Noonian Soong is best known for his pioneering work into Positronic brain based androids
that as of the late 24th century are still unmatched in their complexity and operational
prowess. Hi, Ric here and this video is on the history of the Soong-Type androids the
most notable of which is of course, the Starfleet officer, Data.
Noonian Soong was a Federation citizen born to a lineage of Cyberneticist and continued
their work into artificial intelligence and the robotics.
This work began back in 2154 with the apprehension of the geneticist Arik Soong. This scientist
was imprisoned for his work in recreating the Augment experiments that produced a number
of genetically engineered humans. He did this by stealing the preserved Augment Embryos
from Cold Station 12 and raising them in secret until he was discovered in 2144. Even in incarceration,
he continued to research and develop his genetic techniques mapping out a number of alterations
to the human genome that would remove diseases from an augmented population, however the
Federation’s strict stance on genetic engineering stood and his work was routinely confiscated.
After an incident in 2154 where his Augment children freed him and tried to start a war
with the Klingon Empire and Starfleet, he eventually resigned himself to the realization
that the adage, “Superior ability breeds superior ambition” was true yet again and
stepped back from genetics. He spent the remainder of his life drawing up plans and schematics
for androids, a work that his descendants would later continue.
Jump forwards around 180 years and we have the activation of the first Soong Type androids.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing however, as the issues of crating such a compact artificial
intelligence would have been immense and soon Soong had fallen behind on his claims. He’s
work was eventually seen as a dead end and he had moved to Omicron Theta, an out of the
way colony world, most notable for its use as a pit stop on shipping lanes. This was
even done under an assumed identity as he had been laughed out of his scientific circles.
Here he married Juliana O’Donnell and the two continued the work laid out generations
earlier to create the first functional positronic brain.
Their first creations were two androids that functioned well enough for a time, but both
eventually completely stopped working. This hurt the couple who had begun to think of
the creations as their children, but they persisted in their work, eventually constructing
B4. B4 was the most advanced model yet, comparatively
at least, but lacked much in terms of brainpower. His physical shell was modelled on the appearance
of Noonian Soong but alabaster white with yellow eyes. The design of the body, its capabilities
and so forth would remain relatively unchanged throughout the later models, though the mind
would receive considerable upgrades. The android in his current state was aware of its surroundings
and could follow simple instructions but it could not process much beyond the simplest
of interactions. It’s easy to look at B4 and say that Soong failed, but consider everything
that it was capable of; it had enough memory to contain several lifetimes’ worth of information,
fine motor control, awareness enough to move unobstructed through its surroundings and
all this in a body the size of a humans. It’s here we see the true goal of the Soong
type androids project. At this stage, they could have gone another way with the designs
and produced an android servant, one that didn’t need that much more advancement,
but that wasn’t what Soong had wanted when he set out on his work. The goal was to effectively
create new life, artificial and cybernetic in nature sure, but one that so closely resembled
organic life that it could be accepted as a person.
For this reason, they continued their work in in the early 2330s, they had drawn up plans
for two more androids, Data and Lore. Lore was activated first and while supporting the
same frame as B4, was far more advanced. He had functional emotions and a powerful mind.
Proud of their work, the Soong’s routinely introduced Lore to the other colonists; however
they were perturbed by its near-human qualities combined with its obviously unhuman capabilities.
In short, Soong dropped Lore into the uncanny valley but it was a bit more than this too.
Lore began to exhibit signs of emotional instability and began to see itself as not just different,
but superior to those around it, even its creator manifesting in almost spiteful behaviour.
Once again, a Soong had repeated the mistakes of the past albeit in a different field. Lore
was soon deactivated while Soong set about working on his “brother”, Data. Data had
basically an identical mind to Lore’s, however numerous upgrades were removed such most of
the subroutines pertaining to emotion. However, things like artistic creativity were left
intact and I’d argue that you need a certain amount of expression even if it is subconscious
to explore that side of yourself. But I digress and that’s a topic for another video. Sometime
prior to all this B4 was deactivated too and stored before Data’s activation.
Soong deactivated Lore, with the intent to repair his faulty mind after he had finished
work on Data, but too late and unbeknownst to Soong, Lore had already sent a message
to the Crystalline Entity, marking out the location of Omicron Theta to the planet-razing
creature like a “free buffet” sign, because as we’ve established, Lore was turning into
a bit of a dick. Work was completed on the more “artificial”
seeming Data and it’s likely that he was partially activated during his testing as
he has vague recollections of the lab. As part of a basis on which to build Data’s
knowledge, he had copies of the memories of the colonies inhabitants and logs added to
his memory banks. Juliana Soong however had trouble shaking the notion that Data would
turn out like Lore and convinced Noonien to postpone Data’s activation. Soon however,
the crystalline entity rocked up and began to devour all organic matter on the planet.
Soong was forced to flee for his life and abandoned his lab and all its inhabitants
including Data, Lore and B4. He had fled with Juliana, who was comatose from the attack
while many of the colonists hid in his lab. The colony managed to send out a distress
call and the USS Tripoli had arrived on scene, the Crystalline Entity had either finished
feeding and moved on or was yet to arrive as they reported a verdant planet, though
devoid of inhabitants. Away teams discovered the inactive Data, but
never located Soong’s laboratory where Lore remained offline, and the colonists were holed
up. Data was activated by the away team and returned to Starfleet for study, his positronic
brain being the most advanced that Starfleet had ever encountered and seemingly of human
design. The Crystalline Entity must have returned at some point however to finish what it began
as by the time Data revisits the planet, it has been completely swept clean of all life.
Eventually Soong wound up on Terlina III where he set up a new lab and continued to while
away his years using the experiences with Lore to create more stable improvements for
Data, whose career he had been watching from afar. Arguably, the pinnacle of Soong’s
work however, was the creation of Juliana Soong.
This android had full emotional range, emotionally stable, but unlike Data and Lore, restricted
to human-level capabilities. She did however, possess a working circulatory system, sweat
glands and even a built in ageing program and deactivation date, making her mortal.
Her neural net was a direct copy of Juliana’s who had her mind scanned prior to her death,
having never woken from her coma. She even emitted false bio readings that fluctuated
according to her state making detection as an android by anything short of disassembly
impossible. Well, impossible for a human anyway. In fact she was so human and unaware of her
state, that she divorced Soong when he became too involved in his work in remarried.
The goal of the Soong project as I mentioned, was not to simply create an android or the
most advanced AI possible. It was to make an artificial person, to test what defined
sentience and consciousness and see what such a person could achieve. This is best exemplified
by Data’s abilities and the numerous design features that seem to go out of their way
to make him appear human. He has a subroutine that controls the randomness of this blinking
and he both has a pulse and breathes. The pulse is from his own circulatory system that
carriers a conductive fluid through his frame and the breathing is to intake air for cooling
purposes. Cooling vents or some futuristic fluid could be a much better cooling agent,
but Soong went out of his way to create an approximation of lungs.
Data was also programmed with the ability to learn, after a built in acclimatisation
period, he could effectively mimic and adapt any task he witnessed, which was aided by
a creativity afforded by the very nature of his positronic brain. He even grew hair and
a beard if he allowed himself to and his body could mimic the aging process. All of these
additions to his functions are pointlessly complex and must have taken no small amount
of time to create, diverting time and effort. This leads to one conclusion, on supported
by his creator, that Data was designed to fit in with organic life, to bridge the gap
of the artificial by appearing as natural as possible.
Most impressively he was built for potential. As his neural net adapted from experience
and grew more complex, Soong built in a number of abilities that would unlock when certain
milestones where reached. For example, after 31 years of near-continuous running, a shock
rendered Data offline during which he discovered he had unlocked the ability to dream, for
no other reason than to be given the experience. Soong also created an emotion chip for Data’s
mind that when added to his matrix would allow him to experience a full emotional range.
The reason for the removal of his emotions in the first place was to allow him an objective
basis on which to build an understanding of right and wrong behaviour guided only by his
experience and ethical subroutines, unclouded by emotion as Lore had been. With that achieved,
he eventually concluded his development had reached an impasse without emotional understanding
provided by the chip. After some brief hurdles with controlling emotions, Data seemed to
incorporate the chip well enough but could deactivate and reactivate it at whim.
There’s more on Data that I’ll save for a personnel file, but in 2367 he was granted
the rights of a sentient being by the Federation after much deliberation and dancing around
the issue. As for the other Soong type androids, well B4 resides with Federation science, likely
the Daystom institute, after having all of Data’s experiences imported into the unit
and in beta canon sources, Geordie La Forge continues to tinker with B4 until he’s able
to restore Data’s matrix in B4’s body which does take several years to accomplish.
Data objected to this as he saw it as destroying B4, not saving Data, but B4 allowed himself
to be overwritten taking the decision of out Data’s hands.
Lore too, is currently disassembled and in the hands of Starfleet with his attempt to
usurp control of Hugh’s independent Borg thwarted by his brother. Again, memory Beta
content says that Lore was still in the hands of the Enterprise E scientists but the point
remains that while Data lost his life in service to his captain and crew at the battle of the
Bassen Rift, both his memory and identical physical forms are preserved in the hands
of Starfleet. What started out as the scrawling of a convicted
scientist eventually culminated in one of the most remarkable technologies the Federation
has ever produced. Through much trial and error the positronic brain was perfected by
giving it the ability to learn and grow, but tempering it with human experience. It remains
to be seen where Soong’s research will progress from here, with Data even attempting to recreate
his father’s work in the creation of Lal, as short lived as she may have been. Work
with the Positronic brain is still ongoing, Soong being decades ahead with his research,
was a complete recluse and secretive. Experts like Geordi La Forge and Bruce Maddox are
still working to unravel the extent of Soong’s programming and robotics work.
What do you think? Which of the Soong types would you argue is the most successful? I’d
have to say that the recreation of Juliana meets the projects goals pretty well, though
she was unaware of her status as an android, so could she really be considered such a bridge
between artificial and organic life? Certainly she is more of a success than Lore, but even
he was remarkable in his own way. Thanks for watching this video on the history
of the Soong type androids, I’m thinking of doing a video on Data himself, whether
that’s a personnel file or something else I’m not decided on yet so stay tuned for
that. Thanks again, and until the next video, I’ve
been Ric and I’ll see you next time, goodbye.