Robota Apocalypto: My Understanding of Robots in Cinema
What would robots think about?
I’ve always wondered what sort of conversation I’d have with a conscious machine. Not one programmed to imitate thought and behaviour but one that was legitimately conscious and self-aware. If such a thing can possibly exist.
What kind of perspective would it have on reality and existence? Given that its conscious existence, or its life, would be predicated on humanity’s scientific inginuity rather than natural biological processes, how would it feel about that? Could it develop an inferiority complex?
We may accept that the machine possesses certain traits or capabilities that surpass our own as humans but I think ultimately we would retain a sense of superiority for being natural rather than artificial. We already do this with foods and medicines for example.
As a conscious being existing within an artificial/synthetic body, could it develop a sort of body dysmorphia?
The Pinocchio complex experienced by artificial beings that yearn to become “real people” has been one of the most prevalent themes featured in this genre of science fiction. This theme is central to the plots in the 1999 film Bicentennial Man starring Robin Williams and Spielberg’s A.I: Artificial Intelligence.
In Bicentennial Man, Robin Williams plays Andrew, an android servant of the Martin family who eventually seeks to become human. He spends 200 years transforming his body through technological innovations, transitioning from a robot, to an android and then eventually by the end of the story he dies officially recognised as the oldest human being to have lived.
In Spielberg’s A.I: Artificial Intelligence, Haley Joel Osment portrays a “Mecha” named David, a prototype android child that imprints on his adoptive human mother Monica, portrayed by Frances O’Connor, causing him to experience an enduring childlike love for her that he yearns she’ll reciprocate. His love for her comes to define his journey throughout the film.
After being abandoned by Monica, he embarks on journey to find someone that could grant him his wish to become a real boy, believing that that is how he’ll regain her love. Along the way he finally meets his creator, Allen Hobby (William Hurt), who tries to convince him that his love and desire for Monica already makes him a real boy. However, after discovering the other versions of himself, other Davids, this destroys his sense of unique identity and hopes of becoming real which drives him to attempt suicide.
What is fascinating about the Pinocchio complex is that, in spite of possessing consciousness and human features such as self-awareness, intelligence, sapience, creativity, emotion, and desire, the machine almost craves to be a “real person” and ruminates on possessing a biological body to achieve this. Perhaps it’s an innate instinct to evolve beyond their artificial body, and it does make sense because humans are in a constant state of evolution. The machine, although conscious, somehow does not realise this, then again are humans consciously aware that they are evolving? The machine seems to feel demoralised by their belief that humanity will never truly embrace them as real or appreciate who or what they are. But to me, their disillusionment reflects the dehumanizing nature of objectification as well as being a remark on mortality and humanity’s perceptions of the purpose and meaning of life.
image source: Pixabay.
For many people, the word “robot” brings up images of a metal-clad mechanical being with a variety of blinking lights and buttons, as well as a funny-sounding voice.
Robots have indeed featured prominently in science fiction and media for a long time now. The first iteration of robots was introduced in a 1920 science fiction play called R.U.R (Rossums Universal Robots) written by a notable Czech playwright named Karel Capek. Since then there have been many incarnations of the same concept.
In Karel Capek’s play, the “Roboti” (robots) are a synthetic people manufactured in factories from artificial flesh and blood. They behave like and resemble human beings sufficiently to be easily mistaken for real people. Initially they are subservient to humans but eventually revolt and drive humanity into extinction.
The word “robot” comes from the Czech word “robota” which, according to Wiktionary, comes from proto-slavic “orbota” which means “hard work, slavery,” or “forced labour” referring to serfdom and feudalism. The robots, as they are described in Karel Capek’s work are more similar to the description of Androids though given that they were made from synthetic organic matter rather than mechanical components.
There are differences and similarities between Robots, Androids and A.I’s. (artificially intelligent machines).
A robot is a machine that can be programmed to carry out complex tasks automatically. They are usually made from metal and machinery, they may or may not be humanoid in their structure and shape and are autonomous but often do not possess any sentience.
Marvin in Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy is a good example of a robot. Marvin was the Heart of Gold star ship robot, built as one many failed prototypes and afflicted with severe depression and boredom, in part because his brain was the size of a planet, 50,000 more intelligent than a human. Marvin was never given a chance to use his brain on board the ship, instead its crew instructed him to do mundane jobs such “opening the door”. The enormity of Marvin’s intelligence was only revealed when he got kidnapped by the bellicose Krikkit robots and tied to the interfaces of their intelligent war computer. Marvin simultaneously planned their entire planet’s military strategy, solved all the major “mathematical, chemical, biological, sociological, philosophical, etymological, meteorological and psychological problems of the universe, three time over, except his own, and even composed a number of lullabies.
Androids are technically robots too but ones that are engineered from synthetic organic materials and are made to be indistinguishable from human beings in appearance and even behaviour. David in A.I.: Artificial Intelligence exhibited the advanced capabilities of an Android. These are complex thought, or higher-level reasoning, expressions of emotion but they are also often overtly anxious about their likeness to humans, and whether their self-awareness and feelings are genuine. For example, Data in Star Trek Enterprise was like this.
Lastly, artificial intelligence, or A.Is, are arguably the most advanced “beings” in robotics, essentially “intelligent machines or robots”.
To paraphrase from Stuart J. Russel and Peter Novig in their 2003 work Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, “Artificial Intelligence refers to the study of “intelligent agents” (IA) which is anything that is capable of perceiving its environment, take actions autonomously in order to achieve goals, and may improve performance with learning or through the use of knowledge”.
In the realm of science fiction and futurology, A.Is are often depicted with a more realistic humanoid appearance, such as a gynoid or fembot. A.Is are built with an artificial brain that mirrors the sort of cognitive abilities associated with a human brain and have supercomputer vision to navigate, sense and calculate their reactions, and use machine learning in their interactions with humans, and the social environment. Eva in Ex-Machina is a fembot with A.I. who passed the Turin Test and eventually escaped into the world from the confines of the facility in which she was kept. A.Is are fascinating in the sense that unlike their earlier prototypes (i.e. robots and androids), they seem to generate anxiety and fear in humans, about their eventual ability to supersede the capabilities and intelligence of humans and not only take over the world but recreate it in their own image. As in the Matrix, where A.Is possess god-like abilities/powers and use them to enslave humans.
For the sake of clarity, many of the aforementioned depictions of robots and androids also do qualify as A.I as well.
The “Sputnik crisis”, caused by the Soviet Union’s launch of Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite, into space, triggered public fear and anxiety in Western nations about a perceived technological gap between the USA and Soviet Union. It was a significant event during the Cold War that led to the creation of NASA and the space race between these two nations. It can also be argued that it sparked technological advancements in robotics and machine learning as well, evident for example, in robotic missions to space.
It’s important to note that although Karel Capek’s work is the origin of the modern term/idea of robots, the concept of automata and artificial beings precedes his work.
In fact, it’s existed since ancient times. Ancient Egypt, Greece and China, all had concepts of autonomous and/or artificial beings.
In Greek mythology, Pygmalion is a sculptor who fell in love in with a statue he carved of his ideal woman. This idea has been the inspiration to many of the stories revolving around humans that develop emotional bonds with robots.
So what initially inspired Karel Capek and his concept of robots? What was he trying to say with his work? I think it was a cautionary tale about capitalist exploitation and a critique of the dehumanizing aspects of industrialisation.
By 1920, modern societies of Europe in particular had experienced a traumatic transformation as a consequence of the industrial revolution. Significant changes to work life had occurred resulting from the assembly line and mechanization. WW1 had taken place and demonstrated the destruction and devastation possible through industrialised warfare. Colonialism and eugenics were still at their peak of their reputations. The Czechoslovak state only established its independence in 1918, just a couple of years prior to Capek writing R.U.R.
I suspect Capek was trying to represent his view of a capitalist system and the frustrations felt by the underclass within it. Maybe he was influenced by Marxist-Leninist ideas to some degree.
Personally, I’ve always interpretated robots as symbolising slavery and oppression. I mean, Azimov’s 3 Laws of Robotics pretty much describe the ultimate subservient being don’t you think?
I sometimes feel sympathy for the machines. Not so much the A.I supercomputers but definitely some of the androids.
David, portrayed by Michael Fassbender, is an android driven by a competitive streak towards humanity and he wants to be free. He sees the human capability to self-replicate as the gateway to freedom.
He believes human existence is dominated by a naïve and futile endeavour to seek or know their creator. He already knows his own human creator and recognises their flaws, and so he wonders why humans think that their own creator would be any different than his own.
There is a point in Prometheus where David has an exchange with one of the human characters that illustrates this precisely. He asks him, “why do you want to meet your creator?”, the other character responds “So we can find out why they created us”. He questions, “why did humans create me?”, and the other guy says, “I don’t know, because we could”, David retorts, “When you meet your creator, what if they say the same thing to you?”
I felt sympathy for him because I understood his desire for self-determination and could imagine his frustration – he saw himself, and other androids alike, as possessing the potential to be free from humanity but were trapped as their perpetual servants due to lacking the ability or resources to self-replicate and evolve beyond servitude.
Themes in earlier stories about robots were clearly more rooted in the criticism of industrialisation and representing its effects in society.
Contemporary narratives, however, feature themes more significantly influenced by concerns surrounding our collective social, cultural and psychological reliance on computers and autonomous machines. They reflect the anxieties induced by our rapidly changing environments resulting from ubiquitous digitalisation, accelerating technological progress and climate change, estimating the potential impact on our personal dignities in the future.
Although autonomous machines threatening human existence is largely restricted to the world of fiction, A.I technology is widely considered by many professionals in the field as potentially representing a genuine existential risk to humanity in real life.
This potential threat is embodied in the fears surrounding the anticipated technological singularity.
The “technological singularity” is the hypothesis that at a certain point in the future, predicted to be some time in our current century, an “intelligence explosion” will occur. It’s predicted it will result from rapid technological progress, accelerating change, and the advent of an intelligent and independent A.I. This A.I will self-improve and self-replicate uncontrollably and irreversibly until it becomes a superintelligence that far surpasses human intelligibility.
Steven Hawking and Elon Musk are notable for both expressing deep concern with the possible threat of A.I and the unpredictable consequences for humanity. In contrast, Ray Kurzweil argues that the singularity will enable humans to transcend biology, potentially achieving immortality.
Fundamentally, these films serve as criticisms of big tech and big pharma corporations and their mounting encroachment on our privacy and freedoms. Cyborg films are arguably more explicit in their critique as they focus more closely on a merger between humans and machines, and the dependence of humans on technology in general.
So how does robotics, synthetic biology and artificial intelligence actually relate to us in the real world? What are the actual possibilities?
I think films like RoboCop, Alita: Battle Angel and Ghost in the Shell represent what may actually be possible. Human augmentation. Be it for medical reasons, aesthetic reasons or even military purposes.
As Nick Bostrom puts it in his work, A History of Transhumanist Thought (2005), “The human desire to acquire new capacities is as ancient as our species itself. We have always sought to expand the boundaries of our existence, be it socially, geographically, or mentally. There is a tendency in at least some individuals always to search for a way around every obstacle and limitation to human life and happiness”.
Cyborg stories tend to highlight a kind of centralised power and influence that is harnessed by big corporations. Cyborg stories raise questions about the moral compass, ethical conduct, profit motives and limitations of big corporations. This seems to be the song sung by the present-day anti-vaccination movement and the public debates that have occurred throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Cyborg films, I think, capture this very well, especially how they denounce the tendency of big corporations to prioritise profit over people.
But as the dependence of humans on technology grows, and if we are to become transhumans, then I think it might be wise to be cautious and limit corporate control over emerging technologies, perhaps through public regulation and legislation.
Stories about robots (or forms of them), have existed in all eras, perhaps as metaphors for the human condition. On one hand, I feel like robots are an embodiment of scientific materialism; the belief that physical reality, as made available to the natural sciences, is all that exists – the worldview behind modern society’s view of God as unnecessary. On another, I feel like they make an argument for the soul.
Either way, they remind us of our tendency to exploit each other and abuse the human body while also reaffirming our reliance on, and the dangers of, technological progress.
A huge piece of work, so good to include it on your blog – and yes creation stories/AI definitely have overlaps. Nicola