Androids in My English Class?!

I'm a Freshman at Indiana University of South Bend. i'm taking English 131. For Thursday's class we were told to read an essay by Maureen Caudill (sp) entitled "Redefining the Measure of Mankind." This lovely little essay was about androids, which our entire class will be about for the next month or more. Personally, I was rather upset- I signed up for an English class- I want to learn about effective writing- not replication. (The only reason that I will stay in the class is because it is required.) While I don't know what androids have to do with English, Caudill brought up some......interesting... points about the idea.
She stated that when, not if, androids came about in the next century or so, what would they be like? Would they be more like a computer? My dog? Humans? And what types of characteristics would they have? Would they be enough humanlike to know right from wrong? Or have feelings and emotions? Or learn and grow? And then the question arrises, if we create these humanlike beings, who have all of the same characteristics of us and can comprehend things, how should they be treated? Of course, the person to create them would be wanting to use them for personal gain. The ideas brought into my classroom ranged from a sort of complex computer, to soldier, to nurse, and right back to fast food worker. And we thought, because of Caudill, is it acceptable to force these beings, although we did create them, to do whatever petty tasks we want them to perform?

My class turned in to a sort of futuristic human rights conversation. The realization that every time a group of people has tried to control another group of people, they have, some how, been overturned. But then again, these beings, they aren't human- they are androids. Do they have the same rights? Would they even care? And if they did care, would they somehow take over the world which controlled them?! My professor told us that these androids would be smarter than use- and if they were ,would they, because of their intelligence levels, be able to create something smarter than them like we did? So on and so forth, in a sort of evolutionary pattern, until they have created an omnipotent and omniscient being.

Of course our question, as should be your's, was "why would we want to create something like that? Something that could destroy us." His answer, straight from Caudill, was that WE, the general people, have no say, it's the scientist doing the work who has the say. "If a buck can be made off of it, someone will do it."

I still don't seem the point to this android sympathy class I seem to have gotten myself in to, but I'd like ot know your thoughts on the matter- on anything I've said. On the silliness of my English class, or on the repercussions of slavery of androids...or production evolution of them, or anything else that you think, or know about this topic. And who knows, I might even get to use you in my paper.

Peace and Love,
Dani