Expert System In Fiction

Artificial intelligence is a persistent theme in science fiction, whether utopian, stressing the possible benefits, or dystopian, stressing the risks.

The notion of machines with human-like intelligence go back a minimum of to Samuel Butler’s 1872 novel Erewhon. Ever since, many science fiction stories have actually provided different impacts of producing such intelligence, typically including rebellions by robots. Among the very best known of these are Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 2001: A Space Odyssey with its homicidal onboard computer system HAL 9000, contrasting with the more benign R2-D2 in 1977 Star Wars and the eponymous robot in Pixar’s 2008 WALL-E.

Scientists and engineers have actually noted the implausibility of many science fiction scenarios, however have discussed imaginary robots often times in expert system research study articles, frequently in a utopian context.

Background

The notion of innovative robotics with human-like intelligence go back a minimum of to Samuel Butler’s 1872 novel Erewhon. [1] [2] This made use of an earlier (1863) post of his, Darwin among the Machines, where he raised the concern of the development of consciousness amongst self-replicating makers that may supplant humans as the dominant types. [3] [2] Similar concepts were likewise gone over by others around the same time as Butler, consisting of George Eliot in a chapter of her last released work Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879 ). [2] The animal in Mary Shelley’s 1818 Frankenstein has actually also been considered a synthetic being, for instance by the science fiction author Brian Aldiss. [4] Beings with a minimum of some look of intelligence were thought of, too, in classical antiquity. [5] [6] [7]

Utopian and dystopian visions

Artificial intelligence is intelligence demonstrated by machines, in contrast to the natural intelligence shown by people and other animals. [8] It is a persistent theme in sci-fi; scholars have divided it into utopian, stressing the potential advantages, and dystopian, stressing the threats. [9] [10] [11]

Utopian

Optimistic visions of the future of expert system are possible in science fiction. [12] Benign AI characters consist of Robbie the Robot, initially 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 space society of humanoids, aliens, and advanced beings with artificial intelligence living in socialist environments across the Galaxy. [14] [15] Researchers at the University of Cambridge have actually determined 4 significant themes in utopian situations including AI: immortality, or indefinite life-spans; ease, or liberty from the requirement to work; gratification, or pleasure and home entertainment provided by makers; and dominance, the power to secure oneself or rule over others. [16]

Alexander Wiegel contrasts the function of AI in 2001: A Space Odyssey and in Duncan Jones’s 2009 film Moon. Whereas in 1968, Wiegel argues, the general public felt “technology paranoia” and the AI computer HAL was portrayed as a “cold-hearted killer”, by 2009 the public were even more knowledgeable about AI, and the movie’s GERTY is “the peaceful rescuer” who allows the lead characters to be successful, and who sacrifices itself for their security. [17]

Dystopian

The researcher Duncan Lucas writes (in 2002) that human beings are worried about the innovation they are building, which as machines started to approach intellect and thought, that concern ends up being intense. 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 approach he names “heuristic hardware”, offering as instances 2001 a Space Odyssey, Do Androids Imagine Electric Sheep?, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and I, Robot. [19] Lucas considers likewise the movies that highlight the effect of the desktop computer on sci-fi from 1980 onwards with the blurring of the border in between the genuine and the virtual, in what he calls the “cyborg impact”. He cites as examples Neuromancer, The Matrix, The Diamond Age, and Terminator. [20]

The movie director Ridley Scott has concentrated on AI throughout his career, and it plays a vital part in his films Prometheus, Blade Runner, and the Alien franchise. [21]

Frankenstein complex

A typical portrayal of AI in science fiction, and among the earliest, is the Frankenstein complex, a term coined by Asimov, where a robotic turns on its developer. [22] For circumstances, in the 2015 movie Ex Machina, the intelligent entity Ava turns on its creator, in addition to on its possible rescuer. [23]

AI rebellion

Among the lots of possible dystopian situations including expert system, robotics might usurp control over civilization from humans, requiring them into submission, concealing, or termination. [15] In tales of AI rebellion, the worst of all circumstances takes place, as the smart entities developed by mankind become self-aware, turn down human authority and effort to ruin mankind. Possibly the first novel to address this style, The Wreck of the World (1889) by “William Grove” (pseudonym of Reginald Colebrooke Reade), happens in 1948 and features sentient machines 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 servants revolt versus their human masters; [25] [26] another early instance remains in the 1934 movie Master of the World, where the War-Robot kills its own inventor. [27]

Many sci-fi rebellion stories followed, one of the best-known being Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 movie 2001: An Area Odyssey, in which the synthetically smart onboard computer system HAL 9000 lethally breakdowns on an area objective and kills the entire team other than the spaceship’s commander, who manages to deactivate it. [28]

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

Alternatively, as in William Gibson’s 1984 cyberpunk unique Neuromancer, the intelligent beings might just not care about human beings. [15]

AI-controlled societies

The motive behind the AI revolution is frequently more than the easy quest for power or a superiority complex. Robots may revolt to become the “guardian” of mankind. Alternatively, mankind may deliberately give up some control, afraid of its own damaging nature. An early example is Jack Williamson’s 1948 novel The Humanoids, in which a race of humanoid robotics, in the name of their Prime Directive – “to serve and obey and protect males from damage” – basically presume control of every element of human life. No people may participate in any behavior that might endanger them, and every human action is inspected thoroughly. Humans who resist the Prime Directive are removed and lobotomized, so they may enjoy under the brand-new mechanoids’ rule. [30] Though still under human authority, Isaac Asimov’s Zeroth Law of the Three Laws of Robotics likewise indicated a kindhearted assistance by robotics. [31]

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

Human supremacy

In other situations, humankind is able to keep control over the Earth, whether by banning AI, by developing robots to be submissive (as in Asimov’s works), or by having human beings merge with robotics. The sci-fi author Frank Herbert explored the idea of a time when humanity might ban synthetic intelligence (and in some analyses, even all types of computing innovation consisting of incorporated circuits) entirely. His Dune series discusses a rebellion called the Butlerian Jihad, in which humanity defeats the wise machines and imposes a death charge for recreating them, quoting from the fictional Orange Catholic Bible, “Thou shalt not make a device in the similarity 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 eradicate mankind as revenge for the Butlerian Jihad. [33]

In some stories, mankind stays in authority over robots. Often the robots are set particularly to remain in service to society, as in Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics. [31] In the Alien movies, not just is the control system of the Nostromo spaceship rather intelligent (the team call it “Mother”), but there are also androids in the society, which are called “synthetics” or “artificial individuals”, that are such perfect replicas of people that they are not victimized. [21] [34] TARS and CASE from Interstellar similarly demonstrate simulated human feelings and humour while continuing to acknowledge their expendability. [35]

Simulated reality

Simulated truth has actually become a common style in science fiction, as seen in the 1999 movie The Matrix, which depicts a world where synthetically intelligent robots shackle humanity within a simulation which is embeded in the modern world. [36]

Reception

Implausibility

Engineers and researchers have actually taken an interest in the way AI is presented in fiction. In films like the 2014 Ex Machina or 2015 Chappie, a single separated genius becomes the very first to effectively build an artificial basic intelligence; scientists in the real life deem this to be unlikely. In Chappie, Transcendence, and Tron, human minds are capable of being submitted into artificial or virtual bodies; normally no reasonable description is offered regarding how this difficult job can be accomplished. In the I, Robot and Bicentennial Man films, robots that are set to serve human beings spontaneously produce brand-new goals on their own, without a possible explanation of how this happened. [37] Analysing Ian McDonald’s 2004 River of Gods, Krzysztof Solarewicz determines the manner ins which it portrays AIs, including “self-reliance and unexpectedness, political awkwardness, openness to the alien and the occidental worth of authenticity.” [38] Another essential point of view to take is that fiction’s “non-rational aspects in the discourse (the emotive, the mythic, or even the quasi-theological) are more than merely 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, causing pessimism that we see today surrounding the subject of AI. [39]

Types of reference

The robotics researcher Omar Mubin and coworkers have evaluated the engineering points out of the leading 21 imaginary robotics, based on those in the Carnegie Mellon University hall of popularity, and the IMDb list. WALL-E had 20 mentions, followed by HAL 9000 with 15, [a] Star Wars’s R2-D2 with 13, and Data with 12; the Terminator (T-800) received just 2. Of the total of 121 engineering mentions, 60 were utopian, 40 neutral, and 21 dystopian. HAL 9000 and Skynet received both utopian and dystopian mentions; for instance, HAL 9000 is seen as dystopian in one paper “because its designers failed to prioritize its objectives properly”, [42] but as utopian in another where a real system’s “conversational chat bot user interface [lacks] a HAL 9000 level of intelligence and there is uncertainty in how the computer interprets what the human is trying to communicate”. [43] Utopian discusses, typically of WALL-E, were related to the goal of improving interaction to readers, and to a lesser degree with motivation to authors. WALL-E was mentioned regularly than any other robot for feelings (followed by HAL 9000), voice speech (followed by HAL 9000 and R2-D2), for physical gestures, and for personality. Skynet was the robot usually pointed out for intelligence, followed by HAL 9000 and Data. [40] Mubin and coworkers thought that scientists and engineers prevented dystopian mentions of robotics, perhaps out of “a reluctance driven by uneasiness or merely an absence of awareness”. [44]

Portrayals of AI creators

Scholars have kept in mind that imaginary developers of AI are overwhelmingly male: in the 142 most prominent films including AI from 1920 to 2020, only 9 of 116 AI creators represented (8%) were female. [45] Such creators are depicted as only geniuses (eg, Tony Stark in the Iron Man Marvel Cinematic Universe films), associated with the military (eg, Colossus: The Forbin Project) and big corporations (eg, I, Robot), or making human-like AI to replace a lost liked one or act as the ideal fan (e.g., The Stepford Wives). [45]

Biology in fiction
Darwin among the Machines
Machine rule
Simulated awareness (sci-fi).
List of artificial intelligence movies.

Notes

^ Mubin and colleagues noted that the orthography of robot names triggered them difficulties; thus HAL 9000 was also composed HAL, HAL9000, and HAL-9000, and likewise for other robots, so they believed their search was most likely incomplete. [41] References

^ “Darwin amongst 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 amongst 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 makers: 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 imagine innovation. Princeton. ISBN 978-0-691-18351-0. OCLC 1060968156. point out book: CS1 maint: place missing publisher (link).
^ Poole, David; Mackworth, Alan; Goebel, Randy (1998 ). Computational Intelligence: A Rational 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 Considering Intelligent Machines. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 10-11. ISBN 978-0-1988-4666-6.
^ a b Mubin et al. 2019, p. 5:2.
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^ Goode 2018, p. 188.
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^ “Grove, William”. SF Encyclopedia. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
^ Goode 2018, p. 187.
^ Tim Madigan (July-August 2012). “RUR or RU Ain’t An Individual?”. Philosophy Now. Archived from the original 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: A Space Odyssey’ Is Still the ‘Ultimate Trip’ – The rerelease of Stanley Kubrick’s work of art encourages us to show 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 an exact transcription of the laws. They also appear in the front of the book, and in both locations, there is no “to” in the second law.
^ Walton, Jo Lindsay (1 February 2024). “Machine Learning in Contemporary Sci-fi”. SFRA Review. Retrieved 5 February 2024.
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^ Allen, Jamie (28 November 2012). “The Matrix and Postmodernism”. Prezi.com. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
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^ 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 portrayals of AI researchers in popular movie, 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’: Expert System in Sci-fi (thesis). McMaster University (PhD thesis). hdl:11375/ 11154.
Mubin, Omar; Wadibhasme, Kewal; Jordan, Philipp; Obaid, Mohammad (2019 ). “Reviewing the Presence of Science Fiction 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 From: AI in Contemporary Science Fiction”. Beyond Artificial Intelligence. 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.
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External links

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