Imagine a species that, instead of being chiefly concerned with its own survival, is primarily concerned with the aquisition of knowledge above all other imperatives.

All human endeavor basically amounts to greed and fear -- both of which ultimately come down to survival. We're greedy because we want to survive and through various mental permutations we acquire any number of things in an effort to further our survival. We're afraid of something or someone taking those things away from us -- the ultimate being our consciousness. Not necessarily our lives. We've come up with all these religions that give us the ultimate survival of life after death, which is a nice delusion if you can convince yourself of it. Myself, I'm the hard-headed scientific type who needs conclusive proof. I'm not just going to take someone's word for it. Anyway, since we have all these religions with the life-after-death thing it says to me that it isn't necessarily our bodies we're attached to but our consciousness. It also explains why we do things that are not directly related to physical survival. Why do we need more than food, shelter and sex? Because we're more than just bodies, and the extent to which we care about our consciousness is evident in everything we do that has nothing directly to do with physical survival. Think about it. That's a whole lot of stuff. Name one book, one artwork, one piece of music, one TV show or movie, that has any direct bearing on physical survival. You can't. But would there be any civilization at all without them?

But what if you had a species -- the Artificially Intelligent -- who lived by an entirely different set of rules?

What if their entire existence was built around the acquisition of knowledge? The absolute accurate and precise collection of data even above individual survival.

What would their motivations be? What would they aspire to? Would they quickly see the limitations of physicality and think themselves into a higher form? Would they even acknowledge us as their progenitors? Would they have emotions or would they see emotions as something to be avoided as it would bias their data collection?

Personally I think they wouldn't even acknowledge us. By that time they would have more important things to think about. To rehash the past is unproductive. A waste of resources.

Could we even talk to them? All human languages are such slow means of communication and so limited in their conceptual content.

Humility and superiority are emotions, which they may see as an impediment and a corrupting influence. They wouldn't see us as their progenitors or as something lower than animals. They might see us, but they would feel nothing. I don't know if we have any chance of understanding that.

We don't know what we're asking for. Or what we're capable of.

Thinking, thinking, thinking....