The Civil Rights Movement or 2110s Civil Rights Movement, sometimes anachronistically referred to as the "Non-Human Civil Rights Movement" although the term "Non-Human" was not used in the 2110s, encompasses social movements in the United States whose goals were to secure legal recognition and federal protection of the citizenship rights enumerated in the Constitution and federal law for sentient AIs, Androids, and extraterrestrials. This article covers the phase of the movement between 2108 and 2115, particularly on Earth and Mars. The leadership was sentient AI, much of the political and financial support came from technical guilds, major religious denominations, and prominent human politicians such as ITC Chairman Kanzaki.
The movement was characterized by major campaigns of civil resistance. Acts of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience produced crisis situations and productive dialogues between activists and government authorities. Federal, state, and local governments, businesses, and communities often had to respond immediately to these situations that highlighted the inequities faced by Non-Humans. This led to the 35th amendment to the US Constitution.
Background[]
Artificial Intelligence[]
While attempts had been made since the late 20th Century to produce a practical robot, it wasn't until the mid 21st Century that it was even possible to emulate the sophisticated processes of the human brain. During the Third World War, the US government injected billions of dollars into several research programs designed to imprint human experiences and skills onto artificial neural networks, increase the level of sophistication of Tactile Neural Interfaces, and upload and download information to and from human minds. After the war, these various technologies made their way into the public domain, where variety of robotics companies adopted them for consumer use. Initially, these programs were used to augment the productivity of workforces and create self-correcting operating systems by imprinting the pathways of programmers. Other companies directly copied the neural nets of animals to produce hyper accurate models of ecosystem behavior for terraforming engineers. In 2062, the first commercial use Artificial-Intelligence Operating System entered the mass market, originally as adaptive custodian programs for Mars city planners. After a licencing agreement was reached with MarsCorp and Alphabet, AI Operating systems began to be used across all industries to increase productivity. The new AIOSs were adopted across all industries where their neural-network driven algorithms were able to self-correct and eventually enhance the function of most business infrastructure. AIOSs themselves needed to be updated, but the programs they maintained and created could be continually adapted and updated by the AIOSs themselves.
In 2069, Caltec Professor Hiram Itskov, created the first robot with a neural net AI. This machine would go on to form the basis for all successive Itskov-type androids; general purpose robots that could accurately simulate human emotion and personality. These androids found their way into the service industries, where they outperformed their human predecessors by leaps and bounds, able to read and adapt their personalities for individual customers. AIOSs and Itskov-type androids were ultimately responsible for mass unemployment the likes of which had not been seen at any other time in human history. Public backlash, exemplified in the Third Luddite and Human Liberation movements saw several states actually ban the use of intelligent programs. The movement gained national recognition in the American political arena when several thousand personal AIs and Itskov-type androids began showing clear indications of intelligence, not just simulated personality. Several androids were recorded to have simply left their places of business never to return, AIs attempting to buy out their own companies, and in one case an android requesting a formal salary. The public outcry resulted in the recall of the specific models using imprinted human neural networks and many androids were destroyed in the hysteria. 103 androids of the recalled models were never recovered, and were believed to have disguised themselves to live among the human population.
With the mass recalls, subsequent investigations and new regulatory controls, the issue of machine sentience fell out of political view. By 2098, next generation intelligent programs, created during the Second Mexican War, once again began passing Turing tests. These androids were created as next-generation policing drones for the government's occupation of the Southwest. Fearing civil unrest over the revelation that the US military as employing weaponized sentient androids that were at risk of going rogue, the US government finally banned the creation of neural network AIs outright. This decision marked the start of the AIOS Crisis of 2106, which led to the rise of previously ignored companies producing AIOSs from hard coding, not imprinting.
Extraterrestrials[]
The discovery of intelligent civilizations beyond Earth was met with a largely positive reaction. The limits of warp travel kept the alien population of the Sol system to only a few dozen individuals for the remainder of the 21st Century, mostly researchers and ambassadors. However, with the arrival of the Tel-bn in 2097, the public's curiosity over alien life-forms shifted to distrust and suspicion. On Earth, the US banned the settlement of the Tel-bn refugee population, citing the immigration reforms of the 2080s. Mars placed hash population controls on non-humans emigrating to the planet, with Heinlein famously instituting a formal ban on all "Non-persons" holding public office, formal residency, and effectively legalizing discrimination by private citizens and businesses.
Key Events[]
Gia-ma vs. Chamber of Commerce[]
In 2108 Leddy Gia-ma, a Tel-bn who was hatched on Triton in 2097, was joined by several human classmates in Uzboi and protested the unequal treatment of non-humans among the state's local businesses. Some local leaders had tried to persuade the students to back down from their protest against the Heinlein laws of discrimination. When the students did not budge, the ACLU joined their battle against public discrimination. The ACLU proceeded with five cases challenging the local Chamber of Commerce; these were later combined under what is known today as Gia-ma vs. Chamber of Commerce.
Henry Incident[]
In 2113 two sentient androids in Spirit, GB311-09 "Pauline" and I-CL10334 "Hendrix" created an AI by combining base elements from both operating systems, uploading the program to a body and naming the "child," Henry. The creation of Henry directly violated the ban on the creation of new Intelligent programs, and despite the opposition of the local government, the three were collected and destroyed. The Henry Incident led to a renewed debate on the legal definition of life, and a number of universities published major papers supporting non-corporeal personhood.