Missing from this discussion, which mentions both David Brin’s Uplift books and the Planet of the Apes franchise, is a mention of Cordwainer Smith. His uplifted animals were basically second-class humans, treated as slaves. The Ballad of Lost C’Mel is probably the best-known story, in which an uplifted cat joins in a courageous and tragic fight for the betterment of her people. A more recent example is Barsk, by Lawrence M. Schoen, though it would be a spoiler to tell you how that plays out.

The other thing – and I can’t remember where I read this – is that if you take a great ape, say, and give it the genetic changes that are needed for it to be more intelligent and able to speak – including changing much of its physiology so that it can give birth to offspring with larger skulls – what you end up with is something that basically looks like a human. The article notes that guppies with larger brains ended up with smaller digestive systems and fewer offspring; you can’t just magically add more intelligence to a species in isolation from other physiological changes.

The other way this could be done, of course, is to hook both humans and non-human animals up to AI with neural nets. If the enhanced intelligence is not physiologically supported, but technologically supported, you’re in a whole different realm; you can leave the animals’ physiology largely as it is, but enable them to control devices for manipulating their environment, performing various forms of advanced mental processing, and communicating. But then, is that an animal with AI enhancement, or an AI with a biological peripheral?

Originally shared by Singularity Hub

If We Learn to Engineer Animals to Be as Smart as Humans—Should We? http://suhub.co/2mLHA8j