Introduction
For as long as mankind has existed we have been an apex predator, with the power and intelligence to shape the world to our own unique preferences and to bend the will of almost every mammal that lived alongside us. We have been thus far unchallenged in our position on earth but a natural part of evolution leads us to develop ideas of what beings could possibly over throw us/what beings could possibly challenge our position. These intrigues manifest themselves in a variety of ways such as science fiction novels, art pieces (?) and films alike but the medium in particular I will be focusing on is science fiction films and how they are used to represent and grow these ideas. Specifically I will be looking at how we have created a villain, an obsession, within something that has only in the last few years come to exist - Artificial Intelligence, or in other words Robots.
(needs to have a nice opening quote at the start or quote with fact embedded, 2 establishing quotes needed, one factual, one fictional?)
Main Arguments
There was a time where robots were more of a futuristic fancy than an actual threat, they started off as a novel idea to include within movies, often under guise of a soft villain or dumb service machine aiding the hero (include examples from Metropolis where the maria-bot sets out to destroy the city under the disguise of being human ‘There can be no understanding between the hand and the brain unless the heart acts as mediator.’). Address how Metropolis is regarded as one of the most influential films in the science fiction genre. It was a template for robots to come, with the maria bot as a villain under a humans control. (implant some quotes from time-out website). Maria was the inspiration for both bladerunner and c3PO and how the two differentiate (c3PO completely subservient, bladerunner not so much).
humans haven't always acknowledged or accepted A.I as the natural evolution of our species but slowly with the development of real-life technology robots inclusion within films starts to change as we realised the potential in robots. The influences of things like wars inspired the idea for a war machine such as terminator (films like Terminator and I Robot back this up, where Humans rally against the robots and assert their authority in the movies).
How there was a mid range film (A.I Aritifical Intelligence 2001) where the robots weren't the bad guys but they were rallied against anyways but still outlived the humans ultimately.
But as modern technology has developed (siri, hospital A.I, online services) that we are gradually coming towards a realisation that our creations might surpass us/ our abilities and this is shown through recent movies such as Ex Machina and Her where the viewer is left having to acknowledge that the A.I has overpowered the humans and is left as both the protagonist and antagonist at the end of the film. The inclusion of the idea of consciousness will be something i will interlink into the essay, our humanisation of robots (and their appearance) over the years but also how they are always represented as slaves (c3po, A.I, I Robot)
Address how to some extent robots are wish fulfilment for Humans, how we like the idea of being able to control something (possibly) immortal to carry on our ways. Talk about the enslavement of robots in movies and how in the digital age we are experimenting with various forms of A.I and how we are ironically slaves to the machine (POINT TO COME BACK TO).
Talk about the mid way point briefly in the film (A.I) where the robots are aware of what they are made to do but not necessarily wanting to obey, then the next natural step would be a robot that doesn't want to obey those rules, talk about the IROBOT adaptation and use factual quotes about the red queen hypothesis and ask whether humans are starting to question our position in the world.
Concluding
The representation of A.I in science fiction is slowly manifesting itself into two representations that each related themselves to the current reality and society we are living in, These two representations are
a conscious non physical form, something that is entirely possible within our lifetime (technically it is online now but has no control over anything as of yet)
and a physical robot that wants to blend in with humans but be free of a human mindset.
The physical robot is representative of our acceptance and celebration of a technological evolution within society and the inclusion of technology in our lives. The physical robot is used within science fiction to occasionally narrates the threat of becoming to self reliant on convenience and that if something has a conscious it should be treated as such. We often beat the physical robot in science fiction which creates hope for the human race and hope that robots are not the evolution of humans.
The conscious non physical A.I is representative of our own fear of the unknown, something we have created that we cannot control. It is used within science fiction to narrate and remind us to not to abuse technology and not to trust technology. We often struggle to beat the A.I in science fiction because it is hard (but not impossible) to stop something that isn't physically manifested (iRobot, Resident Evil, Skynet - terminator) and that controls our actions/lives/ other robots. This creates mistrust in the development of Robotics/A.I and alludes to A.I becoming the evolution of humanity.
These two representations together create a balance in the science fiction world and a balanced response to modern technology. The one celebrates our advancements and reminds us we are in charge and the other shows the brilliance of A.I and reminds us that we shouldn't rely too heavily on something we cannot guarantee complete control over.
In some regards yes, the next evolution for humans is expanding our life cycles whilst also finding a way to control the amount of pollution that a human emits over a life time. Some would argue that the natural progression of this would be to advance Artificial intelligence to a point where our memories could continue on in a robotic form. Presuming of course that A.I hasn't gotten to a point where it no longer needs us. This worry manifests itself in more recent films such as "her" and "ex machine" where robots that were designed to fit in amongst society to improve our lives become higher beings with intelligence to understand they will outlast the human life.
In some regards no, Humans are still very much the apex predator and it would be unnatural to continue our evolution through use of mechanical beings. With all these science fiction films out there shows that people ARE aware of the consequences of enslaving anything with a mind. It might be fine to poke fun at siri from time to time but developing a more advanced A.I means that we rely more and more on something that we cannot see, and only believe we can control. Technology is in some ways unpredictable, as much as we try to control it and are under the impression we can there will always be "ghosts in the machine".
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