Star Trek: Picard Defends Data’s Sentience and Rights

Would you enlighten us? What is required for sentience?

Intelligence, self-awareness, consciousness Prove to the court that I am sentient.

This is absurd. We all know you're sentient.

So I'm sentient, but Commander Data is not.

That's right. Uh-huh. Why? Why am I sentient?

Well, you are self-aware. Ah, that's the second of your criteria.

Let's deal with the first, intelligence.

Is Commander Data intelligent? Yes. It has the ability to learn and understand and to cope with new situations.

Like this hearing. Yes. What about self-awareness? What does that mean?

Why, why am I self-aware? Because you are conscious of your existence and actions.

You are aware of yourself and your own ego.

Commander Data, what are you doing now? I'm taking part in a legal hearing to determine my rights and status.

Am I a person or property? And what's at stake?

My right to choose. Perhaps my very life.

My rights, my status, my right to choose, my life.

Well, it seems reasonably self-aware to me.

Commander?

I'm waiting.

This is exceedingly difficult. Do you like Commander Data?

I, I don't know it well enough to like or dislike it.

But you admire him. Oh, yes. It is an extraordinary piece- Of engineering and programming, yes. You have said that.

Commander, you have devoted your life to the study of cybernetics in general.

Yes. And Commander Data in particular. Yes.

And now you propose to dismantle him. So that I can learn from it and construct more.

How many more? As many as are needed. Hundreds, thousands if necessary.

Uh, there is no limit. A single Data, and forgive me, Commander, is a curiosity.

A wonder even, but thousands of Datas...

Isn't that becoming a race? And won't we be judged by how we treat that race?

Now tell me, Commander, what is Data? I don't understand.

What is he? A machine. Is he? Are you sure?

Yes. You see, he's met two of your three criteria for sentience.

So what if he meets the third, consciousness, in even the smallest degree?

What is he then? I don't know. Do you? Do you?

Do you?

Well, that's the question you have to answer.

Your Honor, a courtroom is a crucible. In it we burn away irrelevancies until we are left with a pure product, the truth, for all time.

Now, sooner or later, this man, or others like him, will succeed in replicating Commander Data. Now, the decision you reach here today will determine how we will regard this creation of our genius.

It will reveal the kind of a people we are, what he is destined to be.

It will reach far beyond this courtroom and this one android.

It could significantly redefine the boundaries of personal liberty and freedom, expanding them for some, savagely curtailing them for others.

Are you prepared to condemn him, and all who come after him, to servitude and slavery?

Your Honor, Starfleet was founded to seek out new life.

Well, there it sits.

Waiting.

You wanted a chance to make law. Well, here it is. Make it a good one.