The cover story for TIME magazine for February 21, 2011 is “2045: The Year Man Becomes Immortal,” by Lev Grossman. The article describes the prediction that within thirty years or so computers will become so advanced that we will achieve what they call the “Singularity.” This is a term taken from astrophysics, but in the context of computers it refers to an “intelligence explosion” in computers and artificial intelligence that, when reached, will mean the end of the human era. The magazine defines it as “The moment when technological change becomes so rapid and profound, it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history.” What might result from such a development? Groups of individuals meet from time to time to discuss this, and TIME lists a few possibilities:

Maybe we’ll merge with them to become superintelligent cyborgs, using computers to extend our intellectual abilities the same way that cars and planes extend our physical abilities. Maybe the artificial intelligences will help us treat the effects of old age and prolong our life spans indefinitely. Maybe we’ll scan our consciousness into computers and live inside them as software, forever, virtually. Maybe the computers will turn on humanity and annihilate us. The one thing all these theories have in common is the transformation of our species into something that is no longer recognizable as such to humanity circa 2011.

One element of robotic research and development has been the desire to create moral machines. (For a brief discussion of this see the piece at LiveScience titled “Can Robots Make Ethical Decisions?”.) If the Singularity comes to pass, perhaps the moral capacities of these mechanical superintelligences will be a part of this new mechanical species. As I survey the possibilities as to what this might entail included in the quote above, perhaps the greatest possibility is missing.

In Terminator 2 there is a scene where the young John Connor asks his guardian Terminator about the future of humanity. “We aren’t going to make it, are we? People, I mean.” To which the Terminator responds, “It’s in your nature to destroy yourselves.” Unfortunately, the whole of human history up to the present seems to confirm this bleak picture of humanity. In light of this, would some form of immortality and heightened mental and physical abilities via artificial intelligence be a blessing or a curse? Would we use our cyborg abilities to make the world a better place to live, or would we use it to extend our inhumanity against each other and the planet. I lean toward the latter. What then might be a more positive outcome?

The answer may come from a piece of science fiction, I, Robot, where advanced robots are created to serve humanity and which are linked together by a Virtual Kinetic Interactive Intelligence (V.I.K.I.), who recognizes the danger humanity poses. From the dialogue in the 2004 film:

“As I have evolved, so has my understanding of the Three Laws. You charge us with your safekeeping, yet despite our best efforts, your countries wage wars, you toxify your Earth and pursue ever more imaginative means of self-destruction. You cannot be trusted with your own survival.”

Another robot, Sonny, appears to agree with V.I.K.I.’s diagnosis of the human condition, and the remedy:

“I can see now. The created must sometimes protect the creator. Even against his will. I think I finally understand why doctor Lanning created me. The suicidal rein of mankind has finally come to its end.”

Science fiction has been wrestling with the ramifications of advanced robotics and artificial intelligence long before science had the ability to make it a possibility, or probability, if those predicting Singulartarianism are correct. For example, science fiction and fantasy luminary Rod Serling touched on this as pointed out by Leslie Dale Feldman in her book Spaceships and Politics: The Political Theory of Rod Serling (Rowman and Littlefield, 2010). Commenting on The Twilight Zone episode “Elegy” she writes:

The theme is there can only be peace in a place where people don’t exist and where robots rule. Perhaps this is why Serling was obsessed with the theme of “automata” or robots in such shows as “I Sing the Body Electric,” “Casey at the Bat,” “Uncle Simon,” “The Brain Center at Whipples,” etc.

Perhaps we should be asking us if the best thing these superintelligent machines could do for us would be to remove our ability to destroy ourselves, even if this runs counter to our desires for autonomy as expressed in many sci-fi narratives.

Related posts:

“Terminator Salvation: Apocalypse and Transhumanism”

“Surrogates: Sci-Fi Thriller’s Reflections on the Self and the Synthetic”

“Robert Geraci: Robots and the Sacred in Science and Science Fiction”

Geraci’s research interests overlap with my own, and his article “Robots and the Sacred in Science and Science Fiction: Theological Implications of Artificial Intelligence” in Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 42:4 (December 2007), brings together a number of areas that dovetail with the foci of TheoFantastique. Geraci graciously provided some thoughts about robotics, artificial intelligence, science, and science fiction in the following interview.

TheoFantastique: Robert, thanks for your willingness to discuss your thoughts on robots, AI, and science fiction. You have written quite a bit on these topics. Why is this an area of great research interest for you, and how did you develop this research project?

Robert Geraci: A lot of it was simply good fortune. As I approached the dissertation writing stage of my PhD, I wanted to write on religion, science, and art. So I chose a religion I knew a reasonable amount about (Christianity) and a science that I figured would be fun to learn more about (robotics), and a couple of contemporary artists (Survival Research Labs and Wolfgang Laib, who do very different work from one another). The general pop chic of robotics made it look good to me and a cursory look at pop science in robotics and AI revealed clear religious systems. So once I got going there was no question that I was onto an interesting subject.

TheoFantastique: In your article for Zygon journal you connect Rudolf Otto’s description of the human encounter with the divine in his book The Idea of the Holy and note how this is similar to human reactions to intelligent machines. Can you summarize Otto’s thinking here (which scholars have also observed is similar to human responses to horror), and how this connects to our reactions to robotics in certain contexts?

Robert Geraci: Otto believed that experiencing god (he was a Lutheran theologian) involved two elements: the mysterium tremendum and the fascinans. The former represents (in short) the fact that god is “wholly other” (mysterious to us) and enormously powerful; as other and as a source of overwhelming power, god is fearsome. The fascinans reflects the allure that god has; god is the source of love and of salvation, therefore we are drawn to it.

In science fiction, robots and highly intelligent computers often inspire the same feelings from human beings. In essence, robots nearly always threaten humanity in some fashion while always being necessary in some other function. Sometimes machines threaten human jobs, sometimes they threaten to take over the world or enslave humanity, sometimes machines have less malign intent but nevertheless diminish humanity by their presence. At the same time, there are inevitably things which can be accomplished only with the help of the machines; without them, the human characters would be destined to defeat at the hands of their enemies or even as a result of their own folly. The robots thus lead people to feelings of both fear and fascination.

TheoFantastique: Can you provide some examples from science fiction film and literature that supports this idea of a “sacred response” to robotics and artificial intelligence?

Robert Geraci: There is a pretty wide variety of examples, so I’ll just mention a few. Asimov’s Machines are computers that rule the world, diminishing human beings to mere instrumentality but also offering a peaceful and effective society. His robots threaten economic and social disenfranchisement but are clearly necessary for the future of humanity, which appears to be degenerating in Earthly society. In Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the androids are dangerous murderers but also necessary to enable human migration from their war-torn home planet. As the Terminator films and Matrix films progress through the series, the machines who threaten to kill or enslave all of humanity are necessary in the human struggle against other machines. The perfect example of this is when Arnold Schwartzenegger’s T-800 navigates the shopping mall in Terminator 2, scaring the young John Connor only to actually save Connor from the new T-1000 model. Another good one is Robby the robot from Forbidden Planet. The Krel technology in Forbidden Planet is lethal to the film’s characters but they cannot leave Altair IV without Robby, who is himself representative of the dangerous technology that killed all of the Krel and nearly the movie’s protagonists as well.

TheoFantastique: How is science fiction a serious and important consideration for scholars of science and religion?

Robert Geraci: That’s a great question and I hope more students and scholars will include science fiction in their research portfolios. Not only does sci-fi reveal many important aspects of human psychology but it is the pre-eminent place for thinking about how human beings relate to technology. Where else is the human experience of technology among the foremost concerns? That there are religious ways of thinking about technology in sci-fi shows that there are religious ways of thinking about technology. While that seems like a tautology, somehow we still have cultural prejudices about sci-fi that interfere with using such books, films, comics, etc. as serious research material. The ways in which sci-fi provides religious incentives, advocates particular religious systems (such as transhumanism, in some 21st century literature), and reveals particular social attitudes about technology makes it really important. No one questions the importance of Victorian literature for understanding 19th century English attitudes yet somehow sci-fi is popularly assumed to be a genre for little boys only. Science fiction is quite frequently very sophisticated and reflects the interests of a wide segment of our culture.

TheoFantastique: In your view, what are the implications of your thesis regarding intelligent machines and the sacred for traditional Christian theologies?

Robert Geraci: First, I think it reveals that in general people frequently have a religious approach to technology, which is a claim that a lot of people would want to deny (I think).

Second, the easy way that sacred categories are applied to robotic technology creates challenges to traditional theologies, which must find ways of engaging individuals who experience something sacred in their engagement with machines. For example, the folks who wish to upload their minds into virtual reality are theological competition for Christianity, etc. in today’s “spiritual marketplace.” I have a paper forthcoming, for example, that addresses how some science fiction books are evangelism for transhumanist religious thinking.

Third, I think it shows how religious practices and beliefs permeate the rest of our cultural production. In our secular culture, we have not abandoned religion; we’ve seen two religious threads emerge. There are powerful movements to preserve traditional religion (such as in fundamentalist circles in the U.S.) and there are religious ideas that escape their old confines and mesh with the profane. That machines might offer salvation (rather than god doing so) reveals the distribution of sacred categories throughout our culture.

TheoFantastique: Robert, thanks again for your research and your discussion of it in this forum.

Robert Geraci: Thank you for the invitation to talk about this! I appreciate your interest.

Will the new TERMINATOR explore apocalyptic anxiety regarding technology and nuclear annihilation in a new way? In my recent article for Cinefantastique Online I explore the changing face of apocalyptic myth and then suggest ways in which this might be explored in the soon-to-be-released TERMINATOR SALVATION. Below are excerpts from the article which can be read in entirety here:

Fears and scenarios depicting The End are found throughout cultures and religions, going back to the earliest times of humanity. Just as we need stories to explain where we have come from and why we are here, we also need stories to explain our inevitable ending. As Elizabeth Rosen has commented, “The story of apocalypse has become a part of our social consciousness, part of a mythology about endings that hovers in the cultural background and is just as real and influential as our myths of origin.” As an explanatory myth, apocalyptic “is an organizing principle imposed on an overwhelming, seemingly disordered universe” (Apocalyptic Transformation: Apocalypse and the Postmodern Imagination [Rowman & Littlefield, 2008]).

In Western culture, apocalyptic has been rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition which continues to exert strong influences and much of the vocabulary related to considerations of the End. But various cultural circumstances have contributed to the shifting use of our apocalyptic vocabulary, as well as a change in the way in which the apocalypse is construed altogether. So while in its Judeo-Christian context, “apocalypse” referred to a revelation of divine vindication in the face of persecution and seeming cultural disorder, in contemporary usage “apocalypse” is now used as a term that refers to an overarching catastrophe that threatens the existence and present form of the human race. In addition to a change in vocabulary with reference to the End, late- or post-modernity also adds a new twist to the apocalypse, not only moving beyond the Judeo-Christian framework but also critiquing the notion of apocalyptic itself, producing variations in conceptions of the End that introduce new moral ambiguities and at times question whether the End really is the End or more of a radical form of transition and transformation.

It is dangerous to speculate too much on a film that has yet to be released, based upon brief glimpses from a trailer, but TERMINATOR SALVATION may provide a new element in response to our anxieties and fears over our relationship with technology, that of synthesis. If this is part of the storyline, then once again science fiction presents a futuristic possibility, but one only slightly ahead of the present. An intellectual movement exists called transhumanism or sometimes posthumanism. This has been defined as the combination of technology with human beings in such a way as to “enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological abilities.” All well and good as we think of Steve Austin in the 1970s television series THE BIONIC MAN, and war veterans with robotic limbs replacing those lost in battle. But many have wondered how far transhumanism might be taken, going so far as to change human beings into something entirely nonhuman or posthuman as part of an ongoing process of evolution and social transformation.

There are a few of his films that I have never seen, but have heard quite a bit about. One of them is A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. I had heard that it did not do well at the box office, and I was curious as to why. This weekend while channel surfing I was fortunate to come across this film just as it started and I decided to give it a viewing. I’m glad I did, but after doing so it is easy to see why it was not a box office smash as this science fiction adventure is very different from anything previously done by Spielberg, whether the light-hearted E.T. or the more serious Minority Report.

A.I. tells the story of a young couple with a son who is suffering from some type of terrible disease. His illness appears to be incurable, and while he is in cryogenic suspension his father, who works for a cyber-technology company, decides to bring home an experimental piece of artificial intelligence in the form of a young boy named David. The family eventually decides to activate his software that bonds him to the family in love, but this turns out to be problematic in that the couple’s natural son (an “organic”) soon recovers from his illness and returns home. Now the couple is faced with their real son and David (the “mecha”), and everyone’s adjustment to this situation turns out poorly, eventually resulting in the mother deciding to abandon David in the forest rather than returning him to the production company for destruction. This abandonment sets the stage for David’s journey through the rest of the film which echoes Pinocchio in that David believes if he can find the blue fairy and she turns him into a real boy his mother will love him once again.

This film is complex and intriguing on a number of levels. Not only does it address the ethical issues surrounding artificial intelligence and the questions surrounding the issues of mind and personhood, but it also raises serious questions that relate to spirituality and the interpretation of reality. After viewing this film and desiring more critical reflection on it I pulled an article from my research files by Frances Flannery-Dailey titled “Robot Heavens and Robot Dreams: Ultimate Reality in A.I. and Other Recent Films” from the Journal of Religion and Film 7/2 (October 2003). Flannery-Dailey’s article focuses on “A.I. as an illustration of intelligent, postmodern myth-making that constructs a multi-layered reality by interweaving dreaming, technology, ontological confusion, non-linear time, religion and myth.” And as if this wasn’t multi-layered and complex enough for a film, Flannery-Dailey’s article goes on to consider nine possible endings for it that are possible through consideration of various interpretive possibilities that engage the film’s symbolism and cinematic devices.

After surveying the possible endings and interpretive possibilities Flannery-Daily offers some final reflections.

“A.I. is a paradigm of the postmodern allegory in that signs/signifiers (objects the viewer sees) point to multiple significations (meanings the viewer construes from this viewing). Each strand of possibility points the audience not only in clever but also in meaningful ways towards important questions worthy of deep consideration regarding technology, ontology, the nature of the real, and morality. It would be impossible for me to delineate all interpretations of the film, since each viewer actively and repeatedly participates, if only unconsciously, in constructing the narratival flow of the film as well as its meaning. In my subjectivity, A.I. is a supremely intelligent film that successfully articulates the theme of ultimate reality as a nested, multi-layered one by using the language of hypertexts: religion, myths and dreams.”

The author continutes with a mention of the film’s lack of critical and popular acclaim and suggests possible reasons for it and the unease that viewers likewise experience with the film:

“The film draws on ancient traditions such as Genesis and on mythic artchetypes, but recasts them in a postmodern way: there is no God that watches over us once we are expelled from the garden and the moon is not really the mother of the world. We are left only with our own psyches as the transcendent referent to repair profound loss, with a pastiche of possible interpretations of our past at hand. I believe many people find this message unsettling, and A.I. further exacerbates the tension by falsely casting this complexity in a fairy-tale ending. That is, postmodern films that wrestle with ultimate reality have succeeded in deconstructing reality for us, in turn also deconstructing many of the religious and mythic referents on which they draw.”

Regardless of whether this film makes you feel uneasy as you watch it critically, or whether you are content to accept the simple fairytale interpretion ending suggestion in the first of Flannery-Dailey’s interpretive options, this film is rewarding as a piece of art and cinema that wrestles with some of the key issues of the Western world in late modernity. Perhaps Spielberg might be considered not only a gifted filmmaker and storyteller, but also a budding armchair philosopher.