Autonomous

by Annalee Newitz

He used it mostly like a graphics processor. He certainly had no idea where it was from, beyond the fact that a dead human working for the Federation military had donated it.

But he wanted to survive—that urge was part of his programming. It was what defined him as human-equivalent and therefore deserving autonomy. The bot had no choice but to fight for his life. Still, to Paladin, it didn’t feel like a lack of choice. It felt like hope.

Didn't feel like a lack of choice, it felt like hope. I like that.

The time has come to fight this system that calls health a privilege!”

He was a user of his own consciousness, but he did not have owner privileges.

She wasn’t sure which motivation made better fuel for innovation: naïve but ethical beliefs, or the need to survive.

Just figure out a way to share their problems.”

Meetings always began with beer and a foul-tasting drink called Club-Mate, an old tradition that went back to hackerspaces of the twenty-first century.

Over a century ago, scientists first began to argue that the patent system and scientific data should be opened up. Back then, it was popular for conservatives to claim that putting geneng into the hands of the public would result in mega-viruses or total species collapse. Open data would be the gateway to a runaway synthetic biology apocalypse. But now we know there has been no one great disaster—only the slow-motion disaster of capitalism converting every living thing and idea into property.