Rooting for Robots- AI: Artificial Intelligence

Welcome to part six of “AI at the Movies.” This week, we will discuss the 2001 Steven Spielberg film AI: Artificial Intelligence, in which AI is the hero. Check out the previous articles here. This article contains spoilers, so if you haven’t seen it, you can catch it on Paramount Plus in the US or stream it on a local service internationally.

“If he’s created to love, it is reasonable to assume he knows how to hate. And if pushed to those extremes, what is he really capable of?” – Henry Swinton from AI: Artificial Intelligence

Humans are the Bad Guys?

AI: Artificial Intelligence marks a significant departure from the other movies we’ve discussed this summer. In each of those, the AI was the antagonist. HAL was the clear villain in 2001; Ex Machina’s Ava revealed her villainous nature in the climax, and even in Her, Samantha's departure from Theodore was a bit of a betrayal. In all these films, we relate to and empathize with the human protagonists. However, AI: Artificial Intelligence flips this narrative on its head. Here, humans are the antagonists, and we empathize with the robot, David (Haley Joel Osment).

The movie opens with Professor Hobby (William Hurt), a brilliant scientist leading a robotics company, inspiring his team to create more human-like robots. His ultimate goal is to develop robots capable of love, following the common trope we've seen in these AI films that the AI creator views themself as God. (Hobby asks, “Didn’t God create Adam to love Him?”) They create David, a young, unblinking humanoid who bears a striking resemblance to the kid from The Sixth Sense. David finds a home with a couple (Frances O'Connor and Sam Robards) who are struggling as their only child has been in a coma for years.

The couple learns to love David as if he were their son; then, the unthinkable happens. Their flesh and blood son recovers, and he comes home to see that Mom and Dad have tried to replace him with a robot. Let’s say he reacts to this in much the same way any pre-pubescent boy would: by mentally torturing the robot. And the neighborhood kids soon do as well. These kids (and also some adults) act as humans do when presented with an outsider. (This is known in social psychology as in-group favoritism.) We see David poked by kids to see if he feels pain. We see David stuff himself with so much food that he shorts out to prove he’s "human."

But except for not blinking (for whatever reason, in robot AI movies, they can build human replicas but can't figure out how to close their eyelids periodically), David looks and acts like a real boy. He is a gentle outsider who gets picked on by bullies and ultimately wants his mother’s love. We know he’s not human, but we anthropomorphize him. When we see a victim, we want to help him, robot or not. Even though he isn’t human, David is relatable.

Several clips of testers “abusing” Boston Dynamics robots started circulating a few years ago. How did people react? A clip from The Daily Show might sum it up best. When a Boston Dynamic engineer kicks a non-humanoid robot in a video being shown, the show’s audience reacts with a collective “Awww.” Going off script, the show’s host, Trevor Noah, responds to that reaction, “Why do you ‘aww?’ It’s a robot!” ?We know, Trevor. But we can’t help it.

Watching AI: Artificial Intelligence, we witness a robot, David, being mistreated. We know David is a robot, yet we can’t help but empathize with him as if he were human.? But why do we empathize with David at all? This question leads us to explore how humans have long grappled with the line between artificial and real, and it's an essential aspect of our engagement with the film.

If it Quacks Like a Duck…

To better understand our reaction to AI in the film and our potential relationship to it in the future, we need to first look at the past. Let’s transport you back almost three hundred years, specifically to 1738.

You are in Paris, and it is a beautiful Sunday afternoon. You just attended mass and now walk into a bustling marketplace. As you smell the freshly baked bread and shop for goods, you keep overhearing chatter about a peculiar exhibit that just came to town. It sounds like a man may have created an animal. How can that be? You know only God has that power. Offput, but curious. You need to see this for yourself. You make your way to the exhibit, and this is what you see:

It is a mechanical duck. Turn the gears, and it moves and behaves like any duck you’d see on the Seine. It sure looks like a duck. It walks like a duck. It quacks like a duck. Given that, you assume it must be a duck! (Yes, this may be the earliest reference of that saying.)

In the 1700s, some believed that this automaton should be classified as a duck. This seems absurd today, but the people of 1738 had never seen anything like this. Because for tens of thousands of years of human existence, if it looked, walked, and quacked like a duck… it was one.

Bringing this back to AI: Artificial Intelligence and playing out this logic, how would you react to David? If David does look like a human, walks like a human, and talks like a human, isn't David a human? Most of us still logically say “no” because we understand and are used to “technological mimicry” more than our ancestors could ever have been.

Then, when people are abusive to David, why do we react that way?? If you watch the movie Office Space, there is a scene where the crew takes out their workplace frustrations on a junky office printer. It is played for laughs as we have all been similarly vexed by these workplace printers. No one feels bad for the printer.

Why is it different? A 1990s printer that flashes “PC LOAD LETTER" is not one for which we would build any emotional reverence.? (That said, I think some would cringe if the same treatment was given to the latest iPhone.) But David looks like us. In the first part of the film, we get to know David. He seems like a sweet kid. We see his struggles, and ultimately, we like him. This is In-Group Favoritism working in the other direction from before. At some level, we view David as part of our ancestral in-group that needs to be protected. Because for tens of thousands of years of human existence, if it looked, walked, and talked like a human… it was one.

?Five Fast Facts About AI: Artificial Intelligence

1. While AI: Artificial Intelligence came out in 2001, the movie’s development stretches back to the 1970s. Stanley Kubrick bought the rights to the source material, Supertoys Last All Summer Long, but never made it in part because he felt no child actor could convincingly play David. In 1995, Kubrick gave up and handed the rights to Steven Spielberg. Spielberg dedicated the film to Kubrick posthumously.
2. To accentuate his non-human appearance, Haley Joel Osment's exposed skin (face, arms, hands) was shaved daily to give him a more plastic look.
3. The World Trade Center twin towers are prominently featured in the shots of the future, underwater Manhattan. The movie was released two and a half months before the towers fell on September 11.
4. The actors playing androids in the movie are not supposed to blink, but a few scenes with blinks snuck into the final cut.
5. Haley Joel Osment was only 11 when he filmed the movie and was seemingly put into some hairy situations during filming. On the film’s 20th anniversary, The Hollywood Reporter said, “He would jump in the water with a bunch of lead weights, sinking like a robot would. And then trust that a scuba diver would swoop in with the respirator after a take was completed.”

Next Time

We’ll discuss Blade Runner in two weeks. For folks in the US, you can rent/buy The Final Cut (the most recent edit) on either Apple TV or Amazon or find it here if you live outside the US.