A History of Artificial Persons

After industrial robots and failed attempts at Synthetic Sentience in AI mainframes, the first-generation of androids was attempted. They were primitive and gross, barely looking human, but the advance in synthetic technology had unknowingly taken a giant step forward. By second-generation, a dozen "andies" had passed the Turing Test, and generations three and four produced over 90% turing conversationalists. A type-two andy could pass the TT conversing through the net, but would still give itself away in a face-to-face test. Type-threes looked human to all sensors in the human-sensual range, but could still be spotted. Body language, facial expression, and other subtle cues gave the candidates away. For the first time the successful examiners reported that their conclusions were based "on a feeling," claiming that they had "somehow sensed" that the androids weren't human.

Tyrell Corporation produced Nexus-4 through -7, all of which had 95%+ success rates in passing the face-to-face (or "Total-") Turing Test. Tyrell used the label Nexus instead of "type" or "generation" and preferred the term replicant to the more "dehumanizing" android. The Nexus-series replicants were bioengineered, and while they were completely artificial (built from the ground up), their flesh and blood was organic and their synthetic brains were 99% integrated biochips.

"We're not computers, Sebastian -- we're physical."
-- Roy Batty, Nexus 6, class A:A.

A replicant unit's "body" was easily distinguished from a natural human body, under chemical analysis and electrical testing, but in the TTT, they were indistinguishable from human beings. After the first few replicant skirmishes (following the Martian wars of 2020), employers began running the "chemical turing test" (CTT) along with the myriad other drug- and implant-testing bioscans.

In 2029, the ACLU won a major victory in pushing through the Physical Privacy Act, forbidding government agencies to require bioscans of their employees or applicants. Even the religious right gave their support to "any legislation recognizing the sanctity of the human body."

Despite the protests of the Policeman's Benevolent Association and the Union of Intelligence Operatives (an umbrella group for both government and corporate spies), police and military groups were exempted from the new restrictions. However, by 2031, the restrictions were extended to include private industry.

Beginning in 2030, Voigt-Kampf produced a series of devices and personal tests to detect these "replicants". The examiner would ask from 50 to 500 questions requiring verbal answers. The V-K monitored for emotionally triggered responses in the autonomic system of the suspect. While replicants were bio-mechanical and almost completely organic, they were not made of human stuff. Their systems were modeled on human organs and neural networks, but their breath, pulse, and pupil dilation gave away the difference in their structure.

In the same year the V-K took hold, 2030, the ACLU and the abolition movement suffered a resounding defeat. The Supreme Court upheld a Georgia law declaring Artificial Person's (AP's) to be "non-legals". A series of small and unorganized rebellions by replicants and enhanced tubes resulted in 49 of the remaining 51 states (all but California and New York) following Georgia's model.

[Note: a "tube" is a biologically "human" being, whose genes are selected, spliced, engineered and grown for "enhancement" in the lab. The word "tube" is from "test tube baby," the press's name for the first child born in vitro.]
Eventually, all non-legals not controlled by the government were banned from the Earth. Off-worlders had less trouble with their replicants than did the Terran humans, and the colonies had greater need for humanoid labor.

New Greenland, was founded on Mars by the AP and human survivors of the "Green Peace" rebellion of 2020. The government of New Greenland offered sanctuary and citizenship to all turing conversationalists, humanoid or not. Eventually, many off-world colonies granted their AP's nominal citizenship in order to stem the flow of rebellions and runaways and to maintain their labor force.

By the time the ACLU's Rights of Artificial Persons (RAP) branch was established both on Earth and in New America, replicants had given way to the modern synths, whose biochip neurostructures and non-organic bodies allowed for deeper and more direct levels of programming.

In 2035, the Supreme Court ruled that these synthetic people were allowed legal status by state and guaranteed minimal citizens rights by the federal government. This shift to the left was largely the result of the non-violent synthetic civil-rights movement that took hold in the early '30's. (Despite initial resistance by the military and certain small religious groups concerned with the question of free will, the law required that synthetics be programmed as non-violent, and eager-to-serve humanity. Their human-compatible nature greatly aided in popular acceptance of the Court's ruling.) By 2050, RAP had secured the rights of tubes and the re-animated, but never replicants.