[alicebot-aiethics] AI: The Movie

[Christopher Fahey [askROM]]

> > Rich said:
> > It may be the first movie in history about which we can 
> > say, "The web site was better than the movie."
> 
> You're right! ;-)

Far, far better. 


> Although AI, the movie, never gave any social context for us 
> to know why people hated these machines, other than natural 
> human cruelty, I harken back to Asimov and his stories about 
> social prejudice against machines that were taking away 
> people's jobs and livelihood.  This kind of explanation seems 
> more plausible, but I found little to grab hold of in the 
> Spielberg attempt.

(Spoilers below)

This was a big issue for me, too. There were some *hints*, however, as
to why such prejudice might exist. Knowing Spielberg I can't imagine him
making a mistake of being too subtle, so I can't be sure if what I
observed was Spielberg's (or Kubrick's) intention, or if it was just a
coincidence.

Anyway, the crowd at the Flesh Fair was very different from the people
you saw in other parts of the movie. Outside of one black woman in
William Hurt's classroom, you pretty much saw only white, physically
fit, wealthy, well-dressed professional, "Alpha" types in this world.
That is, until we got to the Flesh Fair. The Flesh Fair crowd was
distinctly more poorly dressed, out of shape, slobby looking, and
clearly more racially mixed. Nobody at the Flesh Fair could afford to
put a child into suspended animation, much less replace him with a
robot. They were poor and angry at the way robot/AI technology had
upended their lives while making the lives of the rich more easy.

So the (unintended?) message is that there will be an underclass of
people for whom the introduction of robots will be a double threat - not
only for the classic reason of "a robot took my job", but also out of
class envy. The sad fact about monumental technologies like AI, genetic
engineering, etc is that the wealthy will be the first to enjoy their
benefits, while the poor will simply have to deal with it. 

I could be wrong, but my suspicion is that Kubrick's original story
actually played up this class warfare thing, but that Spielberg tried to
de-emphasize the class issues and to overemphasize the metaphorical
"racism" of the crowd. This is typical Spielbergian oversimplification
(The hounds of hell motorcycles? Please!). The WWF-meets-Thunderdome
aesthetic made the whole thing seem so crass and mean-spirited that you
couldn't help but detest the crowd (even at the end) and root for the
poor robots. What could have been a subplot about how "The introduction
of superrobots has further torn society in half" turned into a subplot
about "Stupid ignorant poor people are always prejudiced against things
they don't understand". We never really had a chance to wonder *why*
these people were so angry, we just saw them as a barbarous crowd driven
by some weak "pro-humanity" rhetoric of some crazed Irish demagogue. 

Anyway, good point Robby! Definitely relevant to AI Ethics.

-Cf