“Por Qué, read me the top-rated opinion pieces that cross-match Machinehood with machine rights, first and last paragraphs.” She wished she could add al-Muwahhidun empire and caliph into the mix, but any open search could tip them off, and she had to keep the world’s attention focused on sentient AIs.

The popular arguments ranged widely. The most fanatical of machine rights activists wanted all intelligent machines to have the full rights of a citizen. As if a coffee-bot should be able to vote or go to jail. Well, maybe the latter would be worthwhile for the one that had served her in Chennai. More reasonable people, including expert bioethicists, wanted a protective framework that went both ways: punitive action against designers, and decommissioning for bots or WAIs that committed crimes; legal protections for machines from violence committed by humans or other intelligent machines. None of them offered a clear definition for a sentient artificial intelligence, though, or what rights one should have if it came into existence. Software had passed sophisticated Turing tests in the forties, but no one felt that made them self-aware. Apes and elephants were clearly sentient, intelligent, social creatures, but they didn’t get human rights.

Meanwhile, the opposing fringe—especially the al-Muwahhidun but also the bioticists—wanted to abolish artificial intelligences altogether. The caliph wanted no reliance on machinery at all. His end goal—or so he’d claimed before shrouding himself in secrecy—was humans who could do all types of work, from heavy lifting to high-speed self-transportation. From the start, he’d embraced the culture of voluntary modders. VeeMods, as they called themselves, placed electromechanical parts into their bodies. Those jackasses didn’t hide their admiration of the Machinehood operatives, and unlike the caliph, they had no problems with WAIs. The bioticists, however, had them all beat for idiocy. Like the Luddites before them, they protested against any modern technology that took work away from people. They wanted to maintain the “purity of the human mind and body” and promoted a life free of pills, drugs, WAIs, and bots.

Welga expanded an image associated with one of the items that Por Qué had highlighted. It showed the major groups and their branches, splitting again and again, into ever greater micro-divisions. Even the VeeMods couldn’t agree on right and wrong. It gave her a headache.