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Making
things happen - with integrity. A weekly CyberMemo designed to keep you on task. Monday March 25, 2002 Volume IV Number 12 |
FOCUS - Artificial Intelligence
One of life’s great mysteries is the existence of what I’ve been taught to call the “soul.” In my upbringing, the soul distinguishes human beings from the other creatures wandering around the planet and under the surface of the waters. All living organisms possess spirit. The life force. But only humans possess a soul. In the decades I’ve spent in education and discussion and reading, I’ve discovered that not everyone agrees. Some see no real distinction between humans and other living things. For them, it’s a matter of degree, or complexity or maybe awareness.
I remember as a young student in a major university writing an assigned paper in a philosophy class on what it might be that distinguishes humans from everything else. I found it difficult in the context of “secularism” to resist the default concepts of my religious training. While I was most comfortable simply recounting the Creation Story, Adam and Eve, and God breathing life into the clay form and then directing these first two human beings to take dominion over the rest of the created order, I believed my pagan professor would discount my reliance on a Sunday School flannel graph version of reality and maybe even flunk me. So I tried to tell the truth as I knew it without any direct reference to theology or recognizable Bible quotes. It was veiled evangelism... covered up so well you’d never know.
And maybe that’s the point.
Divorced from a concept of God and His role in creation, there are not many answers to the dilemma of human existence.
I tried. I talked about the human ability to reflect. The capacity for emotion. The faculty to make judgments. To create. To solve complicated problems. To engage in conversation. To use language. It troubled me some that other animals engage in similar behaviors, none of them as complex or intricate. The harder I tried, the more confused I got.
Because really, I didn’t learn much in my science classes or my math classes or even my history classes or psychology or philosophy or logic or ethics classes to help me with the question of what it is that makes a human being a human. They were descriptive. They gave me categories and issues and labels and a vocabulary of human behavior and thought. But no real answers about what makes a person a person.
That said, we all know the difference.
We all know that a person is qualitatively different from everything else. Other things possess human qualities, but they are not human. Our pets make eye contact, look inquisitively when we make certain gestures, as though they are wondering what’s next. They play, they look guilty, they tell us what they want, they get into scrapes with other pets, they are territorial and hungry and after too much exercise, need rest. But they are not human.
We even ascribe human qualities to our machines. Our cars are sexy. Our computers, smart. Our PDA’s are our friends. Our voice mail listens to our messages, and repeats them word for word at our convenience. Our children’s toys are cuddly and cute. Our homes have personality.
But none of them are human.
The great literature, the great films, the great poetry and the great theater, they all explore the question of our humanity; humanity lost and humanity gained. All of the terrible crimes, the unthinkable horrible abuses, the mass destruction and the awful cruelty and exploitation portrayed in the literature of suffering are in one way or another, the story of humanity absent, we call these sorry episodes inhuman (i.e., not human).
Human beings are not machines. And machines will never be human.
Spielberg, in collaboration with the now deceased and legendary Stanley Kubrick (2001 Space Odyssey, Clockwork Orange, The Shining), explored all of this in their recent film, Artificial Intelligence. A.I.
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Think about it. Artificial Intelligence is a classic oxymoron. It’s a contradiction in terms. Like wise fool. Or legal murder. Or jumbo shrimp.
How can intelligence be artificial? If it’s artificial, it’s fake. Simulated. Imitation. How can something that isn’t the real thing be intelligent?
A.I. is a new buzzword. It’s a programmer’s concept. It’s the idea that a programmer can teach a computer chip to make decisions; that a machine can be left alone to do the right thing without human supervision (and maybe the wrong thing, too).
But can a machine become human? If not, why not? What is the essence, then of being human?
Is it not the soul?
Can a machine ever possess a soul? Can Mecha ever be Orga? A machine an organism?
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A. I. was written and directed by Steven Spielberg, a graduate of USC’s school of cinematography. It was there he studied the work of Stanley Kubrick - 2001 Space Odyssey and Lolita and Dr. Stangelove and other works. Kubrick was considered by serious students of cinema a master of technique; and while he was not necessarily popular with mass audiences (his films explored dark themes) his groundbreaking special effects captivated the young Steve Spielberg and his classmate George Lucas.
As Spielberg’s success gained momentum with American Graffiti and Jaws and Raiders of the Lost Ark, Spielberg and Kubrick became friends.
It’s a fascinating friendship, really.
I’ve wondered if, somehow, Kubrick was drawn to Spielberg’s warmth and charm. Kubrick, the cool and calculating cynic, the anti-establishment curmudgeon whose stinging critiques of polite society fueled the anti-war movement and cheered a generation of drop-outs; his work celebrated sexual libertarianism and psychedelic experimentation – this inimitable filmmaker must have considered young Spielberg his cinematic antithesis. Spielberg, with his whiz-bang special effects, and heart warming characters, and eye-popping scenes, with startling surprises and happy endings, Kubrick must have rolled his eyes over the corniness of it all, and then wished maybe he had some of those qualities himself.
Spielberg, perhaps influenced by Kubrick, grew into more serious themes. With Schindler’s List and Amistad and Saving Private Ryan he brought his considerable movie-making style to document some horrible moments in human history. The operative word for Spielberg is human; the human element remained front and center in every case. Spielberg believes in redemption. His vision of the future, unlike Kubrick, is bright. He’s a realist. But he is irrepressible in his confidence that good can and does overcome evil.
To most everyone’s amazement, the two of them developed a deep friendship of mutual respect and worked, for over fifteen years, on this collaboration.
The result is as wonderful and tantalizing and provocative and as confusing as the friendship of these two vastly different men.
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In A.I. Spielberg returns to the theme of the Lost Boy. The time is set in some future era, after global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps have their effect; wiping out most of civilization as we know it. Only a small percentage of human beings remain. Technology and robotics are so advanced that an entire population of mechanical look-a-likes roam the planet. The humanoids are called “Mechas.” (Machines.) Several companies produce the robots; each for specialized purposes.
In a staff meeting at one of the most advanced of these manufacturing firms, Cybertronics, Professor Hobby proposes a new model Mecha, a highly advanced model. One that could become a surrogate child for any needy couple who longs for a child of their own. This Mecha will be programmed with the capacity for human feeling. He will love. He will bond. He will be affectionate. He will meet all the needs of a human mother. He will be the perfect child.
Henry and Monica Swinton occupy a family house, but they are alone. Their biological son contracted a horrible illness; and even in this advanced stage in human history, there exists no cure for his disease. On their physician’s advice, they placed their child in storage, frozen solid, advanced cryogenics, until a cure can be found. Monica is terribly lonely.
Henry heard about the new Mechas available through Cybertronics. Reluctantly, they give it a try.
The experiment doesn’t work. David (the Mecha) is perfect, on one level. He and Monica bond as Mother and Son. Soon after David arrives, Monica’s real son is thawed and cured, and returns home, a brother (?) to David. But David is a machine. He’s in the way. He’s dangerous. He’s got to go.
She takes him into a dark and foreboding forest, and lets him go.
David,
now abandoned, vested (or should I say programmed) with the capacity for
feeling… becomes obsessed with the bedtime story he heard at night, read by his
“mother” before she went to sleep, Pinnochio. David wants more than
anything to become a “real boy.”
Left in the forest with his Mecha Teddy Bear, David’s adventure into the world of humans and mechas begins.
* * * * * * *
But this, perhaps one of Spielberg’s most ambitious cinematic projects, doesn’t work. It didn’t work with the critics. Or the Academy. Or the box office. The idea is so fascinating, and the execution, so Spielbergesque. He even got John Williams for the musical score. But Artifical Intelligence fell way short of everyone’s expectations.
What went wrong?
The Mecha David is brilliantly played by thirteen year old Haley Joel Osment (Sixth Sense). But here’s the rub – David is a MACHINE. He’s a robot. As good as he is, we can not connect with him. He is not human. He has no soul.
In the final scene, when we are to feel some sense of resolution and warmth at the dramatic reunion of an estranged mother and son, there’s nothing there. It just doesn’t work.
And the reason is clear. She is a DNA clone of the real Monica. And he is a Robot.
We have as much connection with the boy as we do an automobile. Or a computer. Or a television set.
In the making of his movie, Spielberg left his world of human connectedness behind for Kubrick’s sterile, mechanical and cynical techno world devoid of the reality of the soul.
That’s why A.I., as clever and as stunning and as epic as it is on the surface, leaves us empty.
* * * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader.
As sophisticated as our machines get, only God can breathe life into an inanimate object, and quicken it to full humanity.
It’s no mistake that the word “soul” has worked its way into our casual conversation. When we say a singer has “soul,” we mean that there is in the performance, a human depth of expression that touches us at a mysterious and wonderful level that makes us feel alive and aware. If food has “soul,” it means that the taste and the aroma and the color and the presentation awaken in us to a new dimension of experience, expanding our appreciation of the goodness of life itself. If we describe our partner as a “soul-mate,” it means that we communicate and share and dialogue in a way that transcends friendship; our connectedness is unique in all the world; no one understands or affirms or appreciates or accepts us as does our “soul mate.”
On this Monday morning, think about it. You possess a soul. In fact, your soul defines you. Your spouse, your children, your neighbors, your workmates… them too.
Where there is no soul, there are only Mechas.
As I understand it, there’s a God in heaven who has one primary concern – the condition of our soul. And according to what I’ve read, and experienced, a lost soul can be redeemed.
Remember, you are not a machine.
Make today soulful.
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2002
LeaderFOCUS is brought to you by Good Stewardship Associates
Special Thanks for Design by my good friend David Belcher, owner of Rhino Media Group and creator of WisdomGram
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