so it's not such a sinister as it may seem from this article.

Source: I'm Slavic. )

I think if something is made of electronics and material parts the ethics are different. It's be like asking if someone bashing their motorcycle is the same as someone bashing their horse.

And, while an interesting footnote for the English word robot, that in Slavic languages whence it's deriven it can refer to worker/servant/serf/slave is beside the point.

But the difference is in reaction. We can emphasize with the horse because - (A) It can show that it's suffering. (B) You can't repair the horse perfectly yet if the damage is beyond certain level. (C) Other reasons for why we consider it living and unique.

If motorcycle is able to fullfil all of them, then what.

Gotta ask what makes machine a machine.

In TV show Westworld, early robots are mechanical, but later replaced by biological ones. Does it make torturing early models any less or more bad, considering that they behave the same?

It’s probably like eating animals. At one point there was little thought about it in terms of ethics for most civilizations, but then gradually things become fuzzy.

Although that being said, it’s interesting that definitions have such a huge impact. For example you can be an extreme vegan but also be okay with abortion (note I’m not anti abortion rights) just pointing out how a definition can affect human ethics among people who are very cautious about affecting living things.

That is arguable. People pay higher price for human made products even if there are better automated counterparts at a cheaper price.

There's already a trend of putting AI and human produced product next to each other with later being highly priced emotionally manipulating some people into buying for the humane touch while others can go for cheaper ones.

Although, I am not sure about limitation androids will face like natural aging, growth, self healing, evolution? Some of that may be cost prohibitive compared to a biological piece of ball.

Or they might fear the robotic take-over and prefer genetically engineered workers.

In any case, DNA looks like a cryptographic code to me. It grew and grew for millions of years and cracking that code without side effects seems similar to cracking a strong cryptographic code. That being said I actually don’t possess any knowledge in this area, perhaps someone more knowledgable would chime-in on how close we are to genetically engineer organisms with well predictable side effects.

> People will opt for the dependable, low maintenance ethics-free option.

I do not agree. Why do people still go to see live bands, when listening to a recording is orders of magnitude cheaper, and generally gives you better sound to boot?