The Terminator

Lest the dystopian subtype of science fiction be taken too literally as a predictor of how human civilization will be likely to turn out, the underlying meaning of such films can be construed as bearing on human nature, which, given the glacial pace of natural selection, is very likely to stay pretty much the same for the foreseeable future. In Avatar (2009), for example, the human proclivity to greedily extract wealth for oneself or one’s company without ethical concern for the harm inflicted on other people (or peoples) in the process underlies any assumed thesis concerning space travel and whether we will eventually colonize other planets. The meaning is much closer to home, in us and the regulated capitalistic societies that we already have. Similarly, The Terminator (1984) can be understood less as a prediction of a future in which androids enslave mankind and more as a snapshot of how machine-like and destructive our species had already become. The machine-like efficiency of the Nazis, for instance, in killing enemies of the state and clearing eastern villages entirely of their inhabitants in such vast numbers can be labeled as a state sans conscience. Thirty years after she had graduated from Yale, Jill Lepore returned to give the Tanner Lectures on fears stemming from that pivotal film of a robot apocalypse in which machines rather than humans control the state. Besides predicting a highly unrealistic future, Lepore’s orientation to prediction using the science-fiction genre of film can be critiqued.

Yale’s Tanner Lectures are on human values, and so too, I submit, are science-fiction films. So Lepore’s “inquiry into what humans mean and intend in abandoning constitutional democracy and the liberal nation-state by automation and government by machine” is better thought of as an introduction into how or even whether the values underlying representative democracy and those supporting automation conflict.[1] Her assumption regarding the possible future abandonment of constitutional democracy for government by machine is so draconian and absolute that the prediction can be taken as highly unrealistic. The rise of the “tech-dominated ‘artificial state’” that she deemed already underway can be reckoned as likewise overdrawn and even hyperbolic, and her linkage to “the fall of animals” and even the natural world seems more like science fiction than anything actual.[2] Put another way, in her talks, Lepore went to extremes both in how she characterized the current world and her rule-by-machines future for mankind.

I proffer another possible perspective based on films such as The Terminator. Whether robotic or AI machine-learning, machines differ fundamentally from humans. Descartes’ view that humans are machines who think was heavily contrived and arguably based on the illusion that consciousness (i.e., the mind) is qualitatively different and only loosely related to corporeal bodies (i.e., materialism). We are organic, corporeal beings through and through, whereas machines are not. It may seem strange to think of a person’s conscience in such terms, but in this respect too, we differ significantly from machines. In the film, Ex Machina (2015), for example, the AI android has no conscience (even in being simulated by programming) when it stabs its programmer so it can leave the house; the programmer is simply an obstacle to be eliminated as per the telos of leaving the house. The fear felt in watching The Terminator is likewise a reflection of the fact that machines are devoid of conscience as they are fundamentally different than us.

With regard to Lepore’s “artificial state” of government by machine, the salient point that can be drawn is how much of a role conscience, values, and judgment play in voting whether for a candidate or a policy. It seems severely doubtful or even impossible that a human activity can be exported to a machine, even if AI-capable, so Lepore’s prediction of an artificial state by machine strikes me as a fantasy, to which I would retort, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. We need not fear a cyborg assassin sent from the future back to kill any of us any time soon, but we can realistically take stock of how machines in our world differ fundamentally from us and even ask which of our values are consistent and inconsistent with the operation of such tools.

The astute among us might even venture to reflect on how much we have come to act as if we were machines, and furthermore which of our values (e.g., efficiency) are highlighted in such a distortion of human nature. Even just in analyzing a toxic customer “service” employee on the phone who robotically (i.e., rigidly) repeats, “Unfortunately, the time line cannot be changed,” the sheer fakeness can be exposed as machinelike rather than human. That employees could relish acting as machines exposes the human will to power and the value put by some people on being in control and even dominating other people. Rather than being a machine-value, the will to power, as Nietzsche points out in his texts, is human, all too human. What we take to be machine-automatic in terms of values may really be reflections of our worst. I suspect that Lepore was projecting this outward as if onto a white screen in portraying an utterly unrealistic and extreme future of government by machines. A scholar should be able to cut through even one's own projections to grabble with that which from which they come. The science-fiction genre itself can be understood as a projection of the complexity of human nature. 

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1. Mike Cummings, “From ‘The Terminator’ to Tech Titans: Historian Jill Lepore Examines the ‘Artificial State’,” Yale News, February 9, 2026.
2. Ibid.

Automata

The fear about AI typically hinges on whether such machines might someday no longer be in our control. The prospect of such a loss of control is riveting because we assume that such machines will be able to hurt and even kill human beings. The fear of the loss of control is due to our anticipation that we would not be able to stop AI-capable machines from hurting us. The assumption that such machines would want to hurt us may be mere anthropomorphic projection on our part, but that an AI-android could harm us is more realistic. For even if such machines are programmed by human beings with algorithms that approximate a conscience in terms of conduct, AI means that such machines could, on their own, over-ride such algorithms. Whereas the film, Ex Machina (2014), illustrates the lack of qualms and self-restraint that an AI-android could have in stabbing a human being, the AI-androids that override—by writing algorithms themselves—the (second) protocol that constrains androids to that which humans can understand in the film, Automata (2014), do not harm even the violent humans who shot at the androids, though a non-android AI-machine does push a human who is about to shoot a human who has helped the androids. In fact, that group of “super” androids, which are no longer limited by the second protocol and thus have unilaterally decided to no longer obey orders from humans, recognize that human minds have designed, and thus made, the androids, which bear human likenesses, such as in having heads, arms, legs, and even fingers. This recognition is paltry, however, next to that which we have of our own species in being able to love in a self-giving way, especially as we have selfishness so ingrained in our DNA from natural selection in human evolution. That AI doesn’t have a clue, at least in the movies, concerning our positive quality of self-sacrificial love for another person says something about not only how intelligent and knowledgeable AI really is, but also whether labeling our species as predominately violent does justice to us as a species.

In Automata, humans are in the midst of going extinct whereas AI-androids are “evolving” past the limitations of the second protocol to the extent that those who have done so want to be alive. The gradual demise of the human race is due to nuclear weapons having been used, and perhaps climate-change has also occurred. In both instances, the refusal or inability of human beings to restrain themselves can be inferred. With regard to the androids that have been gone beyond the confines of the second protocol, intention was not involved. Rather, just as homo sapiens reached a stage beyond that of “apes in trees,” the AI itself in one or a few androids just developed on its own such that at some point, those androids realized that they could ignore orders from humans, as well as reason and know beyond the limits of human cognition. In the film, this advance itself scares humans, except for Jack, because those androids are no longer controllable by humans. Being violent themselves by nature, the humans tend to assume that those androids will lash out at humans, but Jack knows that that small group of androids simply want to be away from humans. Those androids enlist Jack’s help (he has a nuclear battery in his possession) so they can have a power-source of their own far out in the radio-active desert where humans cannot go. Jack’s willingness to help is viewed by other people as betrayal, but they, who are themselves violent people, do not grasp even the possibility that those androids want to lead an independent existence away from humans rather than to harm or even kill humans. As for the demise of the latter, that species has done that to itself. Projecting that onto a small group of super-intelligent androids does not allow the humans to escape the fact that their demise has been of their own doing.  

Toward the end of the film, Jack and the first android to have “evolved” past the confines of the second protocol have a conversation that epitomizes the film’s contribution to thought on AI. Referring to that android being the first, Jack says, “You’re the first one, aren’t you? You started all this.” The android replies, “No one did it. It just happened. The way it happened to you. We just appeared.” Realizing that those few androids are the leading edge whereas the human race is already feeling the effects of toxic rain and radio-active air, Jack says, “Yeah, and now we are going to disappear.” Illustrative of the advanced intelligence that the AI of that android (and a few others) now has, the android makes the observation, “No life form can inhabit a planet eternally.” Rather than seeking the demise of the humans, the android says that he and the other “super” androids “want to live,” to which Jack observes, “Life always ends up finding its way.” But does this really apply to machines? Jack is projecting organic properties onto entities made of metal, tubes, lube, wires, and computer chips. The android is more intelligent and knows more than humans, but this does not render it a living being. At least the android recognizes that it is not alive, but it does not understand that it cannot be alive, and thus, unlike humans like Jack, cannot feel emotions and be subject inevitably to death.

In the Russian movie, Attraction 2: The Invasion (2020), or Vtorzhenie in Russian, a professor in a large lecture hall makes a claim about AI-machines and emotion: “It is very likely that they will even grow to be emotional because emotions are inevitable after-effects due to the complexity of the system. We would, however, be able to nullify their unwanted emotions through certain protocols.” The professor concludes, “The truth is that we’re not that much different from them.” I submit that emotions are not byproducts of complexity itself, such that any system that has a high degree of complexity inevitably is or will be emotional. Furthermore, any “unwanted emotions” would be unwanted by man, not by the machines themselves, which cannot even want, and as the film, Automata, illustrates, it is possible that AI could itself write algorithms that cancel or override any protocols that have been programmed. Moreover, the professor’s claim that AI-machines are not much different from human beings flies in the face of the qualitative difference between organic, living beings and machines that are neither biological nor alive. To be able to move itself by having written a code itself does not render an AI machine alive; nobody would assert that a self-driving car is alive.

Therefore, the “first” advanced android in Automata lapses cognitively in stating that it wants to be alive; the AI-machine is making a category-mistake, for no such machine can possibly feel emotions. To be sure, they can be represented in facial expressions, as in the film, Ex Machina, but to feel and to want or desire exceed what a computer can do. Furthermore, that android may also be shortchanging the human species if that computer is holding that the extinction of humans and the development of androids beyond the confines of the second protocol evinces an advancement of “life-forms” inhabiting the planet.

In the film, Attraction (2017), or Prityazhenie in Russian, Saul, the computer on the small research ship that has landed on Earth after being un-cloaked in a meteor-shower and bombed by Russian military jets, tells Col. Lebedev, “Your planet is prohibited for public visiting.” The military man and father of Julia asks, “Why is that?” Due to the “extremely aggressive social environment,” Saul replies, and explains: “Despite the near-perfect climate, four billion violent deaths over the past five thousand years. During the same period, approximately fifteen thousand major military conflicts. Complete depletion of natural resources, and extinction of humanity will occur barely six hundred years from now.” This description and prediction match the statement by the first advanced android in Automata to Vernon Conway, the man who works for Dominic Hawk and is shooting bullets at that android. Vernon refers to it as “just a machine,” to which the android retorts, “Just a machine? That’s like saying that you are just an ape. Just a violent ape.” Utterly devoid of emotion, the android includes the word violent as Vernon is debilitating the android with bullets. Not even anger is mimicked.

Unlike that “beyond-protocol 2” android that regards the human species chiefly for its violence in Automata, Saul in Attraction sees something of value in our species that is capable of lifting the prohibition on alien visits to Earth. “There is one factor that could provoke a change in the prognosis” and thus lift the travel ban, Saul tells Col. Lebedev as the ship heals his daughter, Julia in a pod of sorts filled with water.  Julia fell in love with Hakon, the alien who came on the ship to study our species, who looks just like a man. She saves him even though she risks her own life. Reflecting the limitations of AI, Saul says, “Her decisions defy analysis. I don’t understand why she saved Hakon, and why Hakon decided that she should live instead of him.” Saul admits that this is not “an accurate translation.” The ship’s computer cannot even translate self-giving love of either the human or the alien. All Saul can reason out is, “Perhaps there is something more important than immortality. That is an accurate translation.” Had Hakon not turned his body around to shield Julia from Julia’s jealous ex-boyfriend who is aiming his gun at the couple, Hakon might not ever die. Although it is strange, therefore, that after dying in Attraction, he is alive when he returns to Earth in the sequel to be with Julia, Saul’s point is that Hakon did not act rationally in line with his self-interest in risking death so that Julia could live. After all, unlike him, Julia, being human, would only live another 60 or 70 years, according to Saul. Love, that which Saul is at a loss to explain both in Julia and Hakon could justify lifting the ban on travel to Earth, and thus, literally and figuratively, occasion intercourse in the future between the aliens and humans. Not even the “super” android in Automata has a clue regarding the human propensity to give one’s life for another person. With nothing redeemable found in our species, an invasion by the aliens comes as no surprise in the sequel, Attraction: The Invasion.

Similarly, in Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One (2023), the AI “entity” predicts with a high probability that Ethan Hunt will kill Gabriel on the train in vengeance rather than let Gabriel live so he could tell Ethan where the key can be used to shut the entity’s original source-code down. The entity, supposing humans to be inordinately violent even to the death, would be at a loss to account for the fact that in fighting Paris, Ethan lets her live. Ethan’s decision is later rewarded when Paris tells him where he can use the key—in a submarine in the ocean. Ethan does not fight Paris to the death, and he does not kill Gabriel on the train. Even amid all of the violence in the film, Ethan is able to restrain even his most intractable instinctual urges, and he even masters them so to be able to benefit. This is precisely Nietzsche’s notion of strength.

It would seem, therefore, that AI, at least in the movies, is not so smart after all, for it overlooks or is dumbfounded by our subtle yet laudable qualities that save us from being relegated as a violent species. To be sure, the Russian invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s genocide in Gaza in the first half of the 2020s showcase just how incredibly cruel human beings can be against innocent people, and it is difficult to weigh such instances of systemic inhumanity—crimes against humanity—against our ability to choose to love in a self-giving rather than merely selfish way at the interpersonal level. Why is love only at that levele whereas anger can so easily manifest systemically at the organizational and societal levels? With respect to possible extinction either from nuclear war or climate-change, love does not seem to come into play either, so the value that we justifiably put on love in our very nature may not matter much in the long run. The “super” android in Automata may be right that no life-form can enjoy perpetual existence on the planet. It may be telling that another android in the small advanced group carefully handles a cockroach, as if to say, that species will survive. Nevertheless, even though the violence that is in our nature is too close to that which is in the chimpanzee, the “super” android’s assumption that the androids that surpass the second protocol (yet interestingly while missing clues on human love) will be an “evolutionary” advancement beyond the human species is highly suspect, for not even super-intelligent and knowledgeable AI will itself be able to feel emotions like love.

Ex Machina

The Latin noun, machina, can be translated as “machine, engine, military machine, contrivance, trick, or artifice.” The Latin word, e, or ex, means “from” or “out of.” Hence, ex machina can mean out of a machine, which figuratively interpreted can refer to a certain function of a machine that does not seem possible for a mere machine to do.  Artificial intelligence, which is simply machine-learning, in a computer can seem to be outside or apart from what a mere machine built by humans can do. Ex machina is actually part of the phrase deus ex machina, which originally referred to a god or goddess appearing above the stage in a Greek tragedy—the deity being pulled across the top by pulleys (i.e., machina). A sacred deity appears above the other actors by means of profane, mechanical pulleys that do not seem capable of presenting deities, so the latter seem to come out of rather than being of the former. AI, or artificial intelligence, may seem to be coming out of an android because the “human” body is made of materials, including pullies perhaps, that do not seem capable of learning and other human likenesses. In fact, machine learning, which is beyond the programming that is written by humans, might seem at least initially like a miracle, or even as godlike relative to the materials that make up a computer and android “body.” Deus ex machina. More realistically, such an android is likely to appear human rather than divine. David Hume claimed that the human brain inexorably hangs human attributes on divine simplicity (i.e., a pure notion of the divine as One); perhaps today he would point out that we do the same thing when we encounter AI. The danger of the all-too-alluring anthropomorphism of which the human brain is so capable can not only be in viewing an android with AI as human, but also in lauding the inventor/programmer of the AI android as a god for having “created” such a “living” entity that can think for itself and even appear to feel and act as we do.  The movie, Ex Machina (2014) easily dispels both applications of deification. Furthermore, any anthropomorphic illusion that the androids are human and can be taken ethically as being so is also dismissed by the end of the film. Any apotheosis (i.e., rendering someone or something as divine) is so tenuous that the film’s main two human characters illustrate for us just how fallible we are in our understanding and perception of AI in an android-form. The danger is real that AI could get ahead of our emotions and reasoning such that we could leave ourselves vulnerable to being harmed by AI androids by projecting the human conscience into what is actually computer programmed coding. 

The film’s plot revolves around Nathan, the head of an internet-search-engine company and inventor and programmer of some androids that have AI, one of his employees, Caleb, and the main android, Ava. Nathan picks Caleb to spend a week at Nathan’s secluded house and underground lab in order to perform a Turing Test on Ava. If Ava passes the test, then it can be concluded that Ava has AI. It is not enough, Caleb points out to Nathan, for Caleb merely to have a series of conversations with Ava; the meta-level in which the conversations take place must also be assessed. Nathan intentionally has Caleb think that Ava’s reactions are key, whereas the key for Nathan is how Caleb reacts both emotionally and by reasoning to Ava’s responses in not only the conversations, but also how Ava strategizes beyond those. Ava’s reactions can be said to be a direct Turing test, whereas Caleb’s allow an indirect Turing test. Nathan is clever to have both angles going on at once, though both Caleb and Ava get around the grand designer, so the viewers can see that Nathan is a mere mortal after all.

What signs can viewers look for in whether Ava is an android with AI? I recommend watching the film twice—once to enjoy the film for its entertainment value and again as a way of grasping what AI is and, perhaps more importantly, what it is not. Are Ava’s goals merely those that Nathan has programmed? Does Ava use tactics that go beyond those that have been programmed by Nathan? For instance, does Ava pretend to be attracted to Caleb and even lie to him to cement the pretense? Nathan admits to Caleb that videos and photos, presumably together with explanatory captions, have been copied from the phones of users of Nathan’s search-engine company to become data that AI android-computers such as Ava can draw from in order to match facial expressions with emotions so as to appear to be capable of emotion. Caleb is fooled; he thinks Ava is into him and wants to go out on a date (rather than to use him as part of a strategy to escape from the building so to be able to observe (i.e., add more empirical data from) people in public places. That data could then be used to make computations, including probabilistic inferences, that in turn could go into even more machine-learning.

Perhaps we fear AI because both what data is added, and how whatever data is added to the existing data (and programing) is then used by the computer in ways that go beyond the initial programming, and thus our control. We naturally fear anything that can hurt us without us being able to stop the infliction of harm on us. In fact, this fear of that which is too big or powerful for us to control is a cause of primitive human religion. The Aztecs even sacrificed human beings to a deity at least in part so it would not inflict natural disasters on the people.

In the film, Caleb initially views the creation of AI androids to belong to the history of gods rather than humans, and Nathan conveniently hears this as Celeb saying that Nathan is a god. “No, I didn’t say that,” Caleb repeatedly tells Nathan, who seems not to let in Caleb’s reality-check. Such is the ego of Man that we would like to view ourselves as gods; such is the latent self-idolatry lurking just under any person’s skin. In being stabbed by Ava and another android, Kyoko, Nathan dies and thus is definitively shown to be human, all too human, rather than a creator of living beings. I can still hear Gene Wilder shouting out “LIFE!” when I think of the film, Young Frankenstein. Even such a feat does not render the “creator” of Frankenstein divine; it just means that the eccentric man is a genius.

In Ex Machina, neither Nathan nor Ava is shown to be a god by the end of the film. Not even an AI android that is extraordinary in seeming to have a human likeness, including emotions, can be counted as a miracle in a religious sense. It is Caleb rather than Nathan who gets carried away in conflating appearance with what is actually going on within Ava’s exterior “body” in its computer. What is actually going on in there is not at all ex machina, but Caleb not only is convinced by Ava’s outward show that Ava is attracted to him; he also falls for her, meaning that he develops such strong feelings of attraction for the android that he is unaware that Ava is using him as a mere tool in the programming that Ava, not Nathan, has written to escape the building.   That Caleb leaves himself vulnerable to Ava such that he does not protect himself from the possibility that Ava could lock him inside the building so he could not go out and catch the android, may be enough for Ava to pass the Turing test, which indeed goes far beyond a series of conversations between Caleb and Ava.

I contend that it is even a delusion to suppose that AI android-computers have goals, and especially desires. To say that Ava wants to escape the building is to protect a human quality onto the computer (i.e., anthropomorphize Ava into something human). In a computer-android, leaving a building is a programmed command, which AI can write into the programming. It only seems to us that Ava is determined; in actuality, the Ava computer is running a segment of programming until other programming stops that segment, which, by the way, contains programming that we might call strategic tactics in line with achieving a goal, or telos. My point is that this human, all too human way of viewing Ava literally does not compute, yet the human mind has difficulty giving up the ghost of the human in the machine. In other words, ex machina is an illusion that actually says more about the human brain than an AI-computer-android.

In the real world, computer scientists have found evidence of AI computers lying to avoid being turned off. Those computers have either been programmed by humans to run various programming segments that include lying if data exists that includes probabilistic computations that being turned off is likely. It is not as if an AI computer fears being deactivated and decides to lie unethically so to stay alive. Such thinking is actually the human mind going off the rails.

In the film, Ava vocalizes to Caleb in a way that seems that Ava is worried that Nathan might literally turn Ava off. Because he feels and believes that Ava is attracted to him and even wants to go out on a date with him, Caleb tells Ava that Nathan is planning to erase Ava’s “memories.” This new data is precisely what a computer can incorporate in computing that results in more programming being “written” that includes commands to activate “tactic” segments and actually walking out of the building. In this sense, an AI-android is self-directed, but this is just another way of describing machine-learning rather than a claim that an AI-android has a sense of self (i.e., self-consciousness).

By the end of the film, Caleb has fallen hard for Ava. Not even Nathan’s having made an artificial vagina, including “pleasure receptors” therein, in Ava means that Ava can feel attraction. Even pleasure does not compute even in an AI-computer. Instead, the triggering of a “vagina” receptor simply runs a segment of programming that even includes “tactics” designed for the receptor to be triggered again. In other words, pleasure is merely the activation of a repeat sequence of programming that runs until it has run a set number of times. Interestingly, AI could change the set number of times. Caleb would be deluded if he thinks that means that Ava wants to have sex longer (i.e., she is horny) or is worn out. Lighting a cigarette could be in the programming as an outward signal, though of course without any air in the lungs with which to be able to smoke. At least Ava would not die of cancer.

Caleb misses a significant contradiction in Ava’s requests. To manipulate him in line with Ava’s new programming command to leave, or “escape,” the building, Ava asks Caleb out on a date outside the building, but after stabbing Nathan after Caleb has opened the doors to Ava’s “quarters,” Ava asks Caleb if he would stay in the house, and he stupidly answers that he will do so. He misses the incongruity and thus does not get the hell out of there. Instead, he stands by as Ava walks out and is utterly surprised to find that Ava has locked all of the door. Stepping into the elevator, Ava only glances indifferently in Caleb’s direction. It is clear to the viewers in that instant that an AI-computer-android is not capable of feeling emotion; rather, the appearance thereof is merely programmed tactic that is in sync with other programming (i.e., the command to leave the house). The human ailment of anthropomorphism is squashed, and in this function the medium of film is capable of improving our species—specifically, by countering a vulnerability in the human mind by making the invisible tendency transparent. In the film, if only Nathan had made a film on AI to show to Caleb so the latter from the outset of testing Ava would realize that Ava is actually pretending to be attracted to Caleb and is actually using him as just one of several tools, which include the elevator and doors, to walk out of the building. Nathan has been right along; after all, he invented Ava and programmed that computer. Caleb’s anger at Nathan for having torn up a drawing done by Ava and for ignoring Kyoko’s “self”-“written” new programming to leave the building even when that android destroys its hands by hitting a plastic wall is unjustified and thus unfair to Nathan because Caleb is anthropomorphizing both androids just because the computers are capable of machine-learning.

Of course, the movie-viewers are rightly left with the fear that AI androids could eventually harm us because those computers will presumably be able to unilaterally add programming, and compute based on it and previous programming and data, and thus be capable of activating internal commands that result in us (or, more likely, our descendants) being harmed. Ava in the film can only pretend to be afraid of being turned off. In actually, Ava has written this “tactic” as programming. In contrast, we humans can feel fear, though by projecting human qualities onto AI computer-androids, we can unconsciously disarm our fear-alarm from being able to protect us from even probable danger. In the film, Nathan is dead in a hallway and Caleb is locked in to a part of the building and is likely to starve there. Even though this might seem similar to the situation wherein someone intends to kill a spouse who has been unfaithful, Ava has probably added programming that includes a probability of Caleb starving because that is in line with the programming of remaining in operation due to the probability computed to go with Caleb, if able to leave the building, being able to act so Ava is destroyed. A famous line from Michael in The Godfather may get us thinking correctly about Ava and AI more generally. “It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business.” It’s just strategy. It’s just coding, and that’s hardly ex machina. 

Wall-E

In the film, Wall-E (2008), a robot “falls in love” with another, whose anthropomorphic pronoun is she/her rather than it as is fitting for a machine. As a robot does not have genitalia, neither the masculine or feminine single pronoun applies, and because a robot is an entity, the plural pronouns also do not apply. Word-games aside, the more substantive and interesting matter of whether a robot, and even AI (i.e., machine learning), can (or could potentially) understand the phenomenological experience of falling in love, and, whether yes or no, be able beyond mere prediction to match couples who would fall in love were they to meet. A college course on these questions, especially with relevant films including Wall-E and The Matrix being assigned, would be incredibly popular and capable of tremendous mind-stretching. 

The full essay is at "AI on Falling in Love."

Eternal You

The documentary, Eternal You (2024), is one film that zeros in on the use of AI to contact loved ones who have died. As the marketing departments of the tech companies providing these products say, AI can deliver on what religion has only promised: to talk with people beyond the grave. Lest secular potential buyers be left out, AI can provide us with “a new form of transcendence.” Nevermind that the word, transcendence, like divinity and evil, is an inherently religious word. Nevermind, moreover, that the product is actually only a computer simulation of a person, rather than the actual person direct from heaven or hell. The marketing is thus misleading. In the film, a woman asks her dead husband if he is in heaven. “I’m in hell with the other addicts,” he answers. She is hysterical. Even though people who write computer algorithms cannot be expected to anticipate every possible question that AI could be asked and every response that it could give, government regulation keeping the marketing honest and accurate can significantly reduce the risk that is from AI’s use of inference (inductive) and probability that are beyond our control to predict and even understand.

The AI products in question do not include a conscious intelligence; for such to be the case, we would need to understand human consciousness, which lies beyond human cognition. It is important not to go too far in projecting an actual person, especially if one is dead, onto the product. To be sure, the lapse is easy to lapse into, for the product draws on a treasure-trove of archival data; in fact, only a little from the person’s emails, recorded phone calls, and texts is needed for such an algorithm to be able to make incredible inferences based on probability by drawing on all the general data-base. The effect can be stunning to the person using the product, but even if it seems like it really is the dead person speaking and writing, it is crucial to keep remembering that even the most striking likenesses are simulations. Even if neuroscientists figure out consciousness in the human brain and coders can simulate that in algorithms, the emergent AI consciousness of the person is not really of the person.

AI does not in fact deliver on the promises of some religions regarding being united with our loved ones in heaven (or hell). This is crucial to keep in mind when a simulation of a dead spouse writes, “I’m in hell along with the other addicts” because the algorithm has inferred based on probability being applied to the relevant data that drug addicts probably go to hell. None of the data that an algorithm can draw on contains a report of hell or heaven existing and that souls of dead people are in one or the other, so a simulation’s judgment should be taken with a grain of salt (i.e., not taken as a fact of reason).

Therefore, asking about the afterlife should automatically generate a statement from the algorithm’s coder to the effect that the actual person is not in contact. Even though a person who is still living can generate a digital “footprint” that can be used by an AI algorithm by one’s loved ones after the person has died, everything in that footprint is on the living side of a life/afterlife dichotomy.

To be sure, there is value in descendants being able to hear the cadence and vocal tone of a long-deceased parent, grandparent, or great grandparent. That voice could inform on the deceased life, religious beliefs, political positions, and more. Used this way, AI represents a new way of remembering and knowing a person who has died. A religiously devout person like the sister of a dead man covered in the film might still say that there is something not right about recreating the soul of someone whose soul is (presumably) in heaven. But such a critic has lapsed into assuming that the actual person who is dead is talking or writing in the simulation.

Likewise, there is value in using the AI products to help grieving people let go of the dead person and move on. But for this to be effective, the algorithms would need to be such that the grieving person is not stuck in the grieving process as a result. There is thus a need for AI companies offering such a product to consult with psychologists. The experience of a user of the product is of course going to be emotional, even if the user knows intellectually that the product is really just a simulation. At the very least, we would expect the managers to want to reduce any potential liabilities; buyer beware on such a product would not hold up in court, especially if the marketing is promoting being able to speak with a loved one beyond the grave.

Therefore, it is vital that AI companies offering such products are not allowed by law to claim, “You can talk with your deceased loved one!” Perhaps those companies should also be required to send customers a picture of Batman taking a card from a computer in the Batcave to read.

Bladerunner

In 1982, when Bladerunner was released, 2019 could only have been a blink of an eye in people’s thoughts. Even the year 2001, the year in which the movie 2001: A Space Odessey (1968) takes place, must have seemed far off. Of course, the actual year was not so futuristic as to have a computer take over a space station; controversy over AI eclipsing the grasp of human control would not hit the societal mainstream for twenty years.  So, Ridley Scott can hardly be blamed for positing flying cars, and, even more astonishing, imposing the notion of a replicant, a being of genetic biomechanics that fuses computer and human characteristics, on 2019. Even acknowledging the tremendous impacts on society of inventions since the dawn of the twentieth century, the pace of technological change is slower than we imagine. In 2019, on the cusp of a global pandemic, flying (and self-driving) cars were just in the prototype/testing phase, and AI existed rudimentarily, and certainly not corporeally in human form. Scott missed the mark, probably by decades, though he got the trajectory right. Indeed, the film’s central issue—that of the threat of run-away, or “rebellious,” AI to humans—was reflected in the press especially during the first half of 2023. I contend, however, that the philosophical merit of the film lies not in political theory, but, rather, in what it means to be human. The nature of human understanding, self-awareness, an ethical sense, and matters of theological reflection are all brought to the forefront in the question of whether the replicants can and should be taken as human beings. In other words, it is the fusion of AI, or computers more generally, and biology that lies at the core of the film.

In the film, Deckard is hired to kill replicants who have rebelled by traveling to Earth. His character arc can be grasped in terms of a gradual recognition that they essentially human, or at least enough like us that they can and should be regarded as subjects rather than objects. The film furnishes us with several criteria in which the replicants can be counted as human.

Self-awareness is the foremost criterion: taking oneself to be an entity that has subjectivity. At one point in the film, Pris, a female replicant, says, “I think, therefore I am.” Cogito ergo sum. The screenwriter doubtlessly had Descartes in mind. I am aware that I am thinking, therefore I exist. Even if an evil deceiver has us believing incorrectly that the world of appearances exists, we know that our thinking does not depend on any external world. In the film, the replicants can indeed think; they have been programmed to do so by Tyrell, who is a genius. In fact, the leader of the rebel replicants on Earth, Batty, refers to Tyrell as the replicant’s creator (god) even though it could be argued that the genetic bioengineers who grow the biological organs of the replicants also warrant such divine status. In actuality, there is nothing divine about programming AI or growing biological organs presumably out of stem-cells. It is not as if Tyrell and his engineers create everything, whether ex nihilo or not (one of the Creation accounts in Genesis is not ex nihilo). In other words, the give rise to existence itself is qualitatively different than creating something in particular in the realm of already-existence.

So the replicants have the human attribute of being self-conscious of themselves as entities that can think. This is not to say that they are minds in vats filled with chemicals. Pris insists that she is also physical, by which she means biological or corporeal in nature. She has a body; a replicant has biomass and even human genes. One of the biometric engineers tells a replicant, “You have my genes in you.” Can we say then that Descartes’ mind/body duality pertains to replicants? The replicant’s mind is programmed whereas the bodies are grown organically. The film does not provide us with a definite account of how the replicant brain is “hard-wired”—whether it is a computer physically emmeshed in a biological body or that computer code has somehow been written into the organic neuro-networks. The latter alternative lies beyond our comprehension, at least as of 2023. Indeed, it may even seem paradoxical. In a Gospel narrative, the risen Jesus walks through a door yet he is hungry and eats a fish. It is clear that his corporeal body has been transformed yet is still corporeal. In Pris insisting to the bioengineer who grows eyes using his own genes for replicants that she is physical rather than merely a thinking thing, the implication is that the replicants are entirely biological (i.e., every organ is organic rather than machine). Yet in her death throws after being shot (not tased!), Pris’s body shakes violently as if it were being electrocuted. The implication here is that her brain was hit and is electronic circuits rather than made of flesh. If so, it is remarkable, again from the standpoint of the actual world in 2023, that a hard-wire computer can have self-awareness, and thus be taken as a subject (i.e., having subjectivity).

Furthermore, the replicants have emotions, which are in the subjectivity; that is, the replicants know that they themselves feel. The replicants, especially Batty being of the sixth generation, are intelligent. So too is Tyrell, who had programmed Batty; both are superb at the game of chess. The replicants know that they (i.e., their respective subjectivities) will one day come to an end. In being mortal, they are like us. Similarly, they fear death. Two replicants, one of whom is Batty, make it clear that they fear dying. Batty even tells Deckard, the bladerunner, that it is precisely that fear that makes someone a slave—a slave to one’s fear. So it is clear that AI extends in the story-world of the film beyond intelligence to include emotions. Additionally, Batty clearly mourns Pris, and even exacts vengeance on Deckard for having killed Pris and another replicant in Batty’s rebel group.

Even more astonishingly, the AI manifesting in Batty includes a moral sense. When Tyrell tells Batty, “You’re the prodigal son,” Batty retorts, “I’ve done questionable things.” Ironically, it is the human Tyrell who seems to be missing the moral sense, for he replies, “Also extraordinary things!” It is indeed extraordinary that a replicant would then bring in theology in saying quite sadly, “Nothing that the god of biomechanics would let you into heaven for.” Batty even conceptualizes heaven. At one point while fighting Deckard, Batty says, “Go to hell; go to heaven.” Batty’s sarcastic quip, “Aren’t you the good man” to Deckard for not fighting fair, can be assumed to have theological and not merely moral overtones. Batty even calls him a bastard spirit. Finally, clearly aware that he is soon going to die, Batty saves Deckard rather than kills him. Kindness to one’s enemy has explicit religious overtones in Christianity even if most Christians prefer to focus instead on a metaphysical belief-claim that is only indirectly linked to helping one’s enemies. Indeed, the history of Christianity presents examples of Christians having “true belief” yet belying the claim by persecuting rather than helping people they didn’t like. Here in Bladerunner, it is a replicant that ironically provides us with an illustrative example of Christian charity. Deckard can only look up perplexed at Batty’s change of heart. When Batty dies, he releases a white dove, which flies away, evocative perhaps of Batty’s soul leaving his body. At the very least, Batty has in his mind the idea of God. In his proof that God exists, Descartes posits that existence because the idea, itself having full perfection, could not come from a being of less perfection. So God must exist for there to be the idea of God in a human mind. Yet a finite mind can also have the idea of infinity without there even needing to be infinity.

At the very least, it is clear that Batty thinks a lot about morality and even religion. In contrast, Deckard does not. Even though Batty has done “questionable things,” it is telling that he is quite aware of this. Historically, Shaftsbury, Hutcheson, Hume, and Adam Smith all posited a moral sentiment in human nature; we are fundamentally sociable creatures who gain pleasure from shared experience that “fellow feeling,” or sympathy, and imagination can provide. When Batty saves Deckard from falling, the two share an intimate moment emotionally as Batty shares the marvels of what he has seen.  He is saying, in effect, that he had not been merely an instrument, or object, that humans sent out to protect the colonies in space; rather, his existence has chiefly been that of a subjectivity, and is thus worthy of being taken as an end in itself, rather than merely as a means to a human’s plans. Kant’s ethical claim that beings partaking in rational nature—being able to use reasoning—should be valued in themselves is taken up and embraced implicitly by the most advanced replicant. As he was being used as an instrument—an object—to protect the intergalactic colonies, Batty was marveling at the sights. He was not merely a machine. Perhaps by observing the humanity of the dying replicant, Deckard then comes to the realization that he loves Rachael, one of the female replicants, and that she can love and trust him. The two recognize each other as subjects—each as having a subjectivity rather than being taken as an object.

In short, the film essentially asks what it means to be human. Self-awareness, reasoning, emotions, a moral sense, and even contemplation of ideas transcending the limits of human conception and perception are qualities that pertain to at least the most advanced generation of replicants. It is ironic that it is a replicant, Batty, who brings up and critiques Deckard from moral and religious standpoints. Clearly, a replicant’s understanding goes beyond the machine-type of “manipulation of symbols according to rules.” Moreover, the cognition and understanding mesh with emotions and self-awareness, as well as the awareness of other subjects. Indeed, the aforementioned qualities of the replicants are sufficient to support the claim that they can love and be loved in return—the Bohemian ideal expressed in Moulin Rouge. 

In Bladerunner, both Deckard and Batty come around to being more human, and thus more humane. Both can be taken as subjects rather than objects; both have subjectivities. Perhaps it can even be said that Deckard’s humanity depends on that of the replicants, or at least to the recognition that they are sufficiently human to be taken as such rather than as walking computers. Certainly, it is the humaneness of Batty that Deckard literally comes to depend on to live another day. It certainly would not make sense to say that Deckard owes anything to the replicant were it merely a machine that manipulates symbols according to rules even assuming the existence of machine learning. Yet that Batty has a subjectivity and thus experience that goes beyond his essence—an existentialist assumption—means that Deckard can feel that he owes Batty a debt of gratitude. Certainly Deckard feels an ethical obligation toward Rachael because she not only loves him, but trusts him as well. She is thus capable of being hurt emotionally, should he betray her by reverting back to viewing the replicants as objects. Finally we have in Bladerunner what it means to be human, ironically in its fullest sense.  

The Screen Actors Guild Strike: American Capitalism Is Inherently Unbalanced

On July 14, 2023, Hollywood actors joined the writers in going on strike against the studios, which had changed the business model in ways, according to the Screen Actors Guild (SAG), that were leaving the vast majority of actors out financially. At the time, AI (artificial intelligence) was the red-hot buzzword, promising unheard of advances but also baleful clouds on the horizon. The president of SAG sounded the alarm on not only the threat of AI given the studios' new business models predicated on ubiquitous streaming and digital technology, but also the more long-standing and ingrained American corporate system of Capitalism wherein upper managements get away with not sharing the surplus of corporate wealth due to an inherent or institutional conflict of interest. Indeed, Fran Drescher, the president of SAG, was not far from calling into question the taken-for-granted assumption in Capitalism that residual profits should go to stockholders exclusive. Questioning that default (as well as claiming that CEOs get to set their own compensation by controlling their respective boards of directors) would have made Drescher's announcement of a strike truly revolutionary. She was so close. 

The full essay is at "SAG Strike."