My final Automata blog

Fear of Machines

As I am writing my essay on R.U.R. I am a little nervous about stepping on the toes of my essay in this weeks blog. As a result I decided to focus more on the fear of machines as it remains today in Literature.

There is no doubting that Karel Capek's play is the birth of the modern conception of robot. Aside from actually introducing the word robot into western lexicon it also gave birth to the idea of intelligent, human like, artificial life built to serve man as slaves without personal wants or needs. It very much signalled a shift in focus, in literature at least, as to what an automaton's purpose is within our lives. It could also be seen perhaps as the literary birth of Artificial Intelligence.

In modern literature robots, and artificial intelligence as a whole, are often seen as antagonists. Although Isaac Asimov wished to change this when he wrote his Three Laws of Robotics:

"...one of the stock plots of science fiction was... robots were created and destroyed by their creator. Knowledge has its dangers, yes, but is the response to be a retreat from knowledge? Or is knowledge to be used as itself a barrier to the dangers it brings? With all this in mind I began, in 1940, to write robot stories of my own -- but robot stories of a new variety. Never, never, was one of my robots to turn stupidly on his creator for no purpose but to demonstrate, for one more weary time, the crime and punishment of Faust" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics#History_of_the_Laws

The loose film adaptation of his short stories, in the 2004 film I, Robot, however showed how even these laws could be manipulated to turn robots against their masters. The supercomputer VIKI attempts to become the despotic ruler of all the Earth in order to ensure that humans do not break the first rule of Robotics. Much like in R.U.R. robots are shown to be the antagonists and the enemy of humans.

In 2001: A Space Odyssey a similar situation occurs. HAL 9000 believes that the humans pose a risk to the success of the mission and so decides they must be terminated. HAL 9000 and VIKI both act perfectly logically acting entirely on a perfectly sensible course of action based on probabilities and a ranking of importance of life and duty to a set of paradigms they must obey.

Another act of violence against humans by an artificially created intelligent supercomputer takes place in James Cameron's The Terminator. In the films the computer system Skynet becomes self aware and proceeds to plunge humanity into nuclear war and then a systematic genocide of the survivors. Although it acts in a similar way to both VIKI and HAL Skynet probably most closely resembles the robots in R.U.R. than the others. Whereas VIKI and HAL were acting out of a sense of duty and logic Skynet's reasoning could almost be seen as emotional. It is expressly stated that the humans attempted to pull the plug on Skynet when they realised it had become self-aware and it was out of an act of self-preservation that Skynet declared war on humanity. The robots in R.U.R., whilst not acting out of self preservation, were acting out of a desire to be more than just slaves, they wanted to experience more than just servitude which is an emotional response. Skynet's actions are the most directly antagonistic towards humanity; there is no attempt at rationalisation from Skynet, "it cannot be reasoned with" (that quote is actually referring to the Terminator itself though can equally be atributed to Skynet also) and it is acting purely out of self defence much like a cornerned animal. It is the most emotionally driven response of these three examples.

One recent exception to the concept of robots explicitly rebelling against their masters is in Stepehen Spielberg's A.I. whereupon a robot acts in response to the emotion of love rather than any other. A.I. in many ways seemed much more disconcerting than the despotic and violent actions of HAL, Skynet and VIKI as this particular emotion is seen as an essence of humanity. The Uncanny nature of the robot boy who can feel love is much more fear inducing as it suggest humans being replaced in a subversive manner, rather than in a violent one which can be overturned as in the other examples. Unlike in 2001 and I, Robot (the Terminator is less clear since that seems to be self preservation) the machine is not acting on cold hard logic or a sense of duty but out of genuine human emotion; and that can, for many people, be disturbing.

Will H