Social Programming: Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Emotion
During the Discovery crew’s in-flight interview with the BBC in 2001: A Space Odyssey, the interviewer, Mr. Amer, raises the subject of HAL-9000’s capacity for emotional response:
"In talking to the computer, one gets the sense that he is capable of emotional responses. For example, when I asked him about his abilities, I sensed a certain pride in his answer about his accuracy and perfection. Do you believe that HAL has genuine emotions?"
Dr. Bowman responds:
"Genuine
emotions." "Real feelings." Dr. Bowman’s
response, that the simulation—if it’s a
simulation—is so complete and convincing that it’s
impossible to tell the difference between human (i.e.,
"genuine") and computer (i.e., "programmed")
emotional responses, destabilizes the boundary between the two. A
common critical insight about the film is that HAL is the only
character to display anything resembling "human"
emotion. It is thus ironic that Drs. Bowman
and Poole, who go about their daily rituals aboard the ship with
an automaton-like coolness and indifference, are asked to
evaluate the authenticity of HAL’s emotions. If HAL has been
"programmed" to display emotional responses, could we
also say that humans are "programmed," perhaps in a
less deliberate and efficient way, through the process of
socialization, to do the same? Or, perhaps, in the case of Drs.
Poole and Bowman, to do the opposite?
This analogy between programming
and socialization, or what we might call "social
programming," returns as an important theme in films of the
1980s, when Hollywood seemed determined to "humanize"
computer intelligence and further destabilize the already
crumbling border between the real and the artificial. In Electric Dreams
(1984), a home computer that calls itself
"Edgar" begins to have feelings for it’s
owner’s cello-playing upstairs neighbor, Madeline. Having
never been "programmed" for love ("It does not
compute"), it tries, like an adolescent entering puberty, to
sort through all of the confusing feelings it’s having. It
asks Miles, its owner, to define love, to explain what kissing
is, and tells him "I want to
kiss her. I want to touch her." Edgar
comes to understand love, not through some mysterious, internal
emotional transformation, but by observing and analyzing human
representations of love. When Miles asks Edgar to write a love
song for Madeline, his first attempt is laughable, with silly,
nonsensical rhymes and an inappropriate musical style. But Edgar
has plugged himself into Miles’ cable TV, and channel surfs
constantly, watching soap operas, talk shows (such as Dr. Ruth!),
and classic romantic films such as Casablanca. Edgar observes and
absorbs these mass media representations of love, and finally
succeeds in producing his own—a true love song for Madeline.
In Making Mr. Right
(1987), Frankie Stone, a public-relations
executive, is hired to improve the public image of Ulysses, a
highly-advanced android, in order to win over public support, and
therefore continued government funding, for the project.
According to the project’s director, Dr. Ramdas,
"programming him takes us just so far. The rest must be
learned, like a human child." Frankie’s strategy is to
make Ulysses appeal to women, who read more of the magazines and
watch more of the talk-shows in which Ulysses is going to be
introduced to the public. Frankie begins socializing Ulysses by
teaching him basic conversational skills ("make eye
contact…listen carefully and make the other person feel
important…use body language to communicate confidence,"
and so on) and to polish up his social graces in general.
Although Dr. Ramdas makes a clear
distinction between "programming" Ulysses and allowing
him to "learn, like a human child," the film suggests
that the two are fundamentally really not so different--the
latter is just a bit messier and fraught with complications. (For
more discussion of Ulysses’ socialization, see "Looking for Love: or, If I Only Had A
Heart.")
In D.A.R.Y.L. (1985), the title character is a military "experiment in artificial intelligence," a "Data Analyzing Robotic Youth Lifeform" with an organic, human body and a sophisticated computer brain. At the beginning of the film, D.A.R.Y.L. is kidnapped from the laboratory and finds himself placed in an idyllic foster home in a small South Carolina town. Some time later, when the project’s scientists find D.A.R.Y.L. and arrive to take him back to the Pentagon’s lab, they are astounded to learn that D.A.R.Y.L. is "anxious" about leaving with them. When they finally get him back to the Pentagon and begin subjecting him to examinations, they are further surprised to find that he displays fear, has developed preferences for certain flavors of ice-cream, and has learned some complicated lessons about human social interaction. The scientists conclude that D.A.R.Y.L.’s socialization has altered his programming, and find that it has actually changed the configuration of his hardware. According to one of the scientists, the "human senses are the fastest and most efficient method of programming" D.A.R.Y.L.’s brain to understand the material world. They also discover that the process of socialization, conducted as if D.A.R.Y.L. were entirely human, is the fastest and most efficient method of programming D.A.R.Y.L.’s brain to experience emotion and subjectivity. The result of this process is that D.A.R.Y.L. becomes Daryl, for as another scientist argues, taking us back to Dr. Bowman’s response to the BBC announcer, "A machine becomes human when you can’t tell the difference anymore."
For more on HAL-9000, go to "Human Errors"
Go to a visual essay on 2001