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Rodica-Gabriela Chira, About SF and Fantasy Through Artificial Intelligence

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Rodica-Gabriela Chira, About SF and Fantasy Through Artificial Intelligence Caietele Echinox, vol. 26, 2014: Possible Worlds: Fantasy, Science-Fiction Rodica-Gabriela Chira 345 About SF and Fantasy through Artificial Intelligence ABSTRACT Preliminaries Set in a rather remote future, Steven Spiel- berg’s film Artificial Intelligence (2001) The distinction between the human be- tells the story of a childlike android named ing and the machine has constituted for David programmed with the ability to love. centuries the major concern of all those pre- Having as starting point a SF short story, occupied by androids. All these creations namely Brian Aldiss’ Super-Toys Last All have the same idea as a starting point: simu- Summer Long (1969) and a novel for chil- lating life through art, science or magic in dren, Carlo Collodi’s Adventures of Pino- order to understand what makes of us hu- cchio (1883), Ian Watson, a British science- man beings. But A.I.: Artificial Intelligence1 fiction writer, created a very interesting screen goes even further by asking what constitutes script. The movie marks the continuity of the boundary between humans, non-humans the specific need human beings have for and post-humans. stories as well as for love. It thus proves to The notion of artificial intelligence be a combination between hard SF and fan- goes back to the 18th century, more exactly tasy. Our paper would mainly underline to the year 1796 with Wolfgang von Kem- some changes in fiction about possible and pelen’s “Chess Player”. The starting point impossible worlds throughout time with an for the development of modern artificial in- accent on the balance between natural and telligence was given by Alan Turing’s ex- artificial. periment. This mathematician and cryptog- KEYWORDS rapher did, in 1950, an experiment through a Artificial Intelligence; Hard SF; Fantasy; mimicry game. Two participants, a human Science; Love. being and a computer, placed in two differ- ent rooms, out of the examiner’s sight are RODICA-GABRIELA CHIRA supposed to answer questions in writing, 1 Decembrie 1918 University, Alba Iulia, their answers appearing on a screen. The Romania computer succeeds if his answers cannot be [email protected] distinguished from those of the human be- ing. Turing imagined that by the year 2000 the computer’s achievements would rise at about 30%. Up to 2001, the first laboratory Rodica-Gabriela Chira 346 of artificial intelligence o- said to him: “‘This is one of the world’s pened in 1950 at the Massa- great stories. Would you write a short syn- chusetts Institute of Technolo- opsis of it I can show to people?’ I was gy (MIT), had created “Cog” and “Kismet”, rehired for a week to write 20 pages. I the last one with a face closer to the humans faxed, I disked. ‘It’s great,’ said Stanley, be- and capable of telling the difference be- fore uttering the fatal words: ‘I might just tween animate and inanimate objects, dis- tinker with it a little...’”. The movie “was to tinction humans are about to disregard when be a picaresque robot version of Pinocchio, speaking of androids; it also put on the spinning off from the Aldiss story, but the market “My Real Baby Doll”, an electronic plotine had bogged down – global warming doll capable of acting in many respects like was flooding New York and an ice age had a baby. The remaining problem is that of set in a thousand years ahead”7. The film creating emotions in a computer for if the was finally achieved by Steven Spielberg in computer is declared human, the human be- 2001. ing can be assimilated to a lifeless object as These specifications are important for Gaby Wood tells us in “Edison’s Eve”2. my approach. They show from the very be- Hans Moravec, chief scientist of See- ginning to which extent intertextuality and grid Corporation, adjunct faculty in the Ro- multidisciplinarity are involved. Intertextu- botics Institute of Carnegie Mellon Univer- ality because we have several literary texts sity, assumes that by 2050 we would have going from fantasy to science-fiction where “The fourth robot generation and its succes- science has an important role, multidisci- sors, with human perceptual and motor abil- plinarity by the merging of literary and sci- ities and superior reasoning powers” which entific texts into a film, a metafilm in fact. “could replace human beings in every es- A metafilm about the specific need human sential task”3. In principle, our society could beings of all civilizations have for stories as continue to operate increasingly well with- well as for love. out us, with machines running the compa- The followed steps start with intertex- nies and doing the research as well as per- tuality which implies the understanding of forming the productive work”. Moravec’s the film plot, continue with multidiscipli- book, Mind Children. The Future of Robot narity through which the film will find a and Human Intelligence (1988)4, was re- place in the usual classifications of the gen- commended by Stanley Kubrick in 1990, re, and finishes through a reflection on hu- together with Carlo Collodi’s The Adven- man existence with its capital challenges. tures of Pinnochio (1883) and Brian Aldiss’ Super-Toys Last All Summer Long (1969)5 to the English SF writer Ian Watson for the writing of a screen script; as Watson con- fesses in his recollections of the collabora- tion6, the A.I. script was enhanced then a- bandoned, even lost, then taken up again until the heart attack that ended Kubrik’s life in 1999. Nevertheless, I. Watson de- clared: “But we all feel AI represented the tremendous movie that it was Stanley’s main and enduring ambition to make”. Be- cause, after losing Watson’s screen script he About SF and Fantasy through Artificial Intelligence world, a viable solution e- 347 The intricacies of intertextuality merges, that of creating, through a new behavioral intelligent It would take many pages to resume unit with a new neuron sequencing technol- each of the stories that have inspired Ian ogy, a mecha child capable of love, a sub- Watson’ screen script, slightly modified af- stitute for a human child. The first idea bor- ter by Steven Spielberg. I chose to resume rowed from Brian Aldiss’ short story Super the film by trying to underline the sources Toys Last all Summer Long is introduced. of inspiration when necessary. Questions on reciprocity are unavoidable: The film suggestively begins with the “Could humans love him back?”; “In the image of ocean waves accompanied by a beginning didn’t God create Adam to love voice, like the one of a story teller (equiv- him?”, underlining the most important chal- alent of the narrator in a novel), locating the lenge of the film: the discussion on the story in a hard-edged future after the disap- boundary between reason and emotions. pearance of some parts of the Earth as a The next image, located twenty months consequence of global warming: ice caps later, presents Monica and Henry Swinton have melted and the resulting rise of the in their car, going to the hospital where ocean waters has drowned all the coastal Martin, their unique son, had been cryogen- cities of the world. Amsterdam, Venice, New ically frozen five years before in order to be York were thus submerged. People were o- kept alive until a cure for his sickness would bliged to adapt to new life conditions. The be found. An interesting connection be- next image projects us in a scientific reun- tween mecha and orga women is created in ion taking place at Cybertronics, New Jer- the passage from one scene to the other: sey. The subject of discussion, directed and after having her head opened, the first one mediated by Professor Allan Hobby, is turn- opens her makeup box trying to mend the ing around the possibility to create an an- damage in her looks; the same operation is droid capable of love. The android is called followed by Monica next to her husband in mecha (term invented by the Japanese)8, in the car. At the hospital, while Henry is talk- order to differentiate it from the orga, or- ing to the doctor, Monica is reading Robin ganic creatures. Professor Hobby evokes the of Sherwood to her encapsulated boy. birth of the notion of artificial intelligence Everyday life scenes follow. Monica and the 1796’s Chess Player. Sheila, a mecha doesn’t have a job, most of her activities woman serves as a proof of the scientific develop at home. To help her fight against evolution. It seems that Hans Moravec’s depression, Cybertronics decides to offer previsions are accomplished: Sheila looks the family the first mecha child, David, an human from head to toe. Through simply eleven years old boy (played by Haley Joel pressing different buttons the professor Osment). Logical fiery debates on the sub- leads us to the image of a complex mechan- ject: how could a machine ever replace a ism covered by artificial skin. A mecha is human being? But David proves to be so not emotionally sensitive touched; if some- perfect in its “built” that Monica finally one hurts it/ (him?), the response is a phys- goes from hesitations to the decision of ical sensation. The mecha lover models can keeping him. She then has to carefully press only work on the activation of senses having a button on David’s head in order to intro- as an effect the creation of pleasure in the duce a code, an “imprinting protocol”, while senses, not a neuronal flashback, “a kind of the mecha child is looking at her all the subconscious”.
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