sesam.hu

Engineering Manager | Trail Runner | Stockholm, Sweden

A.I.

Friday, 6 September, 2002 - sesam

Today I watched {A.I.} again with my brother. For the second time I noticed some more little elements that were kept hidden when I first saw the film. This is why I decided to write about it now. (The following part may contain spoilers, I recommend to read after seeing the movie.)

A.I. is set in the near future when the ecological disasters predicted became true. The ice-caps on the poles melted and the population of the Earth radically increased. This created a need for robots with artificial intelligence. Robots that don't eat, never sleep, all in all far more potent than real men. The artificial intelligence driving these robots improved through the times as well. But robots don't have feelings, they respond to stimuli as programmed, but without emotions.

This changes when Cybertronics introduces David on the market. David is a unique Mecha, a boy-age robot who is programmed to love her 'mother'. However creating a robot that can love raises the question what responsibility the person who has this love holds? Will there be a person who loves the robot back?

Anyway, imagine when we can build a robot that can feel. what if we could accurately simulate the neuron chain with electronic devices? What if we can build a brain that is exactly like ours with a body exactly like ours, too? Who can tell robots and humans apart? what is the boundary between organic life and robotic life?

In a world where cloning became a part of everyday life, in a wolrd where genetics and electronics improves day by day at an unbeliveable speed these questions are not that far-fetched as they seem to be.

We have always searched for the 'spark of life', the thing that makes someone alive and disappears when we die. what makes someone living at all? The ability of reproduction? At some level of technology we will be able to make robots that reproduce themsleves I think... And like real living beings there can be errors during the reproduction. And this fact enables evolution. So would these bots live?

Ethical, philosophical and technical questions. No matter how fast our development in any field is there always be questions, this process is endless. I just hope the right answers will be found.