KITCHENER - We're only a few decades away from a world where robots that are virtually indistinguishable from living, breathing humans will be walking among us.

That's the future envisioned by Suzanne Gildert, founder and CEO of Sanctuary.ai, a company on a mission to create humanlike robots known as "synths" - short for "synthetics." And while the opportunities are immense, there also are serious ethical questions about how we treat these machines.

"What happens when they become sentient and we can just delete their minds?" Gildert asked the crowd of more than 500 people at the True North tech conference, organized by Communitech at Lot 42 in Kitchener.

"I argue this would be very bad for robots and we need to address this," she said. "The word 'delete' should give you an uneasy feeling."

The ethical quandaries go beyond merely wiping a computer's mind with the push of a button. As we train robots to be more like humans, engineers put them through a complex rewards program to tell them if we're happy with how they performed.

Once they reach a certain level of sentience, engineers will implement a "pain" response to properly test the system, and that may be analogous to human torture or animal testing, Gildert said.

"As we progress, where do we draw the line?" she said. Gildert said she first started thinking about the ethics of robotics when she developed a Pong-playing robot that sat on her desk and learned how to play the classic video game.

It was like watching a child learn a new skill, but when the experiment was over and she had to wipe its memory file, she had a hard time going through with it.

"I was so proud of it."

The world of science-fiction films and books have often painted a bleak picture of what the future of robotics and synthetic humans might look like, with some predicting a world of chaos and disorder after robots have attempted to conquer humanity.

Perhaps that's why Canadians have a complicated view of technology and what it means for us in the future. A recent Ipsos survey found the majority of Canadians (58 per cent) believe technology will guide us to a more cohesive and happier society, but there are some concerns with how we get there.

An overwhelming majority of the 2,000 respondents said they believed people should always have the right to override decisions made by artificial intelligence, and 62 per cent said they believe if robots or machines replace workers, there should be a tax on those technologies to help pay for income support or training for displaced workers.

CNC (computer numerical control) machine sand 3-D printers enable almost anyone to fabricate robotic parts in a day, and new developments in deep learning and neural networks mean the mental component is progressing rapidly as well, Gildert said.

The opportunities are immense. From incredibly smart robotic scientists capable of thinking in 10 dimensions and able to develop seemingly impossible technology, such as time travel or warp drive, to an efficient and dedicated workforce that can revolutionize the fields of education or medicine.

There will be some roadblocks ahead, Gildert said, mainly relating to how humans will deal with knowing synthetic life forms could be anywhere. The technology also opens up new opportunities for biomechanical organisms that fuse humans and robots together.

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"We're so used to being at the top of the food chain," Gildert said.

The True North conference continues Thursday, but the event is sold out.