Who decides what is human and what is robot- Artificial Intelligence vs. Human Emotion

June 3, 2010

Who decides what is human and what is robot- Artificial Intelligence vs. Human Emotion

This 1982 film Blade Runner is a futuristic film set in Los Angeles in the year 2019. Rick Deckard played by Harrison Ford, is a semi-retired LAPD’s blade runner whose job is to hunt humanoids (genetically engineered humans) also known as replicants and destroy (‘retire’) them. Deckard was forced out of retirement when six rogue replicants of the Nexus-6 model escaped their ‘Off-World’ colony. Where they were being held as slaves and returned to earth to rebel against their creators at the Tyrell Corporation. Any replicant found living on earth will be destroyed.

Deckard also conducted tests called the Voight Kampff tests which have been put into place to distinguish replicants from humans. A series of questions will be asked to determine whether it is a human or a replicant. When conducting tests Deckard is trying to determine whether the questions being asked invoke emotional responses. These tests were completed at the Tyrell Corporation, which is well know and famous for building these replicants.

Other movies that question the philosophical notion of living vs. the non living are The Matrix trilogies starring Keanu Reeves, I Robot starring Will Smith and Terminator I and II starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. As stated in Litch (2002) artificial intelligence has brought up a philosophy called philosophy of the mind. A question raised here is can computers have minds?

Litch (2002) also writes that only humans have minds. Then why is it that in this film that the replicants have the capacity to develop emotions, does this mean they have a mind? At one stage in the movie two replicants have found Sebastian a worker at the Tyrell Corporation. It is in this stage where one of the replicants says ‘we are not computers we are physical’, which the other then says ‘I think Sebastian therefore I am’. It can be raises here Keller’s notion of ‘life’, as being a ‘fundamental essence or set of properties common to all beings we call ‘living’ and absent from those we call ‘non-living’(Keller, 2007).

Could we indeed say then that the replicants in the film Blade Runner who are very similar to humans themselves are in fact living? Do these replicants have common properties with humans?

It is argued in Falzon (2002) that the film Blade Runner “humanizes or ‘personalizes’ them, and it does so most of all by giving them an emotional life’. The manufacturer of these replicants, the Tyrell Corporation, has produced replicants with memories, but it is not merely this that humanizes them. It is ‘that same capacity for complex emotional response humanizes the replicants that Deckard is pursuing’ (Falzon, 2002, pp.78). The replicants show emotion- Rachael expresses despair and Batty almost kills Deckard but has a changes his mind and openhandedly lets him live, saving him from falling off the top of the building.

This film like many others such as I Robot, Terminator I and II and The Matrix trilogies, constantly questions the line between human and replicant. It is evident in this film that this ‘line’ is very thin when on many occasions it is suggested that Deckard himself may in fact be a replicant.

References

Falzon, C. (2002). Philosophy Goes to the Movies: and Introduction to Philosophy, London: Routledge, pp. 74-9.

Litch, M. (2002). Artificial Intelligence. In Philosophy Through Film. London: Routledge, Chapter 4

Keller, E. F. (2007). Once again, ‘What is Life?’, MIT and REHSEIS [Electronic format]. Retrieved May 25, 2010, from Queensland University of Technology Course Materials Database. http://vuibert.com/IMG/doc/9782711748655-Keller.doc

Permalink