Science fiction is the prophesy of the modern age. And, like all good prophesy, it doesn’t so much predict the future as shape it. An engineer sees a gadget in a science fiction story written two decades earlier and says, I can build that, and fiction becomes fact. William Gibson writes a story in 1984 about a worldwide computer network environment he calls “cyberspace,” and twenty-five years later it exists, and so we call it.
Besides providing ideas and language with which to talk about them, science fiction often provides an early indicator as to the questions those new ideas and technologies will bring up. In Steven Spielberg’s A.I. (2001), the question in question is the nature of what it means to be a person, and the very real possibility that soon the human race will birth its first sentient electronic children.
Bollocks, say detractors, technology will never rival the complexity of the human brain. Well, detractors, take another look. Just recently, the first complete model of the human brain was built inside a supercomputer, and the results are astonishing. Very soon the first artificial intelligences will arise that not only simulate intelligence, but will be in fact self aware. On the opposite end of the spectrum, huge advances in medical technology and bionics mean that we organic beings will become increasingly mechanical. Where for all of our history the issue has been simple, black and white, there are now arising endless shades of gray.
A.I. is a fairy tale about a young robot boy, designed to “simulate” a son in a world where actual offspring are limited by law due to resource limitations. It brings up an interesting point in the “what makes us Human” debate by saying that the boy’s decision to follow a fairy tale and not simple cold calculations is the first step out of the machine–the first spark of humanity inside the circuit boards. As computerized models of the brain grow in accuracy and complexity, it will be interesting to see what the resulting intelligences reveal–are our minds the simple result of neural synapses and hormones, or is there something more, something beyond the simple physical structures of our brains?
Despite the typically Spielberg goodwill and peace to all ending, this movie is well worth a watch to get those synapses firing for yourself.
