"A.I. - or The return of Lassie". I went to see A.I., the movie, with Jill yesterday. Both of us were rather disappointed afterwards. There was much promise in the online A.I "game", which ran prior to the opening of the film and I really had looked forward to watching it. But the film itself turned out to be a rather banal story about a robot that wants to be human, so "mummy" could love it more. The film's premise - which was not consistent, something that really annoys me - is that robots do not have an emotional life, but if you program them to "love" a certain person, they will develop a "human" emotional system. Before our emotionally capable robot, David, is created, there is only sofisticated robot looking like humans, but not behaving as such. However, firstly the film has a rather weird concept of "love" - here it consists of imprinting David to love one - and only one - person, that is: "mummy". Though he is programmed to behave nicely to other people, what he really only cares about is mummy's love - and in that sense he reminded me more of a faithful dog, devoted only to his master. And you can view the story as "kilobyte" version of Lassie. Lassie (David) gets lost from his mum and tries to find his way home again, overcoming ever so many obstacles, facing bad humans etc. Of course there is this xtra element that David wants to be a "real" human, so mummy can "really" love him. But the absolute lack of reflection on the consequences and implications of the wish, is characteristic of David's somewhat canine capabilities. In that sense, too, he is more like a stupid dog, once set on track, he continues without ever stopping... And what about the remaining robots which were supposed "not" to feel? I am still wondering what, if not feelings of "kindness" or "care", motivates the speaking teddybear and the lover-robot to help out David whatever the costs. Why would a robot, programmed to make love to women, care to run around in a dark wood holding hands with another robot (boy), if not a rather irrational "non-robotlike" pity for his mate? Etc. It reminded me more than I thought it would, of another recent film on robots/humans "The Bicentenial man" with Robin Williams. Here the resolution consists in the future "world council" recognising the robot as a human in legal terms. - As Jill asked yesterday: why on earth should robots, if they ever developped a consciousness, want to be like us?
# posted by Lisbeth at: 13:11