Bicentennial Man Blog

11/7/09

In the movie, bicentennial man there is a Robot named Andrew that develops artificial intelligence (AI) by accident. At first Andrew isn’t able to pass the Turing test; he takes words at face value and doesn’t question them. Like when the mother asks Andrew to go to the kitchen so that the family could eat in privacy, Andrew just stands right inside the door, staring at the family. The older daughter of the family hates Andrew so she orders him to jump out the window. Andrew is damaged, he tries to fix himself, but something is still a little off. He starts developing emotions and he “enjoys” himself. He creates a horse out of wood using his new creativity and he “enjoyed” making it. I don’t believe that the robot is intelligent like humans, but the movie does.

Some of the characters believe that Andrew should be treated as if he were alive, while most seem to believe that he is nothing more than an extremely complex toaster. I personally believe that he should be considered an appliance or just another electronic device because even though he can pass the Turing Test, that doesn’t mean that he is “alive” per say. Others might argue that since he seems to have emotions that he should be considered human, but in reality those emotions are just simulations and they don’t truly mean anything.

In the movie, Andrew tells his master that he wants freedom. This wouldn’t interfere with the three rules of robots but merely give Andrew the title of being free. His master doesn’t take this too well because he figures that Andrew just wants to leave, so his master grants him “freedom” and kicks him out of his house. Andrew didn’t want to leave; he just didn’t want to be considered a slave. I think that Robots should be owned. They can’t feel and they don’t eat so it shouldn’t be considered slavery. Your toaster isn’t a slave, is it?

Andrew wishes that he could marry Porsche but he can’t because he isn’t considered human. I don’t think robots should be able to marry humans because they can’t reproduce together. And if every human just decides that it would be easier to get a robot spouse, then there will be no more children and therefore the human population will die out. The movie believes that Andrew should be able to marry Porsche, you can tell because they decided that they would be able to.

Robots should never be considered equal to humans. Andrew wants to be considered human, or at least equal to a human. He tries to get a law passed so that he could be considered human so that he could marry Porsche. The judge ruled that he couldn’t be considered human because he was immortal. I don’t think that anything should be considered human if it’s immortal first of all, and second of all, he has to obey the three laws, so he shouldn’t be able to be considered human. The movie thinks that in the particular case that is Andrew that he should be considered human, because he basically is human.

I think that AI will be good and bad in the future. A good thing will be that many people won’t have to work anymore, but that can be bad because then the government would control the people’s money and we would end up being communist. It’ll be more like Flatline then like Bicentennial Man. The future is going to be much worse then a movie starring Robin Williams.