"I think the best metaphor for them as artificial aliens is to think of them as artificial planets," he says. "They're maybe conscious, maybe setteons on different planets but they're all artificial and we'll work with them like you know Spock." He adds that there's a sense in which we are saying lots of things that we have done and we have identified us as very humanThings turn out to be maybe very human but not necessarily very elevated. The idea that they're going to be like us can't be exactly how complicated they become.