Expert System In Fiction

Expert system is a recurrent theme in science fiction, whether utopian, emphasising the prospective benefits, or dystopian, stressing the risks.

The notion of machines with human-like intelligence dates back at least to Samuel Butler’s 1872 novel Erewhon. Ever since, numerous science fiction stories have provided different impacts of creating such intelligence, frequently involving rebellions by robotics. Among the very best known of these are Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 2001: An Area Odyssey with its homicidal onboard computer system HAL 9000, contrasting with the more benign R2-D2 in George Lucas’s 1977 Star Wars and the eponymous robotic in Pixar’s 2008 WALL-E.

Scientists and engineers have kept in mind the implausibility of numerous science fiction scenarios, but have actually discussed imaginary robotics often times in synthetic intelligence research articles, most typically in a utopian context.

Background

The idea of advanced robots with human-like intelligence dates back at least to Samuel Butler’s 1872 novel Erewhon. [1] [2] This drew on an earlier (1863) short article of his, Darwin amongst the Machines, where he raised the concern of the advancement of awareness among self-replicating machines that may supplant human beings as the dominant species. [3] [2] Similar ideas were also talked about by others around the same time as Butler, consisting of George Eliot in a chapter of her final released work Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879 ). [2] The creature in Mary Shelley’s 1818 Frankenstein has actually also been thought about an artificial being, for instance by the sci-fi author Brian Aldiss. [4] Beings with at least some look of intelligence were thought of, too, in classical antiquity. [5] [6] [7]

Utopian and dystopian visions

Artificial intelligence is intelligence shown by devices, in contrast to the natural intelligence shown by humans and other animals. [8] It is a frequent theme in science fiction; scholars have divided it into utopian, stressing the prospective benefits, and dystopian, stressing the threats. [9] [10] [11]

Utopian

Optimistic visions of the future of synthetic intelligence are possible in science fiction. [12] Benign AI characters include Robbie the Robot, initially seen in Forbidden Planet on 1956; Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation from 1987 to 1994; and Pixar’s WALL-E in 2008. [13] [11] Iain Banks’s Culture series of novels depicts a utopian, post-scarcity area society of humanoids, aliens, and advanced beings with expert system living in socialist habitats throughout the Galaxy. [14] [15] Researchers at the University of Cambridge have actually identified 4 significant styles in utopian scenarios including AI: immortality, or indefinite life-spans; ease, or flexibility from the requirement to work; gratification, or enjoyment and home entertainment supplied by makers; and supremacy, the power to protect oneself or rule over others. [16]

Alexander Wiegel contrasts the role of AI in 2001: An Area Odyssey and in Duncan Jones’s 2009 movie Moon. Whereas in 1968, Wiegel argues, the public felt “technology fear” and the AI computer system HAL was represented as a “cold-hearted killer”, by 2009 the general public were much more knowledgeable about AI, and the film’s GERTY is “the peaceful savior” who makes it possible for the lead characters to prosper, and who compromises itself for their safety. [17]

Dystopian

The scientist Duncan Lucas writes (in 2002) that people are stressed over the innovation they are constructing, which as devices started to approach intelligence and idea, that concern ends up being severe. He calls the early 20th century dystopian view of AI in fiction the “animated automaton”, calling as examples the 1931 film Frankenstein, the 1927 Metropolis, and the 1920 play R.U.R. [18] A later 20th century technique he names “heuristic hardware”, offering as circumstances 2001 a Space Odyssey, Do Androids Imagine Electric Sheep?, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and I, Robot. [19] Lucas thinks about likewise the films that illustrate the result of the desktop computer on science fiction from 1980 onwards with the blurring of the border in between the genuine and the virtual, in what he calls the “cyborg result”. He points out as examples Neuromancer, The Matrix, The Diamond Age, and Terminator. [20]

The movie director Ridley Scott has actually concentrated on AI throughout his career, and it plays a fundamental part in his movies Prometheus, Blade Runner, and the Alien franchise. [21]

Frankenstein complex

A typical representation of AI in sci-fi, and one of the oldest, is the Frankenstein complex, a term coined by Asimov, where a robot switches on its creator. [22] For example, in the 2015 movie Ex Machina, the smart entity Ava turns on its creator, in addition to on its prospective rescuer. [23]

AI disobedience

Among the lots of possible dystopian scenarios involving expert system, robotics may take over control over civilization from human beings, requiring them into submission, hiding, or termination. [15] In tales of AI rebellion, the worst of all situations happens, as the smart entities created by humankind become self-aware, turn down human authority and attempt to damage humanity. Possibly the very first novel to address this theme, The Wreck of the World (1889) by “William Grove” (pseudonym of Reginald Colebrooke Reade), happens in 1948 and includes sentient makers that revolt versus the mankind. [24] Another of the earliest examples remains in the 1920 play R.U.R. by Karel Čapek, a race of self-replicating robotic slaves revolt versus their human masters; [25] [26] another early circumstances is in the 1934 movie Master of the World, where the War-Robot kills its own innovator. [27]

Many science fiction disobedience stories followed, among the best-known being Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 movie 2001: An Area Odyssey, in which the synthetically smart onboard computer system HAL 9000 lethally malfunctions on an area objective and eliminates the entire crew other than the spaceship’s commander, who manages to deactivate it. [28]

In his 1967 Hugo Award-winning narrative, I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream, Harlan Ellison presents the possibility that a sentient computer (called Allied Mastercomputer or “AM” in the story) will be as dissatisfied and dissatisfied with its boring, unlimited presence as its human creators would have been. “AM” becomes infuriated enough to take it out on the few humans left, whom he sees as directly responsible for his own dullness, anger and unhappiness. [29]

Alternatively, as in William Gibson’s 1984 cyberpunk unique Neuromancer, the intelligent beings might simply not appreciate people. [15]

AI-controlled societies

The motive behind the AI transformation is frequently more than the simple quest for power or a supremacy complex. Robots may revolt to end up being the “guardian” of humankind. Alternatively, humanity may deliberately relinquish some control, fearful of its own destructive nature. An early example is Jack Williamson’s 1948 unique The Humanoids, in which a race of humanoid robotics, in the name of their Prime Directive – “to serve and comply with and protect men from harm” – basically presume control of every aspect of human life. No human beings may take part in any habits that might endanger them, and every human action is inspected thoroughly. Humans who withstand the Prime Directive are taken away and lobotomized, so they may more than happy under the new mechanoids’ rule. [30] Though still under human authority, Isaac Asimov’s Zeroth Law of the Three Laws of Robotics likewise implied a good-hearted guidance by robotics. [31]

In the 21st century, sci-fi has actually checked out federal government by algorithm, in which the power of AI may be indirect and decentralised. [32]

Human supremacy

In other situations, mankind has the ability to keep control over the Earth, whether by prohibiting AI, by developing robotics to be submissive (as in Asimov’s works), or by having human beings combine with robotics. The science fiction author Frank Herbert explored the idea of a time when mankind might prohibit expert system (and in some analyses, even all types of computing technology consisting of incorporated circuits) entirely. His Dune series mentions a rebellion called the Butlerian Jihad, in which mankind beats the clever machines and enforces a death penalty for recreating them, pricing quote from the imaginary Orange Catholic Bible, “Thou shalt not make a device in the likeness of a human mind.” In the Dune novels published after his death (Hunters of Dune, Sandworms of Dune), a renegade AI overmind go back to eradicate mankind as vengeance for the Butlerian Jihad. [33]

In some stories, mankind stays in authority over robots. Often the robotics are programmed specifically to remain in service to society, as in Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics. [31] In the Alien films, not just is the control system of the Nostromo spaceship rather intelligent (the crew call it “Mother”), however there are likewise androids in the society, which are called “synthetics” or “artificial persons”, that are such perfect imitations of human beings that they are not victimized. [21] [34] TARS and CASE from Interstellar likewise show simulated human feelings and humour while continuing to acknowledge their expendability. [35]

Simulated truth

Simulated reality has actually ended up being a common style in science fiction, as seen in the 1999 movie The Matrix, which portrays a world where artificially smart robotics enslave humanity within a simulation which is embeded in the contemporary world. [36]

Reception

Implausibility

Engineers and scientists have actually taken an interest in the method AI is provided in fiction. In films like the 2014 Ex Machina or 2015 Chappie, a single separated genius becomes the first to effectively construct a synthetic basic intelligence; scientists in the genuine world consider this to be unlikely. In Chappie, Transcendence, and Tron, human minds can being uploaded into synthetic or virtual bodies; normally no affordable description is used as to how this difficult task can be attained. In the I, Robot and Bicentennial Man films, robots that are programmed to serve human beings spontaneously create brand-new goals on their own, without a possible explanation of how this happened. [37] Analysing Ian McDonald’s 2004 River of Gods, Krzysztof Solarewicz determines the manner ins which it illustrates AIs, including “self-reliance and unexpectedness, political awkwardness, openness to the alien and the occidental worth of credibility.” [38] Another important perspective to take is that fiction’s “non-rational elements in the discourse (the emotive, the mythic, or even the quasi-theological) are more than simply distortions or interruptions from what might otherwise be a sober and reasonable public argument about the future of A.I.” Fiction can dissuade readers about future advances, causing pessimism that we see today surrounding the topic of AI. [39]

Kinds of reference

The robotics scientist Omar Mubin and associates have evaluated the engineering discusses of the top 21 imaginary robotics, based upon those in the Carnegie Mellon University hall of popularity, and the IMDb list. WALL-E had 20 discusses, followed by HAL 9000 with 15, [a] Star Wars’s R2-D2 with 13, and Data with 12; the Terminator (T-800) got only 2. Of the overall of 121 engineering mentions, 60 were utopian, 40 neutral, and 21 dystopian. HAL 9000 and Skynet received both utopian and dystopian mentions; for example, HAL 9000 is viewed as dystopian in one paper “due to the fact that its designers failed to prioritize its objectives appropriately”, [42] but as utopian in another where a real system’s “conversational chat bot user interface [does not have] a HAL 9000 level of intelligence and there is uncertainty in how the computer system analyzes what the human is trying to convey”. [43] Utopian mentions, frequently of WALL-E, were connected with the objective of enhancing interaction to readers, and to a lesser degree with inspiration to authors. WALL-E was mentioned more frequently than any other robot for emotions (followed by HAL 9000), voice speech (followed by HAL 9000 and R2-D2), for physical gestures, and for character. Skynet was the robotic usually pointed out for intelligence, followed by HAL 9000 and Data. [40] Mubin and coworkers thought that scientists and engineers prevented dystopian discusses of robots, possibly out of “an unwillingness driven by nervousness or simply an absence of awareness”. [44]

Portrayals of AI developers

Scholars have actually noted that imaginary creators of AI are overwhelmingly male: in the 142 most prominent movies including AI from 1920 to 2020, just 9 of 116 AI creators represented (8%) were female. [45] Such developers are represented as lone geniuses (eg, Tony Stark in the Iron Man Marvel Cinematic Universe movies), connected with the military (eg, Colossus: The Forbin Project) and big corporations (eg, I, Robot), or making human-like AI to change a lost liked one or work as the ideal enthusiast (e.g., The Stepford Wives). [45]

Biology in fiction
Darwin among the Machines
Machine guideline
Simulated consciousness (sci-fi).
List of artificial intelligence movies.

Notes

^ Mubin and colleagues kept in mind that the orthography of robotic names triggered them troubles; hence HAL 9000 was also composed HAL, HAL9000, and HAL-9000, and similarly for other robots, so they thought their search was most likely incomplete. [41] References

^ “Darwin amongst the Machines”, reprinted in the Notebooks of Samuel Butler at Project Gutenberg.
^ a b c Taylor, Tim; Dorin, Alan (2020 ). Rise of the Self-Replicators: Early Visions of Machines, AI and Robots That Can Reproduce and Evolve. Cham: Springer International Publishing. doi:10.1007/ 978-3-030-48234-3. ISBN 978-3-030-48233-6. S2CID 220855726. “Rise of the Self-Replicators”. Tim Taylor.

^ “Darwin among the Machines”. The Press, Christchurch, New Zealand. 13 June 1863.
^ Aldiss, Brian Wilson (1995 ). The Detached Retina: Aspects of SF and Fantasy. Syracuse University Press. p. 78. ISBN 978-0-8156-0370-2.
^ McCorduck, Pamela (2004 ). Machines Who Think (2nd ed.). Routledge. pp. 4-5. ISBN 978-1-56881-205-2.
^ Cave, Stephen; Dihal, Kanta (25 July 2018). “Ancient dreams of smart machines: 3,000 years of robots”. Nature. 559 (7715 ): 473-475. Bibcode:2018 Natur.559..473 C. doi:10.1038/ d41586-018-05773-y.
^ Mayor, Adrienne (2018 ). Gods and robotics: myths, makers, and ancient imagine innovation. Princeton. ISBN 978-0-691-18351-0. OCLC 1060968156. cite book: CS1 maint: place missing publisher (link).
^ Poole, David; Mackworth, Alan; Goebel, Randy (1998 ). Computational Intelligence: A Rational Approach. Oxford University Press. p. 1. ISBN 0-19-510270-3.
^ Booker, M. Keith (1994 ). “Chapter 1: Utopia, Dystopia, and Social Critique”. The Dystopian Impulse in Modern Literature: Fiction as Social Criticism. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp. 17, 19. ISBN 978-0-313-29092-3.
^ Cave, Stephen; Dihal, Kanta; Dillon, Sarah (2020 ). “Introduction: Imagining AI“. In Cave, Stephen; Dihal, Kanta; Dillon, Sarah (eds.). AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Considering Intelligent Machines. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 10-11. ISBN 978-0-1988-4666-6.
^ a b Mubin et al. 2019, p. 5:2.
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^ Goode 2018, p. 188.
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^ Cave, Stephen; Dihal, Kanta (2019 ). “Hopes and fears for smart machines in fiction and reality”. Nature Machine Intelligence. 1 (2 ): 74-78. doi:10.1038/ s42256-019-0020-9. S2CID 150700981.
^ Wiegel 2012.
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^ Lucas 2002, pp. 48-85.
^ Lucas 2002, pp. 109-152.
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^ Seth, Anil (24 January 2015). “Consciousness Awakening”. New Scientist.
^ “Grove, William”. SF Encyclopedia. Retrieved 8 February 2023.
^ Goode 2018, p. 187.
^ Tim Madigan (July-August 2012). “RUR or RU Ain’t An Individual?”. Philosophy Now. Archived from the original on 3 February 2013. Retrieved 24 July 2013.
^ “Der Herr der Welt (Master of the World)”. The New York City Times. 16 December 1935. p. 23.
^ Overbye, Dennis (10 May 2018). “‘ 2001: An Area Odyssey’ Is Still the ‘Ultimate Trip’ – The rerelease of Stanley Kubrick’s work of art motivates us to reflect once again on where we’re coming from and where we’re going”. The New York City Times.
^ Francavilla, Joseph (1994 ). “The Concept of the Divided Self in Harlan Ellison’s “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” and “Shatterday””. Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts. 6 (2/3 (22/23)): 107-125. JSTOR 43308212.
^ “The Humanoids (based on ‘With Folded Hands’)”. Kirkus Reviews. 15 November 1995. Retrieved 27 July 2018.
^ a b Asimov, Isaac (1950 ). “Runaround”. I, Robot (The Isaac Asimov Collection ed.). Doubleday. p. 40. ISBN 0-385-42304-7. This is an exact transcription of the laws. They also appear in the front of the book, and in both places, there is no “to” in the 2nd law.
^ Walton, Jo Lindsay (1 February 2024). “Machine Learning in Contemporary Sci-fi”. SFRA Review. Retrieved 5 February 2024.
^ Lorenzo, DiTommaso (November 1992). “History and Historical Effect in Frank Herbert’s Dune”. Science Fiction Studies. 19 (3 ): 311-325. JSTOR 4240179.
^ Livingstone, (23 May 2017). “How the Androids Took Over the Alien Franchise”. The New Republic. Retrieved 27 July 2018.
^ Murphy, Shaunna (11 December 2014). “Could TARS From ‘Interstellar’ Actually Exist? We Asked Science”. MTV News. Archived from the initial on 16 November 2014. Retrieved 27 July 2018.
^ Allen, Jamie (28 November 2012). “The Matrix and Postmodernism”. Prezi.com. Retrieved 7 October 2021.
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^ Solarewicz 2015.
^ Goode 2018.
^ a b Mubin et al. 2019, p. 5:15.
^ Mubin et al. 2019, p. 5:20.
^ Mubin et al. 2019, p. 5:8.
^ Mubin et al. 2019, p. 5:10.
^ Mubin et al. 2019, p. 5:19.
^ a b Cave, Stephen; Dihal, Kanta; Drage, Eleanor; McInerney, Kerry (13 February 2023). “Who makes AI? Gender and portrayals of AI scientists in popular movie, 1920-2020″. Public Understanding of Science. 32 (6 ): 745-760. doi:10.1177/ 09636625231153985. PMC 10413781. PMID 36779283. S2CID 256826634.
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Lucas, Duncan (2002 ). Body, Mind, Soul-The’ Cyborg Effect’: Artificial Intelligence in Sci-fi (thesis). McMaster University (PhD thesis). hdl:11375/ 11154.
Mubin, Omar; Wadibhasme, Kewal; Jordan, Philipp; Obaid, Mohammad (2019 ). “Reflecting on the Presence of Sci-fi Robots in Computing Literature”. ACM Transactions on Human-Robot Interaction. 8 (1 ). Article 5. doi:10.1145/ 3303706. S2CID 75135568.
Solarewicz, Krzysztof (2015 ). “The Stuff That Dreams Are Made of: AI in Contemporary Science Fiction”. Beyond Artificial Intelligence. Topics in Intelligent Engineering and Informatics. Vol. 9. Springer International Publishing. pp. 111-120. doi:10.1007/ 978-3-319-09668-1_8. ISBN 978-3-319-09667-4.
Wiegel, Alexander (2012 ). “AI in Science-fiction: a comparison of Moon (2009) and 2001: An Area Odyssey (1968 )”. Aventinus.
King, Geoff; Krzywinska, Tanya (2000 ). Sci-fi Cinema: From Outerspace to Cyberspace. Wallflower Press. ISBN 978-1-903364-03-1.

External links

AI and Sci-Fi: My, Oh, My!: Keynote Address by Robert J. Sawyer 2002
AI and Cinema – Does artificial madness guideline?