Expert System In Fiction

Artificial intelligence is a recurrent theme in science fiction, whether utopian, stressing the potential advantages, or dystopian, stressing the dangers.

The notion of machines with human-like intelligence dates back a minimum of to Samuel Butler’s 1872 novel Erewhon. Since then, numerous sci-fi stories have actually presented different effects of developing such intelligence, typically including disobediences by robots. Among the best understood of these are Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 2001: A Space Odyssey with its murderous onboard computer HAL 9000, contrasting with the more benign R2-D2 in George Lucas’s 1977 Star Wars and the eponymous robot in Pixar’s 2008 WALL-E.

Scientists and engineers have actually kept in mind the implausibility of lots of science fiction scenarios, but have mentioned fictional robots sometimes in artificial intelligence research short articles, most frequently in a utopian context.

Background

The notion of innovative robotics with human-like intelligence dates back at least to Samuel Butler’s 1872 unique Erewhon. [1] [2] This drew on an earlier (1863) article of his, Darwin among the Machines, where he raised the question of the development of awareness amongst self-replicating devices that might supplant human beings as the dominant species. [3] [2] Similar ideas were likewise talked about by others around the same time as Butler, consisting of George Eliot in a chapter of her final released work Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879 ). [2] The creature in Mary Shelley’s 1818 Frankenstein has also been thought about a synthetic being, for circumstances by the science fiction author Brian Aldiss. [4] Beings with a minimum of some appearance of intelligence were pictured, too, in classical antiquity. [5] [6] [7]

Utopian and dystopian visions

Artificial intelligence is intelligence shown by machines, in contrast to the natural intelligence displayed by human beings and other animals. [8] It is a recurrent style in sci-fi; scholars have divided it into utopian, stressing the possible advantages, and dystopian, emphasising the risks. [9] [10] [11]

Utopian

Optimistic visions of the future of expert system are possible in sci-fi. [12] Benign AI characters include Robbie the Robot, first seen in Forbidden Planet on 1956; Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation from 1987 to 1994; and Pixar’s WALL-E in 2008. [13] [11] Iain Banks’s Culture series of novels depicts a utopian, post-scarcity area society of humanoids, aliens, and advanced beings with expert system living in socialist environments throughout the Galaxy. [14] [15] Researchers at the University of Cambridge have actually recognized four significant themes in utopian scenarios featuring AI: immortality, or indefinite life-spans; ease, or liberty from the requirement to work; satisfaction, or enjoyment and home entertainment supplied by machines; and dominance, the power to safeguard oneself or guideline over others. [16]

Alexander Wiegel contrasts the role of AI in 2001: A Space Odyssey and in Duncan Jones’s 2009 film Moon. Whereas in 1968, Wiegel argues, the general public felt “innovation fear” and the AI computer HAL was represented as a “cold-hearted killer”, by 2009 the general public were even more familiar with AI, and the movie’s GERTY is “the peaceful rescuer” who allows the lead characters to succeed, and who compromises itself for their safety. [17]

Dystopian

The scientist Duncan Lucas composes (in 2002) that people are worried about the technology they are constructing, and that as makers started to approach intelligence and thought, that concern becomes acute. He calls the early 20th century dystopian view of AI in fiction the “animated automaton”, naming as examples the 1931 film Frankenstein, the 1927 Metropolis, and the 1920 play R.U.R. [18] A later 20th century method he names “heuristic hardware”, offering as circumstances 2001 a Space Odyssey, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and I, Robot. [19] Lucas thinks about also the films that show the result of the desktop computer on sci-fi from 1980 onwards with the blurring of the limit between the genuine and the virtual, in what he calls the “cyborg result”. He points out as examples Neuromancer, The Matrix, The Diamond Age, and Terminator. [20]

The movie director Ridley Scott has concentrated on AI throughout his profession, and it plays an important part in his movies Prometheus, Blade Runner, and the Alien franchise. [21]

Frankenstein complex

A common portrayal of AI in sci-fi, and one of the oldest, is the Frankenstein complex, a term coined by Asimov, where a robot switches on its creator. [22] For circumstances, in the 2015 film Ex Machina, the intelligent entity Ava switches on its developer, along with on its prospective rescuer. [23]

AI rebellion

Among the many possible dystopian situations involving expert system, robotics may usurp control over civilization from humans, requiring them into submission, hiding, or extinction. [15] In tales of AI rebellion, the worst of all situations takes place, as the smart entities produced by humanity become self-aware, turn down human authority and attempt to ruin humanity. Possibly the very first novel to address this theme, The Wreck of the World (1889) by “William Grove” (pseudonym of Reginald Colebrooke Reade), happens in 1948 and features sentient makers that revolt against the mankind. [24] Another of the earliest examples is in the 1920 play R.U.R. by Karel Čapek, a race of self-replicating robot slaves revolt against their human masters; [25] [26] another early circumstances remains in the 1934 movie Master of the World, where the War-Robot eliminates its own innovator. [27]

Many sci-fi rebellion stories followed, among the best-known being Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, in which the synthetically intelligent onboard computer system HAL 9000 lethally malfunctions on an area objective and eliminates the entire crew except the spaceship’s leader, who manages to deactivate it. [28]

In his 1967 Hugo Award-winning brief story, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, Harlan Ellison provides the possibility that a sentient computer system (called Allied Mastercomputer or “AM” in the story) will be as unhappy and discontented with its boring, unlimited existence as its human creators would have been. “AM” ends up being angered enough to take it out on the few humans left, whom he sees as straight accountable for his own monotony, anger and misery. [29]

Alternatively, as in William Gibson’s 1984 cyberpunk unique Neuromancer, the smart beings may just not appreciate human beings. [15]

AI-controlled societies

The intention behind the AI transformation is frequently more than the basic quest for power or a superiority complex. Robots might revolt to end up being the “guardian” of humanity. Alternatively, mankind may intentionally relinquish some control, fearful of its own devastating nature. An early example is Jack Williamson’s 1948 unique The Humanoids, in which a race of humanoid robotics, in the name of their Prime Directive – “to serve and obey and protect men from damage” – basically assume control of every aspect of human life. No human beings might participate in any behavior that may endanger them, and every human action is scrutinized carefully. Humans who resist the Prime Directive are eliminated and lobotomized, so they may enjoy under the brand-new mechanoids’ guideline. [30] Though still under human authority, Isaac Asimov’s Zeroth Law of the Three Laws of Robotics likewise indicated a good-hearted assistance by robots. [31]

In the 21st century, science fiction has actually explored government by algorithm, in which the power of AI may be indirect and decentralised. [32]

Human supremacy

In other circumstances, mankind has the ability to keep control over the Earth, whether by banning AI, by developing robots to be submissive (as in Asimov’s works), or by having humans merge with robotics. The science fiction author Frank Herbert explored the concept of a time when mankind might prohibit synthetic intelligence (and in some interpretations, even all forms of computing technology consisting of integrated circuits) entirely. His Dune series discusses a disobedience called the Butlerian Jihad, in which mankind defeats the clever makers and enforces a death penalty for recreating them, pricing quote from the imaginary Orange Catholic Bible, “Thou shalt not make a maker in the likeness of a human mind.” In the Dune novels released after his death (Hunters of Dune, Sandworms of Dune), a renegade AI overmind go back to remove mankind as vengeance for the Butlerian Jihad. [33]

In some stories, humankind remains in authority over robots. Often the robotics are set specifically to stay in service to society, as in Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics. [31] In the Alien movies, not only is the control system of the Nostromo spaceship rather smart (the crew call it “Mother”), but there are also androids in the society, which are called “synthetics” or “synthetic individuals”, that are such perfect replicas of human beings that they are not victimized. [21] [34] TARS and CASE from Interstellar likewise show simulated human emotions and humour while continuing to acknowledge their expendability. [35]

Simulated truth

Simulated reality has actually become a typical style in science fiction, as seen in the 1999 film The Matrix, which illustrates a world where artificially intelligent robotics oppress humanity within a simulation which is set in the contemporary world. [36]

Reception

Implausibility

Engineers and scientists have taken an interest in the method AI exists in fiction. In movies like the 2014 Ex Machina or 2015 Chappie, a single isolated genius becomes the first to successfully build an artificial general intelligence; researchers in the real world deem this to be unlikely. In Chappie, Transcendence, and Tron, human minds are capable of being submitted into synthetic or virtual bodies; generally no reasonable description is offered as to how this uphill struggle can be accomplished. In the I, Robot and Bicentennial Man movies, robotics that are set to serve people spontaneously produce brand-new objectives on their own, without a plausible explanation of how this occurred. [37] Analysing Ian McDonald’s 2004 River of Gods, Krzysztof Solarewicz recognizes the ways that it illustrates AIs, including “self-reliance and unexpectedness, political awkwardness, openness to the alien and the occidental worth of authenticity.” [38] Another important perspective to take is that fiction’s “non-rational components in the discourse (the emotive, the mythic, or even the quasi-theological) are more than just distortions or diversions from what may otherwise be a sober and logical public debate about the future of A.I.” Fiction can discourage readers about future advances, triggering pessimism that we see today surrounding the subject of AI. [39]

Kinds of mention

The robotics scientist Omar Mubin and associates have actually evaluated the engineering points out of the leading 21 fictional robots, based on those in the Carnegie Mellon University hall of fame, and the IMDb list. WALL-E had 20 points out, followed by HAL 9000 with 15, [a] Star Wars’s R2-D2 with 13, and Data with 12; the Terminator (T-800) received only 2. Of the total of 121 engineering discusses, 60 were utopian, 40 neutral, and 21 dystopian. HAL 9000 and Skynet received both utopian and dystopian discusses; for example, HAL 9000 is seen as dystopian in one paper “since its designers stopped working to prioritize its goals properly”, [42] however as utopian in another where a genuine system’s “conversational chat bot user interface [does not have] a HAL 9000 level of intelligence and there is ambiguity in how the computer system analyzes what the human is trying to communicate”. [43] Utopian mentions, typically of WALL-E, were connected with the objective of improving communication to readers, and to a lesser degree with motivation to authors. WALL-E was pointed out regularly than any other robotic for emotions (followed by HAL 9000), voice speech (followed by HAL 9000 and R2-D2), for physical gestures, and for character. Skynet was the robotic frequently discussed for intelligence, followed by HAL 9000 and Data. [40] Mubin and coworkers thought that scientists and engineers avoided dystopian mentions of robotics, perhaps out of “an unwillingness driven by nervousness or merely a lack of awareness”. [44]

Portrayals of AI developers

Scholars have actually noted that fictional creators of AI are extremely male: in the 142 most prominent movies featuring AI from 1920 to 2020, just 9 of 116 AI developers represented (8%) were female. [45] Such developers are depicted as lone geniuses (eg, Tony Stark in the Iron Man Marvel Cinematic Universe movies), connected with the military (eg, Colossus: The Forbin Project) and large corporations (eg, I, Robot), or making human-like AI to replace a lost enjoyed one or serve as the perfect fan (e.g., The Stepford Wives). [45]

Biology in fiction
Darwin amongst the Machines
Machine guideline
Simulated consciousness (sci-fi).
List of expert system movies.

Notes

^ Mubin and colleagues kept in mind that the orthography of robot names caused them problems; hence HAL 9000 was likewise written HAL, HAL9000, and HAL-9000, and similarly for other robotics, so they believed their search was likely insufficient. [41] References

^ “Darwin among the Machines”, reprinted in the Notebooks of Samuel Butler at Project Gutenberg.
^ a b c Taylor, Tim; Dorin, Alan (2020 ). Rise of the Self-Replicators: Early Visions of Machines, AI and Robots That Can Reproduce and Evolve. Cham: Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/ 978-3-030-48234-3. ISBN 978-3-030-48233-6. S2CID 220855726. “Rise of the Self-Replicators”. Tim Taylor.

^ “Darwin among the Machines”. The Press, Christchurch, New Zealand. 13 June 1863.
^ Aldiss, Brian Wilson (1995 ). The Detached Retina: Aspects of SF and Fantasy. Syracuse University Press. p. 78. ISBN 978-0-8156-0370-2.
^ McCorduck, Pamela (2004 ). Machines Who Think (2nd ed.). Routledge. pp. 4-5. ISBN 978-1-56881-205-2.
^ Cave, Stephen; Dihal, Kanta (25 July 2018). “Ancient dreams of smart devices: 3,000 years of robots”. Nature. 559 (7715 ): 473-475. Bibcode:2018 Natur.559..473 C. doi:10.1038/ d41586-018-05773-y.
^ Mayor, Adrienne (2018 ). Gods and robots: misconceptions, makers, and ancient dreams of technology. Princeton. ISBN 978-0-691-18351-0. OCLC 1060968156. mention book: CS1 maint: area missing out on publisher (link).
^ Poole, David; Mackworth, Alan; Goebel, Randy (1998 ). Computational Intelligence: A Logical Approach. Oxford University Press. p. 1. ISBN 0-19-510270-3.
^ Booker, M. Keith (1994 ). “Chapter 1: Utopia, Dystopia, and Social Critique”. The Dystopian Impulse in Modern Literature: Fiction as Social Criticism. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp. 17, 19. ISBN 978-0-313-29092-3.
^ Cave, Stephen; Dihal, Kanta; Dillon, Sarah (2020 ). “Introduction: Imagining AI”. In Cave, Stephen; Dihal, Kanta; Dillon, Sarah (eds.). AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking Of Intelligent Machines. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 10-11. ISBN 978-0-1988-4666-6.
^ a b Mubin et al. 2019, p. 5:2.
^ Tegmark, Max (2017 ). Life 3.0: being human in the age of expert system. Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-1-101-94659-6. OCLC 973137375.
^ Goode 2018, p. 188.
^ Banks, Iain M. “A Few Notes on the Culture”. Archived from the initial on 22 March 2012. Retrieved 23 November 2015.
^ a b c Walter, Damien (16 March 2016). “When AI rules the world: what SF novels tell us about our future overlords”. The Guardian. Retrieved 27 July 2018.
^ Cave, Stephen; Dihal, Kanta (2019 ). “Hopes and fears for smart machines in fiction and reality”. Nature Machine Intelligence. 1 (2 ): 74-78. doi:10.1038/ s42256-019-0020-9. S2CID 150700981.
^ Wiegel 2012.
^ Lucas 2002, pp. 22-47.
^ Lucas 2002, pp. 48-85.
^ Lucas 2002, pp. 109-152.
^ a b Barkman, Adam (2013 ). Barkman, Ashley; Kang, Nancy (eds.). The Culture and Philosophy of Ridley Scott. Lexington Books. pp. 121-142. ISBN 978-0739178720.
^ Olander, Joseph (1978 ). Science fiction: modern folklore: the SFWA-SFRA. Harper & Row. p. 252. ISBN 0-06-046943-9.
^ Seth, Anil (24 January 2015). “Consciousness Awakening”. New Scientist.
^ “Grove, William”. SF Encyclopedia. 8 February 2023.
^ Goode 2018, p. 187.
^ Tim Madigan (July-August 2012). “RUR or RU Ain’t An Individual?”. Philosophy Now. Archived from the initial on 3 February 2013. Retrieved 24 July 2013.
^ “Der Herr der Welt (Master of the World)”. The New York City Times. 16 December 1935. p. 23.
^ Overbye, Dennis (10 May 2018). “‘ 2001: An Area Odyssey’ Is Still the ‘Ultimate Trip’ – The rerelease of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece encourages us to show once again on where we’re originating from and where we’re going”. The New York City Times.
^ Francavilla, Joseph (1994 ). “The Concept of the Divided Self in Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” and “Shatterday””. Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. 6 (2/3 (22/23)): 107-125. JSTOR 43308212.
^ “The Humanoids (based upon ‘With Folded Hands’)”. Kirkus Reviews. 15 November 1995. Retrieved 27 July 2018.
^ a b Asimov, Isaac (1950 ). “Runaround”. I, Robot (The Isaac Asimov Collection ed.). Doubleday. p. 40. ISBN 0-385-42304-7. This is a precise transcription of the laws. They likewise appear in the front of the book, and in both places, there is no “to” in the second law.
^ Walton, Jo Lindsay (1 February 2024). “Artificial Intelligence in Contemporary Science Fiction”. SFRA Review. Retrieved 5 February 2024.
^ Lorenzo, DiTommaso (November 1992). “History and Historical Effect in Frank Herbert’s Dune”. Science Fiction Studies. 19 (3 ): 311-325. JSTOR 4240179.
^ Livingstone, Josephine (23 May 2017). “How the Androids Took Over the Alien Franchise”. The New Republic. Retrieved 27 July 2018.
^ Murphy, Shaunna (11 December 2014). “Could TARS From ‘Interstellar’ Actually Exist? We Asked Science”. MTV News. Archived from the original on 16 November 2014. Retrieved 27 July 2018.
^ Allen, Jamie (28 November 2012). “The Matrix and Postmodernism”. Prezi.com. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
^ Shultz, David (17 July 2015). “Which films get artificial intelligence right?”. Science|AAAS. doi:10.1126/ science.aac8859. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
^ Solarewicz 2015.
^ Goode 2018.
^ a b Mubin et al. 2019, p. 5:15.
^ Mubin et al. 2019, p. 5:20.
^ Mubin et al. 2019, p. 5:8.
^ Mubin et al. 2019, p. 5:10.
^ Mubin et al. 2019, p. 5:19.
^ a b Cave, Stephen; Dihal, Kanta; Drage, Eleanor; McInerney, Kerry (13 February 2023). “Who makes AI? Gender and representations of AI researchers in popular film, 1920-2020″. Public Understanding of Science. 32 (6 ): 745-760. doi:10.1177/ 09636625231153985. PMC 10413781. PMID 36779283. S2CID 256826634.
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Lucas, Duncan (2002 ). Body, Mind, Soul-The’ Cyborg Effect’: Artificial Intelligence in Science Fiction (thesis). McMaster University (PhD thesis). hdl:11375/ 11154.
Mubin, Omar; Wadibhasme, Kewal; Jordan, Philipp; Obaid, Mohammad (2019 ). “Reviewing the Presence of Sci-fi Robots in Computing Literature”. ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction. 8 (1 ). Article 5. doi:10.1145/ 3303706. S2CID 75135568.
Solarewicz, Krzysztof (2015 ). “The Stuff That Dreams Are Made of: AI in Contemporary Science Fiction”. Beyond Expert system. Topics in Intelligent Engineering and Informatics. Vol. 9. Springer International Publishing. pp. 111-120. doi:10.1007/ 978-3-319-09668-1_8. ISBN 978-3-319-09667-4.
Wiegel, Alexander (2012 ). “AI in Science-fiction: a comparison of Moon (2009) and 2001: An Area Odyssey (1968 )”. Aventinus.
King, Geoff; Krzywinska, Tanya (2000 ). Sci-fi Cinema: From Outerspace to Cyberspace. Wallflower Press. ISBN 978-1-903364-03-1.

External links

AI and Sci-Fi: My, Oh, My!: Keynote Address by Robert J. Sawyer 2002
AI and Cinema – Does synthetic insanity rule?