Portrayal Of Intelligent Machines In Films example essay topic

In this essay I am going to discuss about the topic:" Science fiction often plays off the real against the artificial, either in the form of humans versus non-human (androids, cyborgs, synthetics), or the world versus the non-world (cyberspace, inner-space, intentional space) ". I have chosen the films "The Matrix" and "Bicentennial Man " An explosion in information access and exchange is fueling the Information Superhighway that was created as a result of the computer revolution. If technology has truly become a god, then cyberspace is definitely its bible. Its scope is endless; its breadth enormous.

Although the foundation of cyberspace, the computer, definitely serves to dehumanize culture, the Information Superhighway itself does not. If anything, cyberspace is re-humanizing the computer revolution. The World Wide Web, through pictures and graphics, has added personality and more personal contact to a technology that for years was 'just the facts. ' Although the statement might be made that this is a pseudo-re humanization that masks true human characteristics with digital ones, this is at least a step in the right direction. Something that removes the human qualities or attributes from culture can be said to dehumanize it. This technology destroys our view of truth and meaning.

The basic presupposition of the Information Superhighway is that it contains information on any subject and can answer any question. It causes people to search places other than God for direction, truth, and meaning. Involvement with the technology serves to replace our involvement with reality. There is a tendency for people to start thinking of themselves and others in terms of their online personalities. Many people develop a whole other life on-line and some even end up being unable to separate their on-line identity from their real one. Recent movies such as The Matrix and Bicentennial Man serve to further blur this already fuzzy line.

Bicentennial Man, directed by Chris Columbus (US, 1999), is based on a story Isaac Asimov wrote in 1975 and like many of his stories, it deals with the enigma of a machine with the intelligence of a man, but without the rights or the feelings. As we might expect the film presents Asimov's concept of the intelligent robot, a concept that, like Asimov himself, pre-dates the modern world of personal computers, video games, the Internet, 'expert systems' and so on. As a result, in many ways the film echoes the themes we saw in the films of the early 1970's - films like West World and The Stepford Wives. It shows robots that act like humans, performed by real actors. I'm going to criticize them because in my opinion they exercise pernicious influence upon the public. In brief, The Bicentennial Man (BM) tells the story of a robot that lasts for about 200 years.

His creator and his descendants change this robot, in order to acquire more and more human features. In the beginning he uses a kind of armor, looking like a machine; during the night he connects a plug into the electric outlet to recharge his batteries. Gradually, his appearance becomes more and more humane, to a point where he acts as any normal human, with thinking, feeling and willing, that is, the robot would have passed the total turning test. It is not clear if it would have passed the total total turning test.

At the end, the woman with whom the robot is in love is going to die, so he decides that he cannot suffer her absence and should also 'die' (Setzer 2002) A 'cyborg', a contraction of Cybernetic Organism, is a hybrid of man (or woman) and machine. The machine parts endow additional strength and physical capability while the human provides the intelligence and will as well as much of the body, which makes them largely irrelevant to this dissertation. Occasionally things are more complicated; when the machine part provides some mental functions as well The story of a reluctant Christ-like protagonist set against a baroque, MTV backdrop, The Matrix, directed by Andy Wachowski & Larry Wachowski, is the definitive hybrid of technical wizardry and contextual excellence that should be the benchmark for all sci-fi films to come (Menor 2000) Almost all the films we have been discussing assume that conflict between robots and people is unavoidable. If anything that conflict has become more violent and inimical, with the film, the Matrix, it is featuring a world in which intelligent machines are at war with humanity. More importantly we see little sign of machine intelligence in them.

True they are machines - under the 'cyborg's kin and flesh that is designed to allow them to pass as human they are constructed of the same metal and electronics as any other robot. We are told that the computers of the future are intelligent, as they must be to design and construct. The Matrix takes a more sophisticated approach to machine intelligence. Rather than exterminate humans, the intelligent machines of the future have domesticated them, using them as 'batteries'.

Humans spend their lives plugged into the 'Matrix', living in a kind of virtual reality created by the machines. As in the film The Matrix it was told that whether the virtual reality apparatus, was wired to all of one's senses and controlled them completely, Within this virtual world human avatars coexist with avatars generated by the AI's. It is through these latter beings, such as 'Agent Smith', that we see into the mind of the machine (s). Of all the characters we have seen in the films so far, Colossus is the closest to Agent Smith.

They both express the same contempt for the petty concerns of humans and the same confidence in their powers. Although the plot details of The Matrix is confusing, when agents speak we get glimpses of their view of the world, and of the humans in it. It becomes clear that Smith is not really like Colossus. He does not want to control a world filled with intelligent human slaves who 'regard him with awe and love'. He wants a world in which humans may provide the energy and power, but do so invisibly, out of sight. It may not be obvious to those unfamiliar with virtual reality concepts exactly what this might mean.

The humans have real bodies that receive all their sensory data from the matrix, rather than from the real world. Though they exist in the real world, they experience a virtual one. Agent Smith on the other hand has no existence other than as a running computer program. He is not like HAL, who exists inside a computer but whose senses let him experience the real world. For Agent Smith, the virtual world is reality.

What is more, it is a reality he can control and adjust to his liking. When he says 'This zoo, this prison' he means a virtual world that is designed to accommodate humans - offering them familiar signs and symbols such as buildings, cars, trees and sky. The sort of virtual world that he desires is, in its very 'otherness', a believable fiction. The 'Bicentennial Man' is a robot called Andrew, the servant of a rich family. Through a 'fault in his programming' he turns out to have a talent for wood-carving. His owner, 'Sir', is persuaded by his daughter to let him keep the money that is made by selling his work, and eventually time gives him enough money to turn himself into a human being - first legally, then medically and finally socially.

This gradual transition is used to illustrate neatly many of the issues that Asimov ian robots have to face and that Andrew clearly has an 'inner life' of thoughts, emotions and feelings. Andrew's skill at woodwork reveals a key aspect of intelligence, the ability to play. We also watch his command of language grow, particularly idioms, the lack of which causes him great difficulty at the start of the film. So far so good, though things are not helped by the way the film departs from Asimov's original by adding a sentimental sub-plot in which Andrew falls in love with, and eventually marries, the granddaughter of his original master. The real problem with the film, at least for those familiar with science fiction, comes from the outdated nature from Asimov's Laws.

Just as AI research has gone along very different lines from those imagined by Asimov, attitudes to computers have changed dramatically. As a result, from our point of view at least, the film is undermined by its old-fashioned ideas of how robots might work. The matrix, as presented in the eponymous film, operates as an Althusserian Ideological State Apparatus (ISA). The Matrix presents a world in which "the state a 'machine' of repression" is made literal where robots rule the land. It is true that they rule by force (sentinels and agents) and these constitute the Repressive State Apparatus, but their primary force of subjugation is the matrix, their ISA. The film traces the path of one man, Neo, in his painful progress from the ideology of the matrix to the "real world", or the ideology of the "real". web Lit%20 Theory%20-%20 The%20 Matrix. doc Though little of The Matrix's content covers new ground for sci-fi, the film is extremely full of ideas and semiotic meanings.

However few of its ideas are developed in depth and indeed many are presented in a casual or throwaway manner. But this is appropriate given the information-overload of postmodern media and society, which The Matrix reflects The plot device of the Matrix as "an interactive computer simulation" is not merely analogous to modern interactive media, particularly the internet and computer games, but an extrapolation from them. One major feature of sci-fi and fantasy fiction is that the genres are not merely concerned with telling stories, but with creating worlds for them to take place in. As well as inventing characters and narrative, the environment is constructed, often meticulously to give meaning to the action. Through the virtual real device, The Matrix makes this world-building its actual subject matter. The irony in The Matrix is that the real world is strange and terrifying while the fantasy landscape is banal.

Although The Matrix presents an elitist view with a sharp division between the superhuman (in the Matrix) heroes and agents on one hand and the duped masses on the other, the film reflects both the fear and horror of, and the utopian possibilities attributed to, all technology - both of which stem from making human labour unnecessary. The limitless possibilities suggested by The Matrix ironically serve to reinforce that it is still confined to a two-dimensional non-interactive movie screen. The film comes across as ultimately escapist in nature, only emphasised by Morpheus's continual reminders that "I can only show you the door; you have to walk through it". However, as the Sight and Sound review of the film concludes, "It seems clear that the Wachowski have discovered a gleeful utopia of their own" (Edwards) In a thoughtful essay Jo Alyson Parker said: Androids, cyborgs, and robots prompt us to ask whether a machine could manifest consciousness, take on life of its own, transcend its programming.

They make us ponder whether our performances could be distinguished from theirs-whether we could in fact be replaced by our creations, At the same time, these mechanical simulacra cause us to consider whether we are ourselves programmed-products of cultural forces, manifestations of the discourse that inscribes us (Mitchell 2003). While the perceptive spectator may, with Parker, ponder the notion of 'our own free will', it seems that the films that have discussed are interested in the question. As we have seen, very few of the machine intelligences possess free will. Most are bound by constraints, built into their programming, that severely restrict their behaviour, if not their thoughts. Only the androids, or the cyborgs, like Andrew in Bicentennial Man, seem to be independent, self-willed beings, and their close biological resemblance to humans makes this both natural and inevitable.

In the Matrix, it shows that the perception of a threat has hardened into inevitable conflict. In these films humans may still hope to triumph, but in truth the inexorable increase in the power of intelligent machines would seem more likely to lead to our extinction - just as the Neanderthals were displaced by Cro-Magnon Man some thirty thousand years ago. If the portrayal of intelligent machines in films teaches us anything, it is that it is fortunate that such machines do not yet exist. It is fortunate that is, for the machines, because all the evidence would indicate that we are not yet ready to treat them as fellow persons. Fortunate too for us perhaps, because when they became smart enough to mount a successful rebellion they might make us pay for their oppression (Mitchell 2003). Reference: 1.

Edwards, D A, 'The Matrix', The Matrix: An Ideological Analysis, viewed 5 June 2005, web 2. Menor F 2000, The Matrix (1999), viewed 7 June 2005, web Mitchell, D 2003, What's it like to be a Robot? , viewed 7 June 2005, web Setzer V W 2002, AI - Artificial Intelligence or Automated Imbecility, viewed 7 June 2005, web The Matrix 1999, motion picture, Prod. Joel Silver. Dir. The Wachowski Brothers. Perf.

Laurence Fishburne, and Keanu Reeves 6. web Lit%20 Theory%20-%20 The%20 Matrix. doc.