Remember when La Forge goes to an AI conference and gains assassin skills? Or when Worf’s spine is repaired through gen-AI-tronics. And don’t forget about the GenAI people who eradicated the gender problem from society.
Sorry, couldn’t help it. I do appreciate the actual shout-out to AI in the La Forge example, as well as the prophetic brainwashing that ensues.
Emotion and empathy are core and required components of sapience in addition to intelligence, in the same way that eggs and sugar are necessary components of cake; no amount of sophistication will render a cake from just flour. An entity that doesn’t have emotion and empathy is too primitive and limited to be sapient regardless of its computational power because it lacks fundamental building blocks of awareness.
Before you try to get out in front of me with this: I’m fully aware that there are human beings with no empathy or emotion. I will not elaborate and I am taking no questions.