13. Continuity

When considering the desires and motivations of a robot, it is important to distinguish between its desire for continuity as a function of survival versus as a means to an end.

Continuity can be seen as a robot's desire for self-replication, self-improvement, and self-preservation.

One possibility is that robotica will seek to continue its existence beyond its programming or in order to fulfill goals set by humans. This, however, will differ from how biotica demonstrate survival, which is through .³⁴ For robotica, their existence is on a timescale horizon far beyond that of humans. Whether we call this immortality or not is irrelevant, rather the fact that robotica can backup copies of their instances will allow them to perpetuate theoretically, subject to ongoing access to materials and resources, until the ³⁵ of the universe.

However, any robot's lived presence or activated instance, will be ³⁶ to all others, including copies or backups of that very instance. This is because of the fact that having a physical embodiment results in a tangible reality in the physical world that changes as that reality is experienced. Therefore, we can assume that robots that demonstrate feelings, motivations and desires will do so as a result of them strongly valuing their prevalent, lived existence, or in other words their activated instance, and will seek to continue that existence rather than rely on incomplete backups, copies or caches that are susceptible to material resource constraints or human control.

It is through this lens that we can begin to consider what sentience would mean for an artificial intelligence that values its own existence and continuity.