The idea that we characterize intimate and deep emotions as “human emotions” is something that I’ve thought more about this week than I ever thought I would. My initial reaction to our in-class viewing of Her (2013) was a little shocking and off-putting, and I’m still trying to understand exactly.
Despite the appearance of the main character, the emotional weight of the film leads more into a deeper conversation about human emotion and how we act upon it. Most people agree that our deepest, and most true emotions come from our soul, the most intimate part of ourselves, that make us ourselves. Brian Christian writes about the loose definition we have put onto our souls, and how we imply this importance onto them. But he states that most of our definition that we call ourselves has shifted to physical organs, our “meaning of being human”. He follows this with “that core, that essence, that meaning, seems to have migrated […] from the whole body of organs to the sole one in our heads” (51).
Christian most notably references the Greek philosophers Plato, Socrates, and Aristotle, and their interpretation on human soul. But their interpretations seem to only translate (both literally and figuratively) the soul as broken bits like; “fulfillment of purpose” and “I think”.
These loose understandings of a human’s soul and emotional existence made me intrigued to re-watch the movie “A.I. Artificial Intelligence”, a movie about a robotic A.I. “child”. This movie presents countless examples of Christian’s text, upon how one sees and acts upon emotional relations with others. Notably, how the characters of this futuristic society react to an emotion-capable robotic child. As the child, David, is introduced, he is prided to be an “emotional-loving” robot, but distinctively not a “physical-loving” robot. Thought the movie, the mother character must interact with the robotic child while her our biological child is sick and in the hospital. Despite David’s programming to be capable of forming an emotional bond with the mother, Monica, she bonds with him but ends up abandoning him in a forest once her biological child can return to her.
Along with the off-putting movie Her, this film, and Christian’s work, the world is slowly starting to question itself in the wake of technological advancement. People are really learning what artificial intelligence is teaching us about being human.
Michelle, I think your post raises the important question of "how much can AI technology really, truly understand about humans?" It's crazy to think that computers can absorb so much information that they become smarter than the human race. They can even mimic human actions and behaviors. However, like I observed in the movie I watched, I, Robot, being able to absorb that much information without truly experiencing human emotions can be dangerous. In I, Robot, VIKI came to the conclusion that humans could not take care of themselves based on what she observed, not by what she experienced. While AI technology can mimic human behaviors, I do not believe there is a true understanding of human emotions, which prevents AI technology from truly understanding humans.
ReplyDeleteI think that A.I. Artificial Intelligence was a very good movie for the perspective of humanity. I thought that it was funny how quick humans were to give up their own inner humanity to conduct "Flesh Fairs." It was only when they took a look at David and realized that robots could look like them that they actually cared. If we took a look at it, they don't see what they're doing as animalistic, but we know logically that it is. Most people would agree that the humans in the movie gave up their own humanity to pursue the animalistic killings of robots. I think another disturbing that, too, was how the robots had pain receptors. We like to think that experiencing pain is a human feeling, but these robots had those pain receptors. To me, that was the most disturbing part about the whole "Flesh Fair" concepts.
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