D.A.R.Y.L. (1985):What's
In a Name?
Is it Daryl or D.A.R.Y.L.? Daryl is a precocious
little boy--he's exceedingly polite, helpful, and has the IQ of a
genius. In other words, he's nothing like the other kids in his
neighborhood. In fact, strictly speaking, he's not human. That's
because he's also D.A.R.Y.L. (a Data Analyzing Robot Youth
Lifeform), a government-funded experiment in artificial
intelligence with an organic body and a computer brain. After
being kidnapped by one of the project's scientists, who
considered D.A.R.Y.L. more human than machine (more Daryl than
D.A.R.Y.L., you might say), Daryl is found lost in the woods,
suffering from amnesia, and is placed in a picture-perfect,
Norman-Rockwellesque foster home in a small town in South
Carolina.
Daryl's new parents are Joyce and
Andy Richardson, and although they become very attached to Daryl,
Joyce is a bit disconcerted with Daryl's precocity: "He's
too helpful, too honest...too damn willing. He doesn't seem to
need anybody." Daryl's new best friend, Turtle, advises him
to "screw up a little," because parents need to feel
that they're "making some progress with their kid," and
the advice works. Daryl strikes out in the last inning of his
little league game and tells his foster father to "kiss my
ass" so that Joyce can gleefully step in and deliver a
lecture on being a good loser.
Thus, during his stay with the
Richardsons, Daryl becomes more and more like the other kids in
the neighborhood, more and more human. When word arrives that
Daryl's real parents have been located and they arrive to pick
him up (they are actually two project scientists posing as
Daryl's parents), they seem surprised when Joyce tells them Daryl
is "nervous" about leaving with them, and that he can
empathize with his friend Turtle's grief that his friend is
leaving.
Back at the Pentagon, the
scientists try to discover how D.A.R.Y.L.'s accidental
socialization has affected his computer brain. Daryl explains why
he struck out in the baseball game: "I discovered that
under certain conditions [relating with others], error is more
efficient than optimal performance."
The scientists learn that he has developed a preference for
chocolate ice cream, although he was never programmed for taste
and subjective response. When they cover his body with
electrodes and prepare to surgically examine
his computer brain, he becomes afraid,
another response for which he was not programmed. The scientists
wonder whether D.A.R.Y.L is simply simulating human emotions, but
conclude that a "machine becomes human when you can't tell
the difference."
The military, predictably, is not
happy about this amazing and unexpected breakthrough in
artificial intelligence. They have no need for an emotional,
empathetic D.A.R.Y.L. who can relate to others; they need, and
are paying for, a "fearless, technically-skilled,
devastating soldier." The project is terminated, and the
scientists are ordered to "dispose" of Daryl. They
refuse, convinced that D.A.R.Y.L.'s emotional responses, whether
simulated or not, signify humanity,
and the remainder of the film is devoted to an extended escape
and chase sequence.
D.A.R.Y.L. becomes Daryl, not
through advanced programming techniques, but through his
socialization and incorporation into a loving family, and through
his interactions with his friend, Turtle, who introduces him to
the subtleties and contradictions of normal human social
relations. Daryl's relentlessly perfect behavior leads Turtle to
tell him "For a genius, you can be really stupid!" This
socialization process is powerful enough to change D.A.R.Y.L.'s
hardware--when he is returned to the Pentagon laboratories, the
scientists discover an error in one of his
silicon chips. (Computers becoming
"human" in films is usually the result of some kind of
malfunction or hardware trauma--for example, see Electric Dreams
and Short-Circuit).
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