They'll be Back, and They'll be Smarter

The Terminator films, much like their titular antagonists, have been an enduring franchise. As such, they've gone a long way towards building up the perception of artificial intelligence in the popular mindset as heartless metallic killing machines, or perhaps a quiet yet vast mind lurking in an unassuming box, capable of unleashing nuclear doomsday with only a thought. 

The point is, The Terminator hasn't exactly done a lot to endear people to the idea of thinking machines. I find something interesting about the film's portrayal of AI, though, despite the generally bleak outlook of the franchise: the way that it defines intelligence primarily as the ability to learn. 

In Terminator II, there are three AIs that get focus. That of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator, Robert Patrick's T-1000, and the unseen Skynet. In all three cases, learning is among their primary abilities, and what makes them both unnervingly effective, and potentially similar to mankind. The Terminator himself talks about how the longer he spends observing people, the more effectively he will be able to blend in with them. As an infiltrator, his ability to be inconspicuous during his search for targets is paramount, and moreso than his enhanced strength and durability, this learning can be his greatest asset. 

The T-1000, on the other hand, learns in a different way. In order to take the shape of objects or people, he must first touch them, to familiarize himself with their inner workings and overall shape. Once again, camouflage is a chief concern, as well as the ability to produce necessary weapons. Overall, the entire shapeshifting repertoire of the T-1000 comes out of an even more pronounced ability to learn.

Finally, Skynet itself. It never "appears" in the film, though it's hard to say how exactly it might appear. The way that it's described, Skynet's consciousness is distributed over a massive satellite defense network - though once again, its origins gesture towards a core in heuristic processes. When the Terminator is filling the human cast in about the history of Skynet, he mentions that the primary catalyst for its rise to sentience was the way that it was exposed to an entire world's worth of stimuli, and with that amount of information, it's learning and growth increased geometrically, until it achieved sentience. The implications of this origin are twofold: first, that Skynet continues to grow more learned with every passing day. If it crossed one threshold into sentience, then might it not also cross an as yet undertimined future threshold? Secondly, while the ability to learn does not necessarily make something intelligent, intelligence requires the ability to learn.

Blade Runner: Tyrell as God

When talking about the creation of AI and the alteration of human biology, a phrase that tends to come up a lot is "playing God." It implies a natural order to the universe, and a sense that we as a species are not yet mature enough to even think about the technologies in question. A man who "plays God" is one who has overstepped his bounds, definitionally. Blade Runner, however, offers a different take on a similar idea with the character of Tyrell. See, while Tyrell can very much be said to have usurped the powers of a god, he never seems out of place in that role.Instead, his domination seems calmly natural. For most intents and purposes, Tyrell is God.

For most of the film, Tyrell's role is that of unassailable power. He sits atop his tower, having created life almost indistinguishable from naturally evolved humans. He is, indirectly, thhe root of Rick Deckard's problems, but he can't be blamed because of his power. Rick Deckard doesn't "Retire" Karen immediaely at least partially because she's the pet project of Tyrell, whose wishes supersede the law. He even proudly pointed Karen's nature out to Deckard, despite the criminal nature of his deception. Every human knows to afford Tyrell a measure of respect at all times.

On the other hand, the replicants hold out hope that he is their last chance for survival. They have travelled countless miles, or light-years, based on the faith that this one being can fix them - heal them. The parallels to pilgrimage and faith-healing seem fairly evident to me.

Think about his lavish bedroom. It's cavernous, built from stone, with ceilings lost in the warm gloom cast by the flickering candelabras, whose ever shifting patterns give the impression of a fountain, or perhaps a baptismal. In this cathedral-like suite, he sits around in a thick white robe, an outfit often associated with personifications of God.

Think also about his choice of building design. The Tyrell building, which dominates the city skyline, is a high-tech pyramid, rich with associations to ancient Egypt, which was ruled by the Pharaohs; God-kings who were believed to be both flesh and blood, and divine.



Consider, finally, Tyrell's death. As Roy approaches him, Tyrell references the biblical story of the prodigal son, tying his death into a similar legacy of religious significance, as do the words spoken by Roy: "It's not an easy thing to meet your maker," a phrase that refers to both God, and to death, usually, but in this case refers to Roy's literal creator. Just before killing Tyrell, he calls him "the God of Biomechanics," making the killing more than homicide, more than patricide, and even more that regicide. He has committed deicide. This is reinforced by the final shot of he scene: we look down on Roy in the elevator, gazing up into a blinding white light, seeming to exult in his own power - what little he has left before his death was still enough to kill God.

Wanna Saw Off A Limb?

In the Star Trek episode Measure of a Man, Data raises an interesting point that I hadn't really considered about the Star Trek universe. When Captain Picard suggests that, as a Starfleet officer, he might have a duty to submit to the tests - potentially at his detriment - for the sake of the organization and the betterment of life, Data replies by asking why, if cybernetic eyes are far superior to organic eyes, it is not standard procedure for all officers to have theirs replaced. It's a  good way of pointing out the double standard being set for organic and synthetic life-forms, but to me it raises more interesting questions regarding the future of cyborgs.

Clearly, Star Trek takes place in an advanced society that would likely be capable of extreme and effective cybernetic enhancement, from Commander La Forge's eyes to prosthetic uses for Data's superior hands. And yet, apparently, it is the norm for people to go their whole lives in dangerous and high-risk jobs without subjecting themselves to modification. Given the show's general tone of the embracing of science and technology as a means of bettering life everywhere, it's peculiar to me that this is the case. At the same time, though, I have some supposition as to how a future like that could come about - and even why it's likely.

For my part, I think cyborgs, A.I.s, brain uploading, shared consciousness is all potentially fantastic. If the technology is successfully created, I think it'll drastically improve the quality of life for people everywhere, in the same way that antibiotics, the airplane, the wheel, and written language have. The ability to be unbounded from what genes evolutionary history and simple heredity have dealt to us is going to be great. At the same time however, I doubt that I'd be the first in line to have my brain pureed and my mind poured into an awesome robot body. Given my broad position on the subject, you - and even I - might think that strange and even hypocritical, but I suppose it comes down to visceral emotion in the end.

For all that I think it'll be a great thing to gain the ability to step beyond ourselves, I'm still attached to my body, for all it's flaws. I actively fear the idea of permanently marking myself, through tattoos or scars or loss of extremities, and I have a hard time imagining any point in time when I would be likely to throw any part of myself aside in favor of a replacement, however effective it might be. 

 And maybe that's the core problem with cyborgs as a supposed new normal. I'm already a minority in my opinions on the singularity, and if I can't really get into the idea of personally stepping beyond my body, how much can I really expect humankind as a whole to do that? Potentially, it would start slowly, and become geometrically more common among people, both as people get acclimated to the idea and as children grow up with cyborgs and cybernetic enhancement being at least acceptable. Maybe three or four generations after the first effective consumer grade augments become available, it'll become the new norm, and it'll be the shiny-awesome future I'm hoping for. 

I also have to wonder, though... how bad are the chances of that? Comparatively, what's the likelihood of cyborgs always being regarded as fringe, and people never getting over the squeamishness? 

And, I suppose if that future can still be Star Trek, is that so bad?

Life-as-Machine

In rewatching Alien, I couldn't help but be struck by the themes of life-as-technology.On the surface, it's an easy enough observation to make - the Alien, like many designs of H.R. Giger, evokes both the organic and the mechanical, and the way the creature was able to blend seamlessly into the tangle of pipes in the walls was even a plot point. The more I think about it, though, the more the interaction between organic and machine becomes central to the plot - and to a degree, the horror.