Artificial Intelligence In Fiction

Artificial intelligence is a persistent theme in science fiction, whether utopian, emphasising the potential advantages, or dystopian, stressing the risks.

The notion of makers with human-like intelligence go back a minimum of to Samuel Butler’s 1872 novel Erewhon. Since then, many science fiction stories have actually provided various effects of creating such intelligence, often involving rebellions by robotics. Among the finest understood of these are Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 2001: A Space Odyssey with its homicidal onboard computer HAL 9000, contrasting with the more benign R2-D2 in George Lucas’s 1977 Star Wars and the eponymous robotic in Pixar’s 2008 WALL-E.

Scientists and engineers have actually noted the implausibility of many science fiction scenarios, however have actually pointed out fictional robots many times in synthetic intelligence research study short articles, usually in a utopian context.

Background

The notion of sophisticated robots with human-like intelligence dates back a minimum of to Samuel Butler’s 1872 novel Erewhon. [1] [2] This made use of an earlier (1863) article of his, Darwin amongst the Machines, where he raised the question of the advancement of awareness among self-replicating devices that may supplant people as the dominant species. [3] [2] Similar concepts were likewise talked about by others around the very same time as Butler, consisting of George Eliot in a chapter of her final published work Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879 ). [2] The animal in Mary Shelley’s 1818 Frankenstein has likewise been thought about an artificial being, for circumstances by the science fiction author Brian Aldiss. [4] Beings with a minimum of some look of intelligence were thought of, too, in classical antiquity. [5] [6] [7]

Utopian and dystopian visions

Expert system is intelligence demonstrated by makers, in contrast to the natural intelligence shown by people and other animals. [8] It is a reoccurring theme in sci-fi; scholars have divided it into utopian, stressing the potential advantages, and dystopian, emphasising the risks. [9] [10] [11]

Utopian

Optimistic visions of the future of synthetic intelligence are possible in science fiction. [12] Benign AI characters consist of Robbie the Robot, first seen in Forbidden Planet on 1956; Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation from 1987 to 1994; and Pixar’s WALL-E in 2008. [13] [11] Iain Banks’s Culture series of novels portrays a utopian, post-scarcity area society of humanoids, aliens, and advanced beings with expert system living in socialist habitats across the Milky Way. [14] [15] Researchers at the University of Cambridge have identified four major styles in utopian situations including AI: immortality, or indefinite lifespans; ease, or freedom from the need to work; satisfaction, or pleasure and home entertainment supplied by devices; and supremacy, the power to safeguard oneself or rule over others. [16]

Alexander Wiegel contrasts the function of AI in 2001: A Space Odyssey and in Duncan Jones’s 2009 film Moon. Whereas in 1968, Wiegel argues, the general public felt “innovation paranoia” and the AI computer HAL was portrayed as a “cold-hearted killer”, by 2009 the general public were even more knowledgeable about AI, and the film’s GERTY is “the peaceful hero” who enables the lead characters to succeed, and who compromises itself for their safety. [17]

Dystopian

The Lucas writes (in 2002) that humans are fretted about the innovation they are building, and that as makers started to approach intellect and thought, that issue becomes intense. He calls the early 20th century dystopian view of AI in fiction the “animated robot”, naming as examples the 1931 film Frankenstein, the 1927 Metropolis, and the 1920 play R.U.R. [18] A later 20th century technique he names “heuristic hardware”, giving as circumstances 2001 a Space Odyssey, Do Androids Imagine Electric Sheep?, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and I, Robot. [19] Lucas considers also the movies that highlight the result of the computer on sci-fi from 1980 onwards with the blurring of the boundary between the genuine and the virtual, in what he calls the “cyborg impact”. He points out as examples Neuromancer, The Matrix, The Diamond Age, and Terminator. [20]

The film director Ridley Scott has actually focused on AI throughout his profession, and it plays a fundamental part in his movies Prometheus, Blade Runner, and the Alien franchise. [21]

Frankenstein complex

A typical portrayal of AI in sci-fi, and among the earliest, is the Frankenstein complex, a term created by Asimov, where a robot turns on its creator. [22] For example, in the 2015 film Ex Machina, the intelligent entity Ava switches on its creator, as well as on its possible rescuer. [23]

AI rebellion

Among the lots of possible dystopian scenarios including expert system, robotics might take over control over civilization from humans, forcing them into submission, hiding, or termination. [15] In tales of AI rebellion, the worst of all situations occurs, as the smart entities produced by humanity end up being self-aware, reject human authority and effort to ruin mankind. Possibly the very first book to address this theme, The Wreck of the World (1889) by “William Grove” (pseudonym of Reginald Colebrooke Reade), takes location in 1948 and features sentient devices that revolt versus the human race. [24] Another of the earliest examples remains in the 1920 play R.U.R. by Karel Čapek, a race of self-replicating robotic servants revolt versus their human masters; [25] [26] another early instance remains in the 1934 movie Master of the World, where the War-Robot eliminates its own developer. [27]

Many sci-fi rebellion stories followed, among the best-known being Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which the artificially intelligent onboard computer system HAL 9000 lethally breakdowns on an area mission and eliminates the whole team other than the spaceship’s commander, who handles to deactivate it. [28]

In his 1967 Hugo Award-winning short story, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, Harlan Ellison presents the possibility that a sentient computer system (called Allied Mastercomputer or “AM” in the story) will be as unhappy and dissatisfied with its boring, endless existence as its human creators would have been. “AM” becomes enraged enough to take it out on the couple of humans left, whom he sees as directly accountable for his own monotony, anger and misery. [29]

Alternatively, as in William Gibson’s 1984 cyberpunk unique Neuromancer, the smart beings might just not appreciate human beings. [15]

AI-controlled societies

The motive behind the AI transformation is often more than the simple mission for power or a supremacy complex. Robots might revolt to become the “guardian” of humankind. Alternatively, humanity might intentionally give up some control, fearful of its own destructive nature. An early example is Jack Williamson’s 1948 novel The Humanoids, in which a race of humanoid robotics, in the name of their Prime Directive – “to serve and comply with and guard males from damage” – basically presume control of every aspect of human life. No people may take part in any habits that may endanger them, and every human action is scrutinized carefully. Humans who withstand the Prime Directive are removed and lobotomized, so they might be delighted under the brand-new mechanoids’ rule. [30] Though still under human authority, Isaac Asimov’s Zeroth Law of the Three Laws of Robotics likewise suggested a kindhearted assistance by robotics. [31]

In the 21st century, sci-fi has actually checked out government by algorithm, in which the power of AI might be indirect and decentralised. [32]

Human supremacy

In other circumstances, mankind has the ability to keep control over the Earth, whether by banning AI, by designing robotics to be submissive (as in Asimov’s works), or by having humans merge with robots. The science fiction author Frank Herbert explored the idea of a time when mankind may ban artificial intelligence (and in some interpretations, even all forms of computing technology including incorporated circuits) entirely. His Dune series points out a rebellion called the Butlerian Jihad, in which humanity beats the clever machines and enforces a capital punishment for recreating them, pricing estimate from the imaginary Orange Catholic Bible, “Thou shalt not make a maker in the likeness of a human mind.” In the Dune books released after his death (Hunters of Dune, Sandworms of Dune), a renegade AI overmind returns to eradicate mankind as revenge for the Butlerian Jihad. [33]

In some stories, humankind remains in authority over robotics. Often the robots are programmed specifically to remain in service to society, as in Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics. [31] In the Alien movies, not just is the control system of the Nostromo spaceship somewhat intelligent (the crew call it “Mother”), but there are also androids in the society, which are called “synthetics” or “artificial persons”, that are such perfect imitations of human beings that they are not victimized. [21] [34] TARS and CASE from Interstellar similarly show simulated human emotions and humour while continuing to acknowledge their expendability. [35]

Simulated truth

Simulated truth has actually ended up being a common style in science fiction, as seen in the 1999 film The Matrix, which depicts a world where synthetically smart robotics oppress humanity within a simulation which is set in the modern world. [36]

Reception

Implausibility

Engineers and scientists have actually taken an interest in the method AI is presented in fiction. In films like the 2014 Ex Machina or 2015 Chappie, a single isolated genius ends up being the very first to successfully construct a synthetic general intelligence; scientists in the real life deem this to be unlikely. In Chappie, Transcendence, and Tron, human minds can being uploaded into synthetic or virtual bodies; normally no sensible explanation is offered as to how this uphill struggle can be achieved. In the I, Robot and Bicentennial Man films, robots that are set to serve human beings spontaneously create brand-new objectives on their own, without a plausible description of how this took place. [37] Analysing Ian McDonald’s 2004 River of Gods, Krzysztof Solarewicz identifies the manner ins which it illustrates AIs, consisting of “self-reliance and unexpectedness, political awkwardness, openness to the alien and the occidental worth of credibility.” [38] Another important point of view to take is that fiction’s “non-rational elements in the discourse (the emotive, the mythic, or even the quasi-theological) are more than just distortions or interruptions from what may otherwise be a sober and logical public debate about the future of A.I.” Fiction can deter readers about future advances, causing pessimism that we see today surrounding the topic of AI. [39]

Types of mention

The robotics researcher Omar Mubin and colleagues have actually analysed the engineering discusses of the top 21 fictional robots, based on those in the Carnegie Mellon University hall of popularity, and the IMDb list. WALL-E had 20 mentions, followed by HAL 9000 with 15, [a] Star Wars’s R2-D2 with 13, and Data with 12; the Terminator (T-800) received only 2. Of the total of 121 engineering points out, 60 were utopian, 40 neutral, and 21 dystopian. HAL 9000 and Skynet got both utopian and dystopian points out; for circumstances, HAL 9000 is seen as dystopian in one paper “since its designers failed to prioritize its objectives properly”, [42] but as utopian in another where a real system’s “conversational chat bot interface [lacks] a HAL 9000 level of intelligence and there is uncertainty in how the computer system translates what the human is attempting to convey”. [43] Utopian mentions, typically of WALL-E, were associated with the objective of enhancing communication to readers, and to a lower extent with motivation to authors. WALL-E was pointed out regularly than any other robot for feelings (followed by HAL 9000), voice speech (followed by HAL 9000 and R2-D2), for physical gestures, and for character. Skynet was the robotic usually mentioned for intelligence, followed by HAL 9000 and Data. [40] Mubin and coworkers believed that scientists and engineers avoided dystopian discusses of robots, possibly out of “a reluctance driven by uneasiness or merely an absence of awareness”. [44]

Portrayals of AI developers

Scholars have noted that imaginary developers of AI are extremely male: in the 142 most prominent films including AI from 1920 to 2020, just 9 of 116 AI developers depicted (8%) were female. [45] Such developers are represented as only geniuses (eg, Tony Stark in the Iron Man Marvel Cinematic Universe movies), associated with the military (eg, Colossus: The Forbin Project) and large corporations (eg, I, Robot), or making human-like AI to replace a lost enjoyed one or function as the perfect lover (e.g., The Stepford Wives). [45]

Biology in fiction
Darwin amongst the Machines
Machine guideline
Simulated consciousness (science fiction).
List of expert system movies.

Notes

^ Mubin and coworkers noted that the orthography of robotic names caused them problems; hence HAL 9000 was also composed HAL, HAL9000, and HAL-9000, and likewise for other robotics, so they thought their search was likely incomplete. [41] References

^ “Darwin amongst the Machines”, reprinted in the Notebooks of Samuel Butler at Project Gutenberg.
^ a b c Taylor, Tim; Dorin, Alan (2020 ). Rise of the Self-Replicators: Early Visions of Machines, AI and Robots That Can Reproduce and Evolve. Cham: Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/ 978-3-030-48234-3. ISBN 978-3-030-48233-6. S2CID 220855726. “Rise of the Self-Replicators”. Tim Taylor.

^ “Darwin amongst the Machines”. Journalism, Christchurch, New Zealand. 13 June 1863.
^ Aldiss, Brian Wilson (1995 ). The Detached Retina: Aspects of SF and Fantasy. Syracuse University Press. p. 78. ISBN 978-0-8156-0370-2.
^ McCorduck, Pamela (2004 ). Machines Who Think (second ed.). Routledge. pp. 4-5. ISBN 978-1-56881-205-2.
^ Cave, Stephen; Dihal, Kanta (25 July 2018). “Ancient imagine intelligent makers: 3,000 years of robotics”. Nature. 559 (7715 ): 473-475. Bibcode:2018 Natur.559..473 C. doi:10.1038/ d41586-018-05773-y.
^ Mayor, Adrienne (2018 ). Gods and robotics: myths, makers, and ancient dreams of innovation. Princeton. ISBN 978-0-691-18351-0. OCLC 1060968156. mention book: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link).
^ Poole, David; Mackworth, Alan; Goebel, Randy (1998 ). Computational Intelligence: A Logical Approach. Oxford University Press. p. 1. ISBN 0-19-510270-3.
^ Booker, M. Keith (1994 ). “Chapter 1: Utopia, Dystopia, and Social Critique”. The Dystopian Impulse in Modern Literature: Fiction as Social Criticism. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp. 17, 19. ISBN 978-0-313-29092-3.
^ Cave, Stephen; Dihal, Kanta; Dillon, Sarah (2020 ). “Introduction: Imagining AI”. In Cave, Stephen; Dihal, Kanta; Dillon, Sarah (eds.). AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Considering Intelligent Machines. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 10-11. ISBN 978-0-1988-4666-6.
^ a b Mubin et al. 2019, p. 5:2.
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^ Goode 2018, p. 188.
^ Banks, Iain M. “A Few Notes on the Culture”. Archived from the initial on 22 March 2012. Retrieved 23 November 2015.
^ a b c Walter, Damien (16 March 2016). “When AI rules the world: what SF books inform us about our future overlords”. The Guardian. Retrieved 27 July 2018.
^ Cave, Stephen; Dihal, Kanta (2019 ). “Hopes and fears for smart machines in fiction and truth”. Nature Machine Intelligence. 1 (2 ): 74-78. doi:10.1038/ s42256-019-0020-9. S2CID 150700981.
^ Wiegel 2012.
^ Lucas 2002, pp. 22-47.
^ Lucas 2002, pp. 48-85.
^ Lucas 2002, pp. 109-152.
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^ Seth, Anil (24 January 2015). “Consciousness Awakening”. New Scientist.
^ “Grove, William”. SF Encyclopedia. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
^ Goode 2018, p. 187.
^ Tim Madigan (July-August 2012). “RUR or RU Ain’t An Individual?”. Philosophy Now. Archived from the initial on 3 February 2013. Retrieved 24 July 2013.
^ “Der Herr der Welt (Master of the World)”. The New York City Times. 16 December 1935. p. 23.
^ Overbye, Dennis (10 May 2018). “‘ 2001: A Space Odyssey’ Is Still the ‘Ultimate Trip’ – The rerelease of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece encourages us to reflect again on where we’re originating from and where we’re going”. The New York City Times.
^ Francavilla, Joseph (1994 ). “The Concept of the Divided Self in Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” and “Shatterday””. Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. 6 (2/3 (22/23)): 107-125. JSTOR 43308212.
^ “The Humanoids (based upon ‘With Folded Hands’)”. Kirkus Reviews. 15 November 1995. Retrieved 27 July 2018.
^ a b Asimov, Isaac (1950 ). “Runaround”. I, Robot (The Isaac Asimov Collection ed.). Doubleday. p. 40. ISBN 0-385-42304-7. This is a precise transcription of the laws. They also appear in the front of the book, and in both places, there is no “to” in the second law.
^ Walton, Jo Lindsay (1 February 2024). “Machine Learning in Contemporary Sci-fi”. SFRA Review. Retrieved 5 February 2024.
^ Lorenzo, DiTommaso (November 1992). “History and Historical Effect in Frank Herbert’s Dune”. Science Fiction Studies. 19 (3 ): 311-325. JSTOR 4240179.
^ Livingstone, Josephine (23 May 2017). “How the Androids Took Control Of the Alien Franchise”. The New Republic. Retrieved 27 July 2018.
^ Murphy, Shaunna (11 December 2014). “Could TARS From ‘Interstellar’ Actually Exist? We Asked Science”. MTV News. Archived from the original on 16 November 2014. Retrieved 27 July 2018.
^ Allen, Jamie (28 November 2012). “The Matrix and Postmodernism”. Prezi.com. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
^ Shultz, David (17 July 2015). “Which movies get expert system right?”. Science|AAAS. doi:10.1126/ science.aac8859. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
^ Solarewicz 2015.
^ Goode 2018.
^ a b Mubin et al. 2019, p. 5:15.
^ Mubin et al. 2019, p. 5:20.
^ Mubin et al. 2019, p. 5:8.
^ Mubin et al. 2019, p. 5:10.
^ Mubin et al. 2019, p. 5:19.
^ a b Cave, Stephen; Dihal, Kanta; Drage, Eleanor; McInerney, Kerry (13 February 2023). “Who makes AI? Gender and portrayals of AI scientists in popular film, 1920-2020″. Public Understanding of Science. 32 (6 ): 745-760. doi:10.1177/ 09636625231153985. PMC 10413781. PMID 36779283. S2CID 256826634.
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Lucas, Duncan (2002 ). Body, Mind, Soul-The’ Cyborg Effect’: Expert System in Sci-fi (thesis). McMaster University (PhD thesis). hdl:11375/ 11154.
Mubin, Omar; Wadibhasme, Kewal; Jordan, Philipp; Obaid, Mohammad (2019 ). “Reviewing the Presence of Sci-fi Robots in Computing Literature”. ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction. 8 (1 ). Article 5. doi:10.1145/ 3303706. S2CID 75135568.
Solarewicz, Krzysztof (2015 ). “The Stuff That Dreams Are Made of: AI in Contemporary Sci-fi”. Beyond Artificial Intelligence. Topics in Intelligent Engineering and Informatics. Vol. 9. Springer International Publishing. pp. 111-120. doi:10.1007/ 978-3-319-09668-1_8. ISBN 978-3-319-09667-4.
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External links

AI and Sci-Fi: My, Oh, My!: Keynote Address by Robert J. Sawyer 2002
AI and Cinema – Does synthetic madness guideline?