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Re: A.I.

Posted by TAFKA Steve (A) on July 11, 2001 at 17:59:41

In Reply to: A.I. posted by Alan on July 10, 2001 at 21:24:24:

My take on A.I. has some similarities to yours, as I didn't jive much with the technology arguments and I watched the film in three steps.

1. I started with the film's opening question: "If you create something capable of loving you, are you morally obligated to love it in return?" The answer, I thought (for both myself and Spielberg), was: "Yes, of course!" From that point on, I watched the film from David's point-of-view.

2. Then I asked: Are humans capable of that kind of unconditional love?" The unfortunate answer: No. This was the big test of the first two acts of the film and the humans flunked miserably. David's mother rejects her adopted child too readily to protect her natural child (and the father never connects with him). David is a hunted outcast and cannot be comforted by a nanny robot. David's creator is more interested in David as a scientific milestone, which does nothing to give David a sense of uniqueness and self-worth.

3. Then I asked: "Can humans justify creating such an entity?" or "Is there some moral justification for David's existence?" If not for the final act, I would have answered: no. In an indirect form of redemption for humans, it is only David's technological successors who give him the love he needs, albeit a limited and qualified one. David's existence is an unfortunate casualty of the process of creating these successors. Why is it limited to one ideal day by the space-time mumbo jumbo? I don't know. But maybe it means that these future beings aren't all-powerful, omniscient, and god-like. If they achieved God-hood, then why would they continue to seek out knowledge (they want to know what the humans were like) and strive for improvement in their own existence, or as Randy Bey wrote below, "Where's the motivation?".

Or maybe I just wasted $7.50 seeing "E.T." all over again, damnit!

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