Artificial Intelligence In Fiction

Artificial intelligence is a reoccurring style in science fiction, whether utopian, stressing the prospective advantages, or dystopian, stressing the risks.

The idea of devices with human-like intelligence go back a minimum of to Samuel Butler’s 1872 unique Erewhon. Since then, many sci-fi stories have presented different effects of creating such intelligence, frequently involving rebellions by robotics. Among the best 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 robot in Pixar’s 2008 WALL-E.

Scientists and engineers have kept in mind the implausibility of many sci-fi scenarios, however have mentioned fictional robots often times in expert system research articles, frequently in a utopian context.

Background

The idea of advanced robotics with human-like intelligence dates back a minimum of to Samuel Butler’s 1872 unique Erewhon. [1] [2] This drew on an earlier (1863) article of his, Darwin amongst the Machines, where he raised the concern of the evolution of awareness amongst self-replicating machines that may supplant human beings as the dominant species. [3] [2] Similar concepts were likewise talked about by others around the same time as Butler, including George Eliot in a chapter of her last published work Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879 ). [2] The creature in Mary Shelley’s 1818 Frankenstein has actually also been thought about a synthetic being, for example by the science fiction author Brian Aldiss. [4] Beings with a minimum of some appearance of intelligence were imagined, too, in classical antiquity. [5] [6] [7]

Utopian and dystopian visions

Artificial intelligence is intelligence shown by devices, in contrast to the natural intelligence shown by humans and other animals. [8] It is a frequent style in science fiction; scholars have divided it into utopian, emphasising the prospective advantages, and dystopian, stressing the dangers. [9] [10] [11]

Utopian

Optimistic visions of the future of expert system are possible in science fiction. [12] Benign AI characters consist of Robbie the Robot, initially 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 depicts a utopian, post-scarcity area society of humanoids, aliens, and advanced beings with synthetic intelligence living in socialist environments across the Milky Way. [14] [15] Researchers at the University of Cambridge have actually identified four major themes in utopian situations including AI: immortality, or indefinite lifespans; ease, or liberty from the requirement to work; satisfaction, or satisfaction and home entertainment provided by makers; and dominance, the power to safeguard oneself or rule over others. [16]

Alexander Wiegel contrasts the function of AI in 2001: An Area Odyssey and in Duncan Jones’s 2009 movie Moon. Whereas in 1968, Wiegel argues, the general public felt “innovation paranoia” and the AI computer HAL was depicted as a “cold-hearted killer”, by 2009 the public were much more familiar with AI, and the film’s GERTY is “the peaceful rescuer” who makes it possible for the protagonists to prosper, and who compromises itself for their safety. [17]

Dystopian

The researcher Duncan Lucas writes (in 2002) that people are stressed about the technology they are building, which as makers began to approach intelligence and idea, that concern becomes intense. He calls the early 20th century dystopian view of AI in fiction the “animated automaton”, calling as examples the 1931 movie Frankenstein, the 1927 Metropolis, and the 1920 play R.U.R. [18] A later 20th century technique he names “heuristic hardware”, providing as circumstances 2001 a Space Odyssey, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and I, Robot. [19] Lucas thinks about also the films that illustrate the effect of the personal computer system on sci-fi from 1980 onwards with the blurring of the limit between the real and the virtual, in what he calls the “cyborg impact”. He mentions as examples Neuromancer, The Matrix, The Diamond Age, and Terminator. [20]

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

Frankenstein complex

A typical representation of AI in sci-fi, and among the oldest, is the Frankenstein complex, a term coined by Asimov, where a robotic switches on its creator. [22] For circumstances, in the 2015 film Ex Machina, the intelligent entity Ava turns on its developer, as well as on its possible rescuer. [23]

AI disobedience

Among the lots of possible dystopian scenarios involving expert system, robotics may usurp control over civilization from people, forcing them into submission, concealing, or termination. [15] In tales of AI rebellion, the worst of all scenarios occurs, as the intelligent entities produced by humanity end up being self-aware, reject human authority and attempt to ruin mankind. Possibly the first book to address this theme, The Wreck of the World (1889) by “William Grove” (pseudonym of Reginald Colebrooke Reade), happens in 1948 and features sentient machines that revolt versus the human race. [24] Another of the earliest examples is in the 1920 play R.U.R. by Karel Čapek, a race of self-replicating robot servants revolt versus their human masters; [25] [26] another early circumstances remains in the 1934 movie Master of the World, where the War-Robot kills its own inventor. [27]

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

In his 1967 Hugo Award-winning narrative, 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, limitless existence as its human creators would have been. “AM” becomes furious enough to take it out on the few humans left, whom he views as directly accountable for his own monotony, anger and distress. [29]

Alternatively, as in William Gibson’s 1984 cyberpunk unique Neuromancer, the intelligent beings might simply not appreciate people. [15]

AI-controlled societies

The intention behind the AI transformation is often more than the simple quest for power or a supremacy complex. Robots may revolt to become the “guardian” of mankind. Alternatively, mankind may intentionally give up some control, fearful of its own devastating nature. An early example is Jack Williamson’s 1948 unique The Humanoids, in which a race of humanoid robotics, in the name of their Prime Directive – “to serve and comply with and protect men from damage” – basically assume control of every element of human life. No humans may engage in any habits that may threaten them, and every human action is scrutinized carefully. Humans who withstand the Prime Directive are eliminated and lobotomized, so they might more than happy under the new mechanoids’ rule. [30] Though still under human authority, Isaac Asimov’s Zeroth Law of the Three Laws of Robotics likewise implied a humane guidance by robots. [31]

In the 21st century, sci-fi has explored federal government by algorithm, in which the power of AI may be indirect and decentralised. [32]

Human supremacy

In other circumstances, humanity has the ability to keep control over the Earth, whether by banning AI, by creating robotics to be submissive (as in Asimov’s works), or by having humans combine with robotics. The science fiction novelist Frank Herbert explored the idea of a time when humanity may prohibit expert system (and in some interpretations, even all kinds of computing innovation consisting of integrated circuits) completely. His Dune series mentions a rebellion called the Butlerian Jihad, in which humanity beats the clever devices and enforces a capital punishment for recreating them, quoting from the fictional Orange Catholic Bible, “Thou shalt not make a maker in the likeness of a human mind.” In the Dune novels released after his death (Hunters of Dune, Sandworms of Dune), a renegade AI overmind returns to remove mankind as vengeance for the Butlerian Jihad. [33]

In some stories, humanity remains in authority over robotics. Often the robots are set specifically to remain in service to society, as in Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics. [31] In the Alien films, not only is the control system of the Nostromo spaceship somewhat smart (the crew call it “Mother”), however there are likewise androids in the society, which are called “synthetics” or “artificial persons”, that are such ideal imitations of people that they are not discriminated against. [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 ended up being a typical theme in science fiction, as seen in the 1999 movie The Matrix, which portrays a world where synthetically intelligent robotics shackle humankind within a simulation which is embeded in the modern world. [36]

Reception

Implausibility

Engineers and researchers have actually taken an interest in the way AI is presented in fiction. In films like the 2014 Ex Machina or 2015 Chappie, a single isolated genius becomes the very first to successfully build an artificial basic intelligence; researchers in the real life deem this to be unlikely. In Chappie, Transcendence, and Tron, human minds can being submitted into synthetic or virtual bodies; usually no sensible description is offered as to how this difficult task can be accomplished. In the I, Robot and Bicentennial Man movies, robots that are programmed to serve human beings spontaneously produce new objectives by themselves, without a possible description of how this happened. [37] Analysing Ian McDonald’s 2004 River of Gods, Krzysztof Solarewicz recognizes the methods that it portrays AIs, consisting of “self-reliance and unexpectedness, political awkwardness, openness to the alien and the occidental worth of credibility.” [38] Another essential point of view to take is that fiction’s “non-rational aspects in the discourse (the emotive, the mythic, and even the quasi-theological) are more than simply distortions or distractions from what might otherwise be a sober and rational public dispute about the future of A.I.” Fiction can deter readers about future advances, causing pessimism that we see today surrounding the subject of AI. [39]

Types of mention

The robotics researcher Omar Mubin and colleagues have actually evaluated the engineering discusses of the top 21 imaginary robotics, 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 mentions, 60 were utopian, 40 neutral, and 21 dystopian. HAL 9000 and Skynet got both utopian and dystopian mentions; for circumstances, HAL 9000 is viewed as dystopian in one paper “since its designers stopped working to prioritize its goals appropriately”, [42] but as utopian in another where a genuine system’s “conversational chat bot interface [does not have] a HAL 9000 level of intelligence and there is uncertainty in how the computer system translates what the human is trying to communicate”. [43] Utopian discusses, often of WALL-E, were related to the objective of enhancing interaction to readers, and to a lesser degree with motivation to authors. WALL-E was discussed 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 personality. Skynet was the robot usually pointed out for intelligence, followed by HAL 9000 and Data. [40] Mubin and coworkers believed that scientists and engineers prevented dystopian points out of robots, potentially out of “an unwillingness driven by uneasiness or just a lack of awareness”. [44]

Portrayals of AI creators

Scholars have kept in mind that fictional developers of AI are extremely male: in the 142 most influential films featuring AI from 1920 to 2020, only 9 of 116 AI creators represented (8%) were female. [45] Such creators are depicted 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 change a lost enjoyed one or function as the perfect lover (e.g., The Stepford Wives). [45]

Biology in fiction
Darwin amongst the Machines
Machine rule
Simulated awareness (science fiction).
List of synthetic intelligence movies.

Notes

^ Mubin and coworkers noted that the orthography of robotic names triggered them troubles; thus HAL 9000 was also written HAL, HAL9000, and HAL-9000, and similarly for other robots, so they believed their search was likely incomplete. [41] References

^ “Darwin amongst the Machines”, reprinted in the Notebooks of 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 among 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 (2nd ed.). Routledge. pp. 4-5. ISBN 978-1-56881-205-2.
^ Cave, Stephen; Dihal, Kanta (25 July 2018). “Ancient dreams of intelligent machines: 3,000 years of robots”. Nature. 559 (7715 ): 473-475. Bibcode:2018 Natur.559..473 C. doi:10.1038/ d41586-018-05773-y.
^ Mayor, Adrienne (2018 ). Gods and robots: myths, devices, and ancient imagine innovation. Princeton. ISBN 978-0-691-18351-0. OCLC 1060968156. cite book: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link).
^ Poole, David; Mackworth, Alan; Goebel, Randy (1998 ). Computational Intelligence: A Rational 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.
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^ Cave, Stephen; Dihal, Kanta (2019 ). “Hopes and fears for intelligent devices in fiction and reality”. 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 original 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: An Area Odyssey’ Is Still the ‘Ultimate Trip’ – The rerelease of Stanley Kubrick’s work of art encourages us to show 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 on ‘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 specific transcription of the laws. They also appear in the front of the book, and in both places, there is no “to” in the 2nd law.
^ Walton, Jo Lindsay (1 February 2024). “Machine Learning in Contemporary Sci-fi”. SFRA Review. Retrieved 5 February 2024.
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^ Livingstone, Josephine (23 May 2017). “How the Androids Took Over 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 initial 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 films get synthetic intelligence 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 representations of AI scientists in popular movie, 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’: Artificial Intelligence in Sci-fi (thesis). McMaster University (PhD thesis). hdl:11375/ 11154.
Mubin, Omar; Wadibhasme, Kewal; Jordan, Philipp; Obaid, Mohammad (2019 ). “Assessing 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 From: AI in Contemporary Science Fiction”. Beyond Expert system. 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.
Wiegel, Alexander (2012 ). “AI in Science-fiction: a comparison of Moon (2009) and 2001: An Area Odyssey (1968 )”. Aventinus.
King, Geoff; Krzywinska, Tanya (2000 ). Science Fiction Cinema: From Outerspace to Cyberspace. Wallflower Press. ISBN 978-1-903364-03-1.

External links

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