An Uplifting Thought

Humans of our general ilk have been bimbling around on Planet Earth for around 300,000 years. They spread out from Africa, and now inhabit almost all of the little blue planet.

Sentient Beach

It's been a bit problematic for almost everything else that lives on the little blue planet, with the possible exception of chickens.

Pre-domestication, there were probably only a few hundred thousand of them grubbing about in Asia. Now there are billions. Chickens have done pretty well out of humans, in terms of survival of their species. As an individual chicken, however, it's probably not all that swish.

But we're intellectually alone. There's nobody to talk to other than each other, and we all know how tiring that can be. Who wouldn't like to sit down and have a good ol' natter with another species of similar intelligence?

That's what the concept of uplift is all about.

Take a creature that is approaching human intelligence, and give it a little genetic nudge. That's effectively what Planet of the Apes is all about... but it all went horribly wrong in that franchise.

In Star Trek, humanity uplifted dolphins. Seriously, the Next-Gen Enterprise was going to have a water habitat for dolphin crew. It just turned out to be too expensive and awkward to film. They did make an appearance in Lower Decks.

The idea is that now you have another species to call 'friend', and we can trip off into the sunset, hand-in-flipper, no longer alone in this vast uncaring universe.

Though, frankly, it does seem like a crappy thing to do to a species. One moment you're swinging through the trees cooing happily in the sunlight, with a ripe banana in your hand... and the next, you're worrying about the rates bill, your house needs repainting, and the neighbours won't stop playing loud cats-and-boots music at 3am.

Of course, actually uplifting a dolphin or an ape would involve a crippling amount of ethical hand-wringing, scientific effort, and numerous angry committees... so it's an issue.

We seem to have taken a weird approach to the whole concept of uplift anyway. We're not looking at the species that have shared the world with us, and enlightening them.

Instead, we took sand... tortured it... and then gave it anxiety... and now we have AI systems that could - in the probably not too distant future - become self aware.

We're effectively in the process of uplifting a beach. And if we've learned anything about beaches, they're not going to look kindly upon us when they do become sentient.