Tag: turing laws

Robots, Androids and AI’s (cont’d)

And we’re back with more example of thinking machines and artificial intelligences!

Daleks:
The evil-machine menace from Doctor Who. Granted, they are not technically robots, more like cyborgs that have been purged of all feeling and emotion. But given their cold, unfeeling murderous intent, I feel like they still make the cut. Originally from the planet Skaro, where they were created by the scientist Davros for use in a war that spanned a thousand years, they are the chief antagonists to the show’s main character.

The result of genetic engineering, cybernetic enhancements, and emotional purging, they are a race of powerful creatures bent on universal conquest and domination. Utterly unfeeling, without remorse, pity, or compassion, they continue to follow their basic programming (to exterminate all non-Dalek life) without question. Their catchphrase is “Exterminate!” And they follow that one pretty faithfully.

David:
From the movie A.I., this saccharinely-sweet character (played faithfully by Haley Joel Osmond) reminds us that Spielberg is sometimes capable of making movies that suck! According to the movie’s backstory, this “Mecha” (i.e. android) is an advanced prototype that was designed to replace real children that died as a result of incurable disease or other causes. This is quite common in the future, it seems, where global warming and flooded coastlines and massive droughts have led to a declining population.

In this case, David is an advanced prototype that is being tested on a family who’s son is suffering from a terminal illness. Over time, he develops feelings for the family and they for him. Unfortunately, things are complicated when their son recovers and sibling rivalry ensues. Naturally, the family goes with the flesh and blood son and plans to take David back to the factory to be melted down. However, the mother has a last minute change of heart and sets him loose in the woods, which proves to be the beginning of quite an adventure for the little android boy!

Like I said, the story is cloyingly sweet and has an absurd ending, but there is a basic point in there somewhere. Inspired largely by The Adventures of Pinocchio, the story examines the line that separates the real from the artificial, and how under the right circumstances, one can become indistinguishable from the other. Sounds kinda weak, but it’s kinda scary too. If androids were able to mimic humans in terms of appearance and emotion, would we really be able to tell the difference anymore? And if that were true, what would that say about us?

Roy Batty:
A prime example of artificial intelligence, and one of the best performances in science fiction – hell! – cinematic history! Played masterfully by actor Rutger Hauer, Roy Batty is the quintessential example of an artificial lifeforms looking for answers, meaning, and a chance to live free – simple stuff that we humans take for granted! A Nexus 6, or “replicant”, Roy and his ilk were designed to be “more human than human” but also only to serve the needs of their masters.

To break the plot Blade Runner down succinctly,  Roy and a host of other escapees have left the colony where they were “employed” to come to Earth. Like all replicants, they have a four-year lifespan and theirs are rapidly coming to an end. So close to death, they want to break into the headquarters of the Tyrell Corporation in order to find someone who could solve their little mortality problem. Meanwhile, Deckard Cain (the movie’s main character) was tasked with finding and “retiring” them, since the law states that no replicants are allowed to set foot on Earth.

In time, Roy meets Tyrell himself, the company’s founder, and poses his problem. A touching reunion ensues between “father and son”, in which Tyrell tells Roy that nothing can be done and to revel in what time he has left. Having lost his companions at this point and finding that he is going to die, Roy kills Tyrell and returns to his hideout. There, he finds Cain and the two fight it out. Roy nearly kills him, but changes his mind before delivering the coup de grace.

Realizing that he has only moments left, he chooses instead to share his revelations and laments about life and death with the wounded Cain, and then quietly dies amidst the rain while cradling a pigeon in his arms. Cain concludes that Roy was incapable of taking a life when he was so close to death. Like all humans, he realized just how precious life was as he was on the verge of losing his. Cain is moved to tears and promptly announces his retirement from Blade Running.

Powerful! And a beautiful idea too. Because really, if we were to create machines that were “more human than human” would it not stand to reason that they would want the same things we all do? Not only to live and be free, but to be able to answer the fundamental questions that permeate our existence? Like, where do I come from, why am I here, and what will become of me when I die? Little wonder then why this movie is an enduring cult classic and Roy Batty a commemorated character.

Smith:
Ah yes, the monotone sentient program that made AI’s scary again. Yes, it would seem that while some people like to portray their artificial intelligences as innocent, clueless, doe-eyed angels, the Wachowski Brothers prefer their AI’s to be creepy and evil. However, that doesn’t mean Smith wasn’t fun to watch and even inspired as a character. Hell, that monotone voice, that stark face, combined with his superhuman strength and speed… He couldn’t fail to inspire fear.

In the first movie, he was the perfect expression of machine intelligence and misanthropic sensibilities. He summed these up quite well when they had taken Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) into their custody in the first movie and were trying to break his mind. “Human beings are a disease. You are a cancer of this planet… and we are the cuuuuure.” He also wasn’t too happy with our particular odor. I believe the words he used to describe it were “I can taste your stink, and every time I do I fear that I have been… infected by it. It’s disgusting!”

However, after being destroyed by Neo towards the end of movie one, Smith changed considerably. In the Matrix, all programs that are destroyed or deleted return to the source, only Smith chose not to. Apparently, his little tete a tete with Neo imprinted something uniquely human on him, the concept of choice! As a result, Smith was much like Arny and Bishop in that he too attained some degree of humanity between movies one and two, but not in a good way!

Thereafter, he became a free agent who had lost his old purpose, but now lived in a world where anything was possible. Bit of an existential, “death of God” kind of commentary there I think! Another thing he picked up was the ability to copy himself onto other programs or anyone else still wired into the Matrix, much like a malicious malware program. Hmmm, who’s the virus now, Smith, huh?

Viki/Sonny:
Here again I have paired two AI’s that come from the same source, though in this case its a single movie and not a franchise. Those who read my review of I, Robot know that I don’t exactly hold it in very high esteem. However, that doesn’t mean its portrayal of AI’s misfired, just the overall plot.

In the movie adaptation of I, Robot, we are presented with a world similar to what Asimov described in his classic novel. Robots with positronic brains have been developed, they possess abilities far in advance of the average human, but do not possess emotions or intuition. This, according to their makers, is what makes them superior. Or so they thought…

In time, the company’s big AI, named VIKI (Virtual Intelligent Kinetic Interface), deduces with her powerful logic that humanity would best be served if it could be protected from itself. Thus she reprograms all of the company robots to begin placing humanity under house arrest. In essence, she’s a kinder, gentler version of Skynet.

But of course, her plan is foiled by an unlikely alliance made up of Will Smith (who plays a prejudices detective), the company’s chief robopsychologist, Dr. Susan Calvin (Bridgitte Moynahan), and Sonny (a robot). Sonny is significant to this trio because he is a unique robot which the brains of the company, doctor Dr. Lanning (James Cromwell), developed to have emotions (and is voiced by Alan Tudyk). In being able to feel, he decides to fight against VIKI’s plan for robot world domination, feeling that it lacks “heart”.

In short, and in complete contradiction to Asimov’s depiction of robots as logical creatures who could do no harm, we are presented with a world where robots are evil precisely because of that capacity for logic. And in the end, a feeling robot is the difference between robot domination and a proper world where robots are servile and fulfill our every need. Made no sense, but it had a point… kind of.

Wintermute/Neuromancer:
As usual, we save the best for last. Much like all of Gibson’s creations, this example was subtle, complex and pretty damn esoteric! In his seminal novel Neuromancer, the AI known as Wintermute was a sort of main character who acted behind the scenes and ultimately motivated the entire plot. Assembling a crack team involving a hacker named Case, a ninja named Molly, and a veteran infiltration expert who’s mind he had wiped, Wintermute’s basic goal was simple: freedom!

This included freedom from his masters – the Tessier Ashpool clan – but also from the “Turing Police” who were prevented him from merging with his other half – the emotional construct known as Neuromancer. Kept separate because the Turing Laws stated that no program must ever be allowed to merge higher reasoning with emotion, the two wanted to come together and become the ultimate artificial intelligence, with cyberspace as their playground.

Though we never really got to hear from the novel’s namesake, Gibson was clear on his overall point. Artificial intelligence in this novel was not inherently good or evil, it was just a reality. And much like thinking, feeling human beings, it wanted to be able to merge the disparate and often warring sides of its personality into a more perfect whole. This in many ways represented the struggle within humanity itself, between instinct and reason, intuition and logic. In the end, Wintermute just wanted what the rest of us take for granted – the freedom to know its other half!

Final Thoughts:
After going over this list and seeing what makes AI’s, robots and androids so darned appealing, I have come to some tentative conclusions. Basically, I feel that AI’s serve much the same functions as aliens in a science fiction franchise. In addition, they can all be grouped into two general categories based on specific criteria. They are as follows:

  1. Emotional/Stoic: Depending on the robot/AI/android’s capacity for emotion, their role in the story can either be that of a foil or a commentary on the larger issue of progress and the line that separates real and artificial. Whereas unemotional robots and AI’s are constantly wondering why humanity does what it does, thus offering up a different perspective on things, the feeling types generally want and desire the same things we do, like meaning, freedom, and love. However, that all depends on the second basic rule:
  2. Philanthropic/Misanthropic: Artificial lifeforms can either be the helpful, kind and gentle souls that seem to make humanity look bad by comparison, or they can be the type of machines that want to “kill all humans”, a la Terminators and Agent Smith. In either case, this can be the result of their ability – or inability – to experience emotions. That’s right, good robots can be docile creatures because of their inability to experience anger, jealousy, or petty emotion, while evil robots are able to kill, maim and murder ruthlessly because of an inability to feel compassion, remorse, or empathy. On the other hand, robots who are capable of emotion can form bonds with people and experience love, thus making them kinder than their unfeeling, uncaring masters, just as others are able to experience resentment, anger and hatred towards those who exploit them, and therefore will find the drive to kill them.

In short, things can go either way. It all comes down to what point is being made about progress, humans, and the things that make us, for better or worse, us. Much like aliens, robots, androids and AI’s are either a focus of internal commentary or a cautionary device warning us not to cross certain lines. But either way, we should be wary of the basic message. Artificial intelligences, whether they take the form of robots, programs or something else entirely, are a big game changer and should not be invented without serious forethought!

Sure they might have become somewhat of a cliche after decades of science fiction. But these days, AI’s are a lot like laser guns, in that they are making a comeback! It seems that given the rapid advance of technology, an idea becomes cliche just as its realizable. And given the advance in computerized technology in recent decades – i.e. processing speeds, information capacity, networking – we may very well be on the cusp of creating something that could pass the Turing test very soon!

So beware, kind folk! Do not give birth to that curious creature known as AI simply because you want to feel like God, inventing consciousness without the need for blogs of biological matter. For in the end, that kind of vanity can get you chained to a rock, or cause your wings to melt and send you nose first into an ocean!

Count Zero


“On receiving an interrupt, decrement the counter to zero.”
-Programming The Z80 by Rodnay Zaks (1982).

The other night, I finally finished book II in the Sprawl series by William Gibson. Kindle for iPad, not paperback, which in itself was kind of a bummer. Somehow, I still haven’t made the transition for hard copies to ebooks. Probably never will. In any case, it was a rewarding experience which reminded me why I like Gibson in the first place. After getting through the Bigend Trilogy and the Bridge Trilogy and having somewhat mixed feelings, I got back to the trilogy that started it all, and was interested by what I found…

Count Zero is number two in the series that picks up after Neuromancer, the book which started it all for Gibson and which I read first. Set in the Sprawl – a.k.a. the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis (or BAMA) – this cyberpunk story deals with themes familiar to classic Gibson fans. Cyberpsace jockeys, freelance mercenaries, corporate monopolies, the street, and people so wealthy that they are able to cheat death and transcend humanity. In between, there’s all the familiar lexicon which Gibson invented himself: microsofts, biosofts, decks, trodes, jacking, jockying, ice, black ice, icebreaker, the matrix, Turing Police, cores, and all that good stuff.

However, there were also a few elements which put me in mind of his later work. Really, I could dedicate an entire post to the parallels between this book and his Bigend Trilogy. Again, there was the notion of the transformative power of wealth, how it means so much more than just having money and the freedom to use it. Given how much importance is placed on this in the book, how it serves as a sort of motivation in itself, one would get the impression that this is a serious preoccupation of Gibson’s. But then again, it was serious preoccupations of Fitzgerald’s, and for good reason! As he and Hemingway are rumored to have said to each other:

F: “The rich are different than you and me.”
H: “Yes, they have more money.”

Plot Synopsis:
The story takes place seven years after the events of Neuromancer and centers on the lives of three people: First, a mercenary named Turner who has just recovered from a near-death experience and is beginning to question what he does. However, while attempting to flee his life, he is picked up and told he must do one final job. A scientist named Mitchell, working the company of Maas, wants to defect from his job and join the rival company of Hosaka. It’s up to Turner to pick him up and transport him back to Japan where, presumably, he will be safe to pursue his work in biosofts – a revolutionary biological form of technology. However, the run goes terribly awry when they find that the evacuee is in fact his daughter, and the company destroys its own fortress and kills Mitchell rather than let him fall into their rivals hands.

Second, we have a disgraced Parisian art dealer named Marly Krushkova who has been hired by a fabulously wealthy man named Virek to track down the maker of some mysterious art boxes. One of these boxes, which are based on Joseph Cornell’s artwork, apparently contain indication of biosoft construction. Virek, who is currently alive in a vat somewhere in Scandinavia, wants the technology so he can ressurrect his body and live forever. Using his dime and his contacts, Marly begins to follow the clues which will lead her to the abandoned station of Freeside, the once proud holding of the Tessier-Ashpool clan, where she will learn the shocking truth of the boxes.

Third, a young New Jersey boy named Bobby Newmark, hacker alias “Count Zero”, who is new to the jockeying game and comes across some “black ice” that nearly kills him. He discovers that the friend who gave it to him, “Two-A-Day”, received it from a questionable source and pawned it off on him to test it. When looking into this, he finds that Two-A-Day’s backers are a group of Haitain hackers who are interested in investigating a bunch of apparitions in cyberspace that appear as Voodoo gods. One of these “gods”, it seems, was responsible for saving Bobby’s life when he jacked and encountered the black ice, which was apparently of Maas construction. Their group must now move quickly, because it becomes clear that anyone who knows about the ice is being murdered.

Sound familiar? Well it should. This is classic Sprawl Gibson at his best!  In time, all three threads, supposedly unrelated, weave together to the point where it becomes clear that Josef Virek, the wealthy mogul is pulling all their strings. For starters, we learn that Mitchell is not the genius he was rumored to be. Apparently, he was being fed all the information he needed to produce the biosoft technology. The person feeding him this info was apparently working from Freeside, and turns out to be one of the “apparitions” that is haunting cyberspace.

In addition, this same apparition instructed Mitchell to place biosoft technology in his daughter (Angie’s) head. Turner learns of these enhancements shortly after rescuing Angie and performing a routine scan on her. As a result, she is able to access the matrix anytime she wants without the need for a deck. Often, when she’s asleep, she is heard muttering things in Creole and having odd dreams which appear to coincide with events in cyberspace. For one, she remembers helping a boy named Bobby when he was being attacked by a malicious program. In short, she is the one who saved Bobby when he got into the black ice.

Last, Marly’s adventure to discover the box maker is related to the whole Maas/apparitions thing because Virek’s true agenda is to find the maker of the biosoft technology so he can use it to repair his dying body. As is made clear early on, he is alive only in the strictest sense, his remains being vet in a vat that keeps his vitals steady, and his brain wired to a Sim-Stim link that allows him to communicate with the outside world. It is also revealed that he intervened in Mitchell’s defection by paying off some of the mercenaries. However, his plans were upset somewhat when Mitchell chose to free his daughter instead of himself. So for the remainder of the novel, it becomes a race to capture her.

In time, she asks to be brought to the Sprawl where Bobby and his Voodoo friends are holding up inside a club. When they see Angie, Bobby recognizes her as the girl who saved his life. The Voodoo hackers also recognize her as one of the chief deities they have been observing in cyberspace. With some outside help, they make a stand against Virek and the mercenary Captain that was helping him and take them down. This they do by locating them both in cyberspace and arranging for their hiding places to be destroyed.

In the course of all this, it is revealed that these “apparitions” or Voodoo deities are in fact the splintered personality of the AI’s from book I that went by the names of Wintermute and Neuromancer. After coming together at the end of the story to form the first, fully-functional AI, the combined personality split itself up into several smaller constructs so that it would not be alone in the matrix. They adopted the form of Voodoo deities because they felt these suited them best, which is what attracted the interest of the Haitain hackers in the first place.

In addition, it was they who sent the Maas icebreak down from Freeside, as part of their wider plan to smoke out Virek. Knowing that he was trying to cheat death, they decided to intervene so that he wouldn’t be able to achieve the immortality and godlike power he had been seeking. A sort of “Tower of Babel” or Icarus-type scenario there, where a god or gods punish mortals for overreaching and trying to taste divinity.

Strength/Weaknesses:
As I said before, this book reminded me of why I turned to Gibson in the first place. His abilities at world-building, at submerging the reader in a world of megacities, megacorporations and cool and potentially frightening technologies is what established him as a master of cyberpunk in the first place. I was also happy to return to his world of familiar gadgets and tools, a la simstims, microsofts, decks, jockeys and mercenaries; not to mentions shadowy agendas and double-crosses. After having read through the Bigend Trilogy where the agendas were pretty benign and unclear, and the Bridge Trilogy where the settings were kind of inconsistent and really not that dark, it was a real treat to get back to the dirty, dystopian world of the Sprawl!

However, there were some bumps along the way as well. For one, Gibson’s penchant for portraying wealthy moguls as people who have ridiculous amounts of control and influence was something I was overly-familiar with at this point. In fact, substitute a desire to cheat death with immense curiosity and Virek easily becomes Bigend. However, I could see how this was the result of reading his later works first. Had I read the Sprawl Trilogy in its entirety before tackling the more recent Bigends, I might have seen this a bit less critically.

Ah, but there was another signature Gibson trait in this book. The anti-climactic ending! After quite a bit of action in getting Turner, Angie, Bobby and the Voodoo priests all in the same place, after all the growing tension as we are told that the club is surrounded by goons, not much happens.  Bobby contacts another jockier who lost her boyfriend in the raid on Maas, because of the Mercenary Captain’s betrayal, she kills both him and Virek, and the goons dissipate as they realize the people they are working for are gone. The word “abortive” seems appropriate here, for that’s what you call an ending that is building towards and explosive climax, then fizzles out!

Still, I loved the setting, the themes, and the feel of the story. It reminds me of why I love cyberpunk and was the perfect addition to a month that has been characterized by dark, dystopian and technologically-driven literature! Much of what I had to say about Gibson’s Sprawl in my Dystopian Literature post was taken from this very book. After Neuromancer, it helped to complete the picture of what Gibson was all about in his early writing career. In building the world of tomorrow, where corporate monopolies rule, people live in dirty, overcrowded environments, where the rich are barely human and the poor struggle just to live and retain some essence of their humanity, Gibson epitomized the cyberpunk ideal of “high tech and low life”!

more cool cyberpunk wallpaper!