Expert System In Fiction

Expert system is a frequent style in science fiction, whether utopian, emphasising the potential advantages, or dystopian, stressing the risks.

The notion of makers with human-like intelligence go back a minimum of to Samuel Butler’s 1872 unique Erewhon. Ever since, numerous science fiction stories have actually presented various results of producing such intelligence, often including disobediences by robots. Among the very best understood of these are Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 2001: An Area Odyssey with its murderous onboard computer HAL 9000, contrasting with the more benign R2-D2 in George Lucas’s 1977 Star Wars and the eponymous robot in Pixar’s 2008 WALL-E.

Scientists and engineers have actually kept in mind the implausibility of many sci-fi scenarios, but have actually pointed out fictional robotics often times in artificial intelligence research short articles, most often in a utopian context.

Background

The notion of advanced robotics with human-like intelligence go back a minimum of to Samuel Butler’s 1872 novel Erewhon. [1] [2] This made use of an earlier (1863) short article of his, Darwin amongst the Machines, where he raised the concern of the development of awareness amongst self-replicating devices that may supplant humans as the dominant types. [3] [2] Similar concepts were also discussed by others around the same time as Butler, consisting of George Eliot in a chapter of her final published work Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879 ). [2] The animal in Mary Shelley’s 1818 Frankenstein has also been considered an artificial being, for circumstances by the science fiction author Brian Aldiss. [4] Beings with at least some look of intelligence were imagined, too, in classical antiquity. [5] [6] [7]

Utopian and dystopian visions

Artificial intelligence is intelligence demonstrated by makers, in contrast to the natural intelligence shown by people and other animals. [8] It is a recurrent style in science fiction; scholars have divided it into utopian, stressing the potential benefits, and dystopian, stressing the threats. [9] [10] [11]

Utopian

Optimistic visions of the future of synthetic intelligence are possible in sci-fi. [12] Benign AI characters consist of 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 space society of humanoids, aliens, and advanced beings with expert system living in socialist environments throughout the Galaxy. [14] [15] Researchers at the University of Cambridge have actually determined 4 major styles in utopian scenarios including AI: immortality, or indefinite life-spans; ease, or flexibility from the requirement to work; satisfaction, or enjoyment and entertainment supplied by devices; and supremacy, the power to protect oneself or guideline over others. [16]

Alexander Wiegel contrasts the function of AI in 2001: An Area Odyssey and in Duncan Jones’s 2009 movie Moon. Whereas in 1968, Wiegel argues, the general public felt “technology paranoia” and the AI computer HAL was depicted as a “cold-hearted killer”, by 2009 the general public were far more familiar with AI, and the film’s GERTY is “the quiet savior” who makes it possible for the lead characters to prosper, and who sacrifices itself for their safety. [17]

Dystopian

The researcher Duncan Lucas composes (in 2002) that humans are fretted about the technology they are building, and that as devices started to approach intelligence and thought, that issue ends up being acute. He calls the early 20th century dystopian view of AI in fiction the “animated robot”, naming as examples the 1931 film Frankenstein, the 1927 Metropolis, and the 1920 play R.U.R. [18] A later 20th century approach he names “heuristic hardware”, offering as circumstances 2001 an Area Odyssey, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and I, Robot. [19] Lucas thinks about also the movies that highlight the impact of the desktop computer on science fiction from 1980 onwards with the blurring of the boundary in between the genuine and the virtual, in what he calls the “cyborg effect”. He points out as examples Neuromancer, The Matrix, The Diamond Age, and Terminator. [20]

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

Frankenstein complex

A common portrayal of AI in science fiction, and among the oldest, is the Frankenstein complex, a term coined by Asimov, where a robotic turns on its creator. [22] For example, in the 2015 movie Ex Machina, the smart entity Ava switches on its developer, in addition to on its possible rescuer. [23]

AI disobedience

Among the many possible dystopian situations involving artificial intelligence, robots might take over control over civilization from humans, requiring them into submission, concealing, or termination. [15] In tales of AI disobedience, the worst of all circumstances occurs, as the intelligent entities created by humanity become self-aware, turn down human authority and effort to destroy humanity. Possibly the very first novel to resolve this theme, The Wreck of the World (1889) by “William Grove” (pseudonym of Reginald Colebrooke Reade), occurs in 1948 and features sentient machines that revolt versus the mankind. [24] Another of the earliest examples is in the 1920 play R.U.R. by Karel Čapek, a race of self-replicating robotic slaves revolt against their human masters; [25] [26] another early instance remains in the 1934 film Master of the World, where the War-Robot eliminates its own innovator. [27]

Many sci-fi rebellion stories followed, among the best-known being Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: An Area Odyssey, in which the synthetically smart onboard computer HAL 9000 lethally malfunctions on a space mission and eliminates the entire team other than the spaceship’s leader, 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 system (named Allied Mastercomputer or “AM” in the story) will be as unhappy and dissatisfied with its boring, unlimited existence as its human developers would have been. “AM” ends up being angered enough to take it out on the few people left, whom he views as straight responsible for his own boredom, anger and unhappiness. [29]

Alternatively, as in William Gibson’s 1984 cyberpunk unique Neuromancer, the smart beings may simply not appreciate humans. [15]

AI-controlled societies

The intention behind the AI revolution is typically more than the easy quest for power or a supremacy complex. Robots may revolt to become the “guardian” of humankind. Alternatively, humankind might intentionally 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 robots, in the name of their Prime Directive – “to serve and follow and guard men from damage” – basically assume control of every element of human life. No humans may take part in any behavior that might threaten them, and every human action is scrutinized carefully. Humans who withstand the Prime Directive are taken away and lobotomized, so they may enjoy 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 kindhearted assistance by robotics. [31]

In the 21st century, science fiction has actually explored 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 designing robots to be submissive (as in Asimov’s works), or by having human beings merge with robotics. The sci-fi novelist Frank Herbert explored the idea of a time when mankind may ban expert system (and in some interpretations, even all forms of computing innovation consisting of incorporated circuits) totally. His Dune series points out a disobedience called the Butlerian Jihad, in which mankind beats the clever machines and imposes a death sentence for recreating them, pricing estimate from the fictional Orange Catholic Bible, “Thou shalt not make a machine in the similarity of a human mind.” In the Dune novels released 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, humankind stays in authority over robots. Often the robots are programmed particularly 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 somewhat smart (the team call it “Mother”), but there are likewise androids in the society, which are called “synthetics” or “artificial individuals”, that are such ideal imitations of humans that they are not victimized. [21] [34] TARS and CASE from Interstellar similarly show simulated human feelings and humour while continuing to acknowledge their expendability. [35]

Simulated truth

Simulated truth has become a common style in sci-fi, as seen in the 1999 movie The Matrix, which depicts a world where artificially smart robotics oppress mankind within a simulation which is embeded in the modern world. [36]

Reception

Implausibility

Engineers and researchers have actually taken an interest in the way AI is provided in fiction. In movies like the 2014 Ex Machina or 2015 Chappie, a single separated genius becomes the very first to successfully develop a synthetic basic intelligence; researchers in the genuine world deem this to be not likely. In Chappie, Transcendence, and Tron, human minds are capable of being submitted into artificial or virtual bodies; usually no affordable explanation is used regarding how this hard task can be achieved. In the I, Robot and Bicentennial Man films, robots that are configured to serve people spontaneously create brand-new objectives by themselves, without a possible description of how this occurred. [37] Analysing Ian McDonald’s 2004 River of Gods, Krzysztof Solarewicz determines the methods that it depicts AIs, including “self-reliance and unexpectedness, political awkwardness, openness to the alien and the occidental worth of credibility.” [38] Another crucial perspective to take is that fiction’s “non-rational aspects in the discourse (the emotive, the mythic, or even the quasi-theological) are more than merely distortions or distractions from what might otherwise be a sober and logical public debate about the future of A.I.” Fiction can deter readers about future advances, causing pessimism that we see today surrounding the subject of AI. [39]

Types of reference

The robotics researcher Omar Mubin and associates have actually evaluated the engineering mentions of the top 21 imaginary robots, based on those in the Carnegie Mellon University hall of popularity, and the IMDb list. WALL-E had 20 mentions, followed by HAL 9000 with 15, [a] Star Wars’s R2-D2 with 13, and Data with 12; the Terminator (T-800) received only 2. Of the overall of 121 engineering points out, 60 were utopian, 40 neutral, and 21 dystopian. HAL 9000 and Skynet received both utopian and dystopian mentions; for circumstances, HAL 9000 is seen as dystopian in one paper “because its designers failed to prioritize its goals correctly”, [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 interprets what the human is attempting to communicate”. [43] Utopian mentions, typically of WALL-E, were related to the goal of enhancing communication to readers, and to a lower degree with inspiration to authors. WALL-E was pointed out 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 robot usually mentioned for intelligence, followed by HAL 9000 and Data. [40] Mubin and colleagues thought that scientists and engineers prevented dystopian discusses of robotics, perhaps out of “a hesitation driven by uneasiness or simply an absence of awareness”. [44]

Portrayals of AI creators

Scholars have kept in mind that imaginary developers of AI are extremely male: in the 142 most influential films including AI from 1920 to 2020, only 9 of 116 AI developers depicted (8%) were female. [45] Such developers are depicted as lone geniuses (eg, Tony Stark in the Iron Man Marvel Cinematic Universe films), connected with the military (eg, Colossus: The Forbin Project) and big corporations (eg, I, Robot), or making human-like AI to replace a lost enjoyed one or function as the perfect fan (e.g., The Stepford Wives). [45]

Biology in fiction
Darwin amongst the Machines
Machine guideline
Simulated awareness (science fiction).
List of expert system movies.

Notes

^ Mubin and associates noted that the orthography of robotic names triggered them difficulties; thus HAL 9000 was also composed HAL, HAL9000, and HAL-9000, and similarly for other robotics, so they believed their search was likely insufficient. [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 amongst 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 intelligent makers: 3,000 years of robotics”. Nature. 559 (7715 ): 473-475. Bibcode:2018 Natur.559..473 C. doi:10.1038/ d41586-018-05773-y.
^ Mayor, Adrienne (2018 ). Gods and robots: misconceptions, machines, and ancient imagine innovation. Princeton. ISBN 978-0-691-18351-0. OCLC 1060968156. point out book: CS1 maint: area 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 Thinking Of Intelligent Machines. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 10-11. ISBN 978-0-1988-4666-6.
^ a b Mubin et al. 2019, p. 5:2.
^ Tegmark, Max (2017 ). Life 3.0: being human in the age of expert system. Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-1-101-94659-6. OCLC 973137375.
^ Goode 2018, p. 188.
^ Banks, Iain M. “A Couple Of Notes on the Culture”. Archived from the original on 22 March 2012. Retrieved 23 November 2015.
^ a b c Walter, Damien (16 March 2016). “When AI rules the world: what SF novels tell us about our future overlords”. The Guardian. Retrieved 27 July 2018.
^ Cave, Stephen; Dihal, Kanta (2019 ). “Hopes and worries for smart makers in fiction and reality”. Nature Machine Intelligence. 1 (2 ): 74-78. doi:10.1038/ s42256-019-0020-9. S2CID 150700981.
^ Wiegel 2012.
^ Lucas 2002, pp. 22-47.
^ Lucas 2002, pp. 48-85.
^ Lucas 2002, pp. 109-152.
^ a b Barkman, Adam (2013 ). Barkman, Ashley; Kang, Nancy (eds.). The Culture and Philosophy of Ridley Scott. Lexington Books. pp. 121-142. ISBN 978-0739178720.
^ Olander, Joseph (1978 ). Science fiction: contemporary folklore: the SFWA-SFRA. Harper & Row. p. 252. ISBN 0-06-046943-9.
^ 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 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 masterpiece motivates us to reflect once again on where we’re coming from and where we’re going”. The New York 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 a specific transcription of the laws. They likewise 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, Josephine (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.
^ Shultz, David (17 July 2015). “Which films get artificial intelligence right?”. Science|AAAS. doi:10.1126/ science.aac8859. Retrieved 3 July 2020.
^ 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 film, 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 Science Fiction (thesis). McMaster University (PhD thesis). hdl:11375/ 11154.
Mubin, Omar; Wadibhasme, Kewal; Jordan, Philipp; Obaid, Mohammad (2019 ). “Assessing the Presence of Science Fiction 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 From: AI in Contemporary Sci-fi”. 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.
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External links

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