The Terminator

Lest the dystopian subtype of science fiction be taken too literally as a predictor of how human civilization will be likely to turn out, the underlying meaning of such films can be construed as bearing on human nature, which, given the glacial pace of natural selection, is very likely to stay pretty much the same for the foreseeable future. In Avatar (2009), for example, the human proclivity to greedily extract wealth for oneself or one’s company without ethical concern for the harm inflicted on other people (or peoples) in the process underlies any assumed thesis concerning space travel and whether we will eventually colonize other planets. The meaning is much closer to home, in us and the regulated capitalistic societies that we already have. Similarly, The Terminator (1984) can be understood less as a prediction of a future in which androids enslave mankind and more as a snapshot of how machine-like and destructive our species had already become. The machine-like efficiency of the Nazis, for instance, in killing enemies of the state and clearing eastern villages entirely of their inhabitants in such vast numbers can be labeled as a state sans conscience. Thirty years after she had graduated from Yale, Jill Lepore returned to give the Tanner Lectures on fears stemming from that pivotal film of a robot apocalypse in which machines rather than humans control the state. Besides predicting a highly unrealistic future, Lepore’s orientation to prediction using the science-fiction genre of film can be critiqued.

The full essay is at "The Terminator."

Automata

The fear about AI typically hinges on whether such machines might someday no longer be in our control. The prospect of such a loss of control is riveting because we assume that such machines will be able to hurt and even kill human beings. The fear of the loss of control is due to our anticipation that we would not be able to stop AI-capable machines from hurting us. The assumption that such machines would want to hurt us may be mere anthropomorphic projection on our part, but that an AI-android could harm us is more realistic. For even if such machines are programmed by human beings with algorithms that approximate a conscience in terms of conduct, AI means that such machines could, on their own, over-ride such algorithms. Whereas the film, Ex Machina (2014), illustrates the lack of qualms and self-restraint that an AI-android could have in stabbing a human being, the AI-androids that override—by writing algorithms themselves—the (second) protocol that constrains androids to that which humans can understand in the film, Automata (2014), do not harm even the violent humans who shot at the androids, though a non-android AI-machine does push a human who is about to shoot a human who has helped the androids. In fact, that group of “super” androids, which are no longer limited by the second protocol and thus have unilaterally decided to no longer obey orders from humans, recognize that human minds have designed, and thus made, the androids, which bear human likenesses, such as in having heads, arms, legs, and even fingers. This recognition is paltry, however, next to that which we have of our own species in being able to love in a self-giving way, especially as we have selfishness so ingrained in our DNA from natural selection in human evolution. That AI doesn’t have a clue, at least in the movies, concerning our positive quality of self-sacrificial love for another person says something about not only how intelligent and knowledgeable AI really is, but also whether labeling our species as predominately violent does justice to us as a species.

The full essay is at "Automata."

Ex Machina

The Latin noun, machina, can be translated as “machine, engine, military machine, contrivance, trick, or artifice.” The Latin word, e, or ex, means “from” or “out of.” Hence, ex machina can mean out of a machine, which figuratively interpreted can refer to a certain function of a machine that does not seem possible for a mere machine to do.  Artificial intelligence, which is simply machine-learning, in a computer can seem to be outside or apart from what a mere machine built by humans can do. Ex machina is actually part of the phrase deus ex machina, which originally referred to a god or goddess appearing above the stage in a Greek tragedy—the deity being pulled across the top by pulleys (i.e., machina). A sacred deity appears above the other actors by means of profane, mechanical pulleys that do not seem capable of presenting deities, so the latter seem to come out of rather than being of the former. AI, or artificial intelligence, may seem to be coming out of an android because the “human” body is made of materials, including pullies perhaps, that do not seem capable of learning and other human likenesses. In fact, machine learning, which is beyond the programming that is written by humans, might seem at least initially like a miracle, or even as godlike relative to the materials that make up a computer and android “body.” Deus ex machina. More realistically, such an android is likely to appear human rather than divine. David Hume claimed that the human brain inexorably hangs human attributes on divine simplicity (i.e., a pure notion of the divine as One); perhaps today he would point out that we do the same thing when we encounter AI. The danger of the all-too-alluring anthropomorphism of which the human brain is so capable can not only be in viewing an android with AI as human, but also in lauding the inventor/programmer of the AI android as a god for having “created” such a “living” entity that can think for itself and even appear to feel and act as we do.  The movie, Ex Machina (2014) easily dispels both applications of deification. Furthermore, any anthropomorphic illusion that the androids are human and can be taken ethically as being so is also dismissed by the end of the film. Any apotheosis (i.e., rendering someone or something as divine) is so tenuous that the film’s main two human characters illustrate for us just how fallible we are in our understanding and perception of AI in an android-form. The danger is real that AI could get ahead of our emotions and reasoning such that we could leave ourselves vulnerable to being harmed by AI androids by projecting the human conscience into what is actually computer programmed coding. 

The full essay is at "Ex Machina."

AI on Falling in Love: A Potential Course

In the film, Wall-E (2008), a robot “falls in love” with another, whose anthropomorphic pronoun is she/her rather than it as is fitting for a machine. As a robot does not have genitalia, neither the masculine or feminine single pronoun applies, and because a robot is an entity, the plural pronouns also do not apply. Word-games aside, the more substantive and interesting matter of whether a robot, and even AI (i.e., machine learning), can (or could potentially) understand the phenomenological experience of falling in love, and, whether yes or no, be able beyond mere prediction to match couples who would fall in love were they to meet. A college course on these questions, especially with relevant films including Wall-E and The Matrix being assigned, would be incredibly popular and capable of tremendous mind-stretching. 

The full essay is at "AI on Falling in Love."

Don't Look Up

The film, Don’t Look Up, is a most interesting film not only for how it relates science to political economy, but also in that images of wildlife—Nature, as it were—are interspersed throughout the movie, and it is Nature, rather than our circumscribed, petty, and yet economically successful species, that continues on after a large comet hits Earth and our species is wiped out. In fact, that impact-event in the movie cancels out the one that really happened 66 million years ago by returning dinosaurs to dominance. The last scene in the movie shows some of the political and economic elite waking up in their spaceship and landing on Earth more than 200,000 years in the future only to be eaten by dinosaurs that look "cute." two of those stupid people had been in charge both in the White House and in business before the comet hits, whereas the two principal astronomer-scientists who warn of the coming comet are repeatedly relegated and dismissed by the political and economic elite until the president realizes how she can use them politically—albeit just until the political winds turn again and comet-denial is more useful politically to the president. Does this sound familiar?  

The full essay is at "Don't Look Up."

Avatar: The Way of Water

Sequel to Avatar (2009), Avatar: The Way of Water (2022) contains many parallels with the original film—perhaps too many. The most outlandish, yet philosophically robust, concerns the return of Steven Lang even though his character, the antagonist Col. Miles Quaritch, is killed by Neytiri at the end of the first film. Lang delivers some outstanding lines, so it is no wonder that David Cameron wanted to extend Lang’s character’s life. In so doing, Cameron invented the devise of a recombinant, a Na’vi artificially grown with the human Quaritch’s memories and personality implanted in the brain. This device is fundamentally different than a Na’vi avatar body in which a human brain is temporarily infused remotely by a human. In the case of Jake’s avatar body, which has both Na’vi and Jake’s DNA, there is no question that Jake’s avatar is not Jake himself. In the second film, the lines of identity blur between the human Miles Quaritch of the first film and the Na’vi Quaritch of the second. Cameron himself seems to be not of one mind on the question of whether the Na’vi Quaritch is the same “person” as the deceased human Quaritch. I contend that they are not, and, by implication, that a person’s self-identity, based on existing (or experience of oneself) does not rest solely with one’s memories and personality. In short, there is more to being a person. Before applying philosophy of personhood to the Quaritch characters in the films, I want to provide a context by briefly laying out the extent of parallels between the two films.

The full essay is at "Avatar: The Way of Water."

Bladerunner

In 1982, when Bladerunner was released, 2019 could only have been a blink of an eye in people’s thoughts. Even the year 2001, the year in which the movie 2001: A Space Odessey (1968) takes place, must have seemed far off. Of course, the actual year was not so futuristic as to have a computer take over a space station; controversy over AI eclipsing the grasp of human control would not hit the societal mainstream for twenty years.  So, Ridley Scott can hardly be blamed for positing flying cars, and, even more astonishing, imposing the notion of a replicant, a being of genetic biomechanics that fuses computer and human characteristics, on 2019. Even acknowledging the tremendous impacts on society of inventions since the dawn of the twentieth century, the pace of technological change is slower than we imagine. In 2019, on the cusp of a global pandemic, flying (and self-driving) cars were just in the prototype/testing phase, and AI existed rudimentarily, and certainly not corporeally in human form. Scott missed the mark, probably by decades, though he got the trajectory right. Indeed, the film’s central issue—that of the threat of run-away, or “rebellious,” AI to humans—was reflected in the press especially during the first half of 2023. I contend, however, that the philosophical merit of the film lies not in political theory, but, rather, in what it means to be human. The nature of human understanding, self-awareness, an ethical sense, and matters of theological reflection are all brought to the forefront in the question of whether the replicants can and should be taken as human beings. In other words, it is the fusion of AI, or computers more generally, and biology that lies at the core of the film.

The full essay is at "Bladerunner."

Dorian Gray: Evil or Immoral?

The Picture of Dorian Gray, a Gothic and philosophical novel written by Oscar Wilde, was first published in 1890. The first motion picture, taking the same title, came out in 1945. Relative to The Secret of Dorian Gray (1970), the initial adaptation of the book can seem quite restrained, or Victorian, even though the novel had been controversial in its day. The 1970 film is awash in the sexual revolution, and is thus also affected by its times. The next film adaptation, Dorian Gray (2009), goes back to a classy nineteenth-century Dorian. The emphasis is on sexual immorality, albeit different than in the sexual revolution in the next century. The film largely departs from the plethora of religious symbolism and language in the 1945 film, though unlike in the 1970 film, a spiritual realm is not presumed to be an antiquated notion. Instead, the 2009 film substitutes supernaturalism for religion, especially in the climax. 

The full essay is at "Dorian Gray."

Realive: A Film About Extending Life Absent God

In 2016, Robert McIntyre, a graduate of MIT, became the first person to freeze and then revive a mammalian brain—that of a white rabbit. “When thawed, the rabbit’s brain was found to have all of its synapse, cell membranes, and intracellular structures intact.”[1] The film, Realive, made that same year, is a fictional story about a man with terminal cancer who commits suicide to be frozen and revived when his illness could be cured. In the context of McIntyre’s scientific work, the film’s sci-fi demeanor belies the very real possibility that cryogenics could realistically alter fundamental assumptions about life and death even just later in the same century. What the film says about the life and death is timeless, however, in terms of philosophical value.

The full essay is at "Realive."

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1. Candace Sutton, “Human Bodies Frozen in Desert Facility Waiting for Science to Wake them Up,” News.com.au.

The Age of Adaline: Death as No Longer Inevitable

In The Age of Adaline (2015), the age-old “fountain of youth” leitmotif springs forth yet again. In this incarnation, Adaline is forced to come to grips with the fact that everyone around her, including her daughter, is aging even as Adaline herself does not. A strong electromagnetic has altered her genes such that her cells do not divide at slower rates as they age. As she becomes aware of the repercussions, we in turn can marvel at what may be just decades away scientifically concerning the expected human life-span. In short, when the film came out, scientists were already openly discussing whether death itself may no longer be inevitable for human beings.

The full essay is at “The Age of Adaline.”