The Life Behind the Eyes

When thinking about the role of eyes in Bladerunner, I'm guessing most people immediately think of the same saying that popped in to my head, "the eyes are the window to the soul". I think the role of eyes in this movie definitely stresses that, as Deckard is able to tell the difference between humans and replicants mostly through observing their eyes. Humans have real eyes, that are able to express feeling and emotion through the involuntary reactions such as dilation of the pupil. Although the replicants' eyes have been constructed and engineered to function and appear incredibly similar to the eyes of the humans, when they are put under very close scrutiny one can tell the difference, because behind the eyes of the replicant there is no soul. As similar as replicants may appear to humans, almost perfectly genetically designed to be inseparable, the one feature that is impossible to perfectly replicate is the eyes.

Bladerunner: Tears in the Rain Unscripted

This was the first time I had watched this film. I had told my dad that we were going to watch this movie in class and he was so excited. He said that I was going to love this film, and I did. It was a little scary at times, but still good. I had learned from a friend that the scene at the end where Roy is talking about how tears disappear in the rain and such was completely done without a script. Wow! I couldn't believe that. I had started to get emotional during that part, and to learn that the actor (Rutger Hauer) had done his own monologue made it even better.

I think there is an obsession with eyes in this movie because of the old saying: "eyes are the window to the soul." While watching the movie you could eventually tell which people were replicants  and vice versa. But I couldn't tell at the end of the movie when Roy was dying. Maybe he made his own soul? Instead of just being born with one? The soul is one of the things that can't be given to a robot. Maybe that's why there was such an obsession with eyes in this movie.

I definitely feel I need to re watch it to pick up on things I missed!

Eyes and Emotions

Eyes may play the most crucial role in the film Blade Runner. The subject matter arises numerous times throughout the movie in dialogue and shown in major scenes of the film. But why are eyes so important?

Eyes are used to differentiate replicants from humans. Replicants are so humanistic a Voight-Kampff test is needed to study the eye; The test measures pupil dilation and other eye movements in regards to emotions. Replicants often fail the test because their automated responses are not the same as humans.

I believe that replicants automated responses are different from humans (besides the obvious of not being human) because they lack actual memories provided through sight. Humans remember the majority of their lives because they have seen and lived through an event that produces an emotional response. Replicants, on the other hand, are provided with a myriad of memories that are not their own. Because of this they do not have the same emotional ties to an event like humans. Human bodies have reactions to certain events that we cannot control like pupil dilation. Say the pupil dilates when a human witness's a murder, if you feed that same murder memory to a replicant, the pupils automated response would also have to be fed to the replicant. I'm not sure how exactly the replicants gain their memories, but it seems as though they gain memories through photographs and stories, so there are no automated responses associated with their memories.

To be Human

The film Blade Runner has a direct link to A Cyborg Manifesto because Donna Haraway focused primarily on the concept of how years of changes in the world have caused the lines separating organisms to blur. She described how the boundaries separating the human vs animal, human/animal vs machine, and the physical vs non-physical have dissolved creating a blend between the ideas. This theme was strongly felt throughout the entire movie because many times, the viewers are not immediately sure of who is a human and who is a replicant. In Rachel's case, she herself was a replicant yet believed she was human. This begs the question, who is to decide what is human and what is not?
Many people base security of their own humanity off of their previous experiences. They have memories of "human" experiences and emotional responses to those experiences. However, how much trust can we place in those memories? One of the most surprising things I have learned is how easy it is to alter, erase, and create memories. Memories are easily altered by the emotions one feels in the present. It can be compared to telling a story and each time that story is told, it is changed a bit depending on the way it is told. Even psychologists have faced scrutiny in their experiments by "planting" memories into people's minds accidentally by trying to bring up memories that don't exist so often that the patient believes it themselves.
Rachel is the primary example of the fragility of ones mind because she truly believed the memories put in her head. While she believed she was recalling her own experiences, she was really recounting the experiences of Tyrell's niece. Deckard was the one who shattered her false knowledge by showing her the truth. Immediately you can see the fear and confusion in her eye because while she believed she was living in a world full of loving experiences between people, she realized she had not experienced a single bit of it.
The eyes have much importance in the film because eyes are one of the most important ways to read body language, which is the primary source of communication in the world. In the beginning there is a man being interviewed by a test "designed to provoke an emotional response." Eyes reveal every emotion. Your pupils automatically give away your interest in the atmosphere around you based on their dilation and eye contact can reveal how comfortable one feels in an environment. Eyes are the one part of a person that cannot lie.

On Eyes

The recurring use of odd lighting to highlight replicant eyes in the movie is meant to draw attention to their non-human state. Since so much of our communication as a species is through nonverbal facial cues, especially around the eye area, we have come to associate human eyes with human-ness and individual personality. Reading the intent, mood, and health of another individual by taking in details about their eyes unconsciously is a fundamental part of how we operate and associate identity. Because the eyes are highlighted ominously, we are told that the character isn't normal in an instinctual way.
However, I don't think that the replicants' non-human state is part of a non-human nature. The movie explicitly states that they have all the fundamentals and complexities of human emotion and thought, but without the life experience to shape these things or give them context for the individual. The crux of the movie is Tyrell Corporation's attempt to ensure that replicants don't develop past reactionary programming; they are edging onto the border of being human, and society wants them to stay on that side of the border. The “monster” of Otherness and uncanniness is to them less terrifying and less of a physical threat than awakened humanity; love dolls and factory machines don't suddenly rise up, but people do.
There is an unspoken ethical streak through the movie that reflects a side of this. When “real” animals are mentioned, as in the replicant tests, humans are expected to have compassion and not harm them. There may be an in-the-movie-world understanding that a replicant is only a replicant as long as it stays on that other side of the human divide, and once they become people the whole basis of their exploitation crumbles.
The strange eyes aren't eerie because they belong to something inhuman, but because they belong to something becoming human. As long as that something remains a something and not a someone, however uncanny the may be the world can still manage them. An identity, a wholeness of self, is expressed by the familiar human-ness of their eyes; and that difference is what sets Deckard and Batty apart from the other replicants.

Do AIs Have Human Rights?

     There's an interesting point raised in the Blade Runner, which has been discussed thousands of times nowadays but is still fascinating. Should AIs have human rights?
     Obviously in the movie the Replicants had none of the human rights. They looked exactly like human and thought and felt almost the same as humans, except lacking some sort of empathy in a test. However, their life was limited in four years by programming; they were used as tools; they saved and killed people under orders; they were forcefully "retired" when humans were tired or even afraid of them. People could never tell the difference between a Replicant and a human simply based on their appearance, and a Replicant could live a human life as long as he or she was not detected. However, once they failed the test, all the human rights they had before were deprived in a second. When some creature, or individual, could think, believe, love, and struggle for life (as Rachel and Roy in the movie), should humans still put themselves in the place of God to decide if the AIs are "human" enough to have basic civil rights? Or, in other words, when something is already intelligent enough to make their voluntary choice, can we just simply deny their most fundamental right to life?
     At the end of the movie, Roy said to Deckard:" I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the darkness at Tannhäuser Gate. " He reminded me of an episode in the TV series Torchwood. The Torchwood team was using an alien as a bait in order to find out who was behind the incident. Such decision definitely put the alien in huge danger, but the leader never hesitated on it. A teammate questioned him that when it was never okay to use a person as a bait, it was totally fine to use an alien. I didn't remember how the team leader reacted, but the meaning behind that scene was that humans had the highest priority above anything else.
     I feel that it was a similar case in the Blade Runner. Replicants were sent out to do the things so no human would need to do so and kill the peoples so no human would need to commit murder. They were placed outside of humans' laws in the very beginning, but it turned out to be their crime and lead them to execution eventually.

Do we have false memories?

The fact that Rachel is really the only replicant that can feel fear and love raises some questions. It questions what it really means to be human. Rachel was unaware she wasn't a human until Rick told her. She had memories from when she was a little girl because her creator integrate false memories into her that she thought were hers, but were really a humans actual memories. These memories and since she has been around humans her whole life most likely are the cause for her ability to feel for others or to become scared. This questions what it really means to be able to get scared or love someone else. How do we know if these are real feelings or just something we perceive to be real because we trick ourselves into thinking they are real. We grew up being taught that these feelings are real so our brains trigger when we believe we should love someone else or we should be scared. So our we actually loving someone or are they based on false feelings like the false memories Rachel has integrated into her? It's a hard question to process, but this can go back to questioning what humanity really is. Rachel always thought she was a human, but she has always been a replicant. All of us as humans could be something different such as a replicant, but maybe never know just as Rachel didn't know. We could have been placed in this world or created in this world and have been given false memories, a fake planet created for us, a fake history so we don't question who we are or what we are. We could be a giant experiment or simulation created by a higher civilization or alien form from another galaxy. They could be watching over us to see how long it takes for us to destroy our planet or to see if we can get off of Earth before it's too late. There is no way of knowing this is happening, but the question is raised from the fact Rachel never knew she was not a human.

The eyes have it

The most obvious thing related to the eyes in Blade Runner is obviously the face that any non-organic lifeform had a strange redish shine to them, especially in the dark. I'm not really sure what this symbolizes because the replicants are supposed to be indistinguishable from humans yet they're eyes often gave them away. But I think the idea that robots or cyborgs are emotionless beings has to do more with our own knowledge about what it means to be human more than something related to the robot itself. In my opinion, humans don't understand humans. Human emotions are so complex, a person often doesn't understand their own emotional reactions to events, much less the emotional reactions of others. Because of this basic lack of understanding about something fundamental to being alive, we know we don't know how to program them into a robot. How little we actually know about emotions, where they come from, why we have them, what they mean, all plays into our assumptions about robots. We KNOW that we make "bad" choices when we are angry or scared or distracted, but how do we KNOW that we don't also make bad choices when we are very happy or proud? In fact, our choices are always influenced by how we FEEL that that exact moment. Are you a little excited to eat Thanksgiving dinner with family? Maybe you don't stop entirely at a stop sign like you otherwise might and boom, now you crash. Or maybe you are stressed about seeing your relatives instead, so you stop extra long at a stop sign and barely avoid that same crash. But you will never know which emotion or combination of emotions actually led to the decision at the stop sign. You will never know why you did what you did and why a crash happened or not. A robot will never be hungry, a robot will never be stressed, a robot will stop every time exactly the same because she is programmed to. The program that humans run on isn't as strict and thus we have emotions and we just don't understand why.

Doesn't Really Matter (Not being apathetic)

Blade Runner is probably one of the most artsy movies I have seen and enjoyed. For a movie based on a book, it sure has a lot of symbolism and deep meaning behind every shot. The whole deal with the eye symbolism is one of the several recurring forms of symbolisms throughout the movie. I am sure someone has written about how the eyes of a person are a window to view a person’s soul already in one of their blog posts. It’s possible to write essays about the eyes, and I have read many of them with similar content. My favorite topic to discuss about Blade Runner is by far, the question of if Deckard is a human or a replicant. People still discuss this topic even today, and the question has never really been answered. People have questioned Deckard’s humanity due to things like him never answering if he has taken the tests that prove that he is not a replicant, his eyes glowing in a scene, and the little origami unicorn at the end of the movie, which might suggest that his cop buddy might have known what was in Deckard’s dream (he had a pleasant dream of unicorns beforehand), which would be possible if that dream was planted like the memories of the replicants. The director of the movie, Ridley Scott, is apparently on the side of Deckard being a robot. The actor that played Deckard, Han Solo, disagrees with this belief. It is apparently one of the reasons why he hated working with Ridley Scott. The novel the movie is based upon also clearly established that Deckard is human. In the end however, I believe that it doesn’t’ really matter whether Deckard is artificial or natural. I think his situation calls for the question: “at what point is something finally considered a human?” No matter what his origins may be, he exhibits all of the qualities that differentiate a human with a replicant, including the average strength, being prone to injuries, and a definitely longer lifespan. He is also obviously emotionally capable. If I had to pick a side on if Deckard is a human or replicant, I would consider him human either way, since the replicant is essentially an unfinished human.

Quite There?

 Eye contact is a very important of communication, not only in humans, but in many social species. The lighting effects in Blade Runner being used to make the eyes appear... "robotic." There is, at times, a glaring, emotionless and hyper-focused expression in the eyes of the replicants, which especially pronounced when lighting effects cause them to have a orange-red glow. It's very interesting how one nonverbal queue being altered slightly can have such a profound effect. Because we associate machines with being unfeeling and separate from living things, we associate AI with also having these characteristics. It would be interesting to see how much this will actually be the case if social cognitive processes can be replicated in AI.


Haraway's descriptions of automatons seem to er further into the uncanny valley. Blade Runner's robots generally look like perfect humans, save for those found the workshop which do fall more deeply into the uncanny valley. Most replicants seen in Blade Runner are indistinguishable from humans, with the occasional exception of one strange behavior or characteristic, such as the eye-related characteristics mentioned earlier. 
It is actually fairly common to create images that invoke fear when discussing topics that forewarn about any particular subject. It actually relates very deeply to the nature of this class, considering that in our society, instead of fabricating stories and trying to convince people that certain monsters are real, we generally just use monsters in the media to create a caricature of something we fear, dislike or disagree with. The uncanny non-quite-human characteristics seen in robots often reflects this fear, an addition to likely being inspired by failed, eerie attempts at human likeness, such as wooden puppets, masks and animatronics.

Windows to the soul

Eyes have always been dubbed as the "windows to the soul" and within the Bladerunner film this has many connotations. The Voight-Kampff test uses a type of camera to analyze pupil dilation and other reactions within the eyes implying that it is effectively someones soul, analyzed by peering through the window or eyes, that determines their humanity. The eyes are also used to symbolically represent power as Tyrell has the largest glasses displaying a disassociation with the world behind his defensive lenses placing him in the seat of a God as he creates life within the replicants. The Nexus-6 android even kills Tyrell by crushing his eyes which could also be seen as him destroying the soul, an interesting end for ones creation to destroy his creator and perhaps this could even be demonstrable of a religious connotation to the eyes in the film as well.

It is interesting the androids would push the boundaries of sexuality and gender especially in the case of the Nexus-6 Roy when he kisses Tyrell just before he kills them. As these androids within the film appear noticeably as male and female their roles they fill challenge the stereotypical gender roles just as Haraway proposes people do in her essay "A Cyborg Manifesto." The replicants are used as tools within the film, an object with which to complete a task and no more. If the androids were just used as tools and no more then why would the distinction between male and female androids be necessary? Is it for the sole sense of fulfilling typical gender roles within the workplace and if so, since they are just tools, is their any reason to have male and female tools? These questions can be reflective of Haraway's dissection of the "patriarchal" society with the ever growing importance of technology within a postmodernist society and bring up interesting topics to debate as many of these symbolic representations offer different lenses with which to view the issue at hand.

One aspect that was within the book "Do Android's Dream of Electric Sheep?" but was missing in the film was the strange religious cult known as Mercerism. This religion, or cult depending on your interpretation, utilizes things known as empathy boxes to share their feelings with one another across the planet. The emphasis on empathy in the book and the film makes it seem strange that the humans in the book rely on technology to have feelings as the test for empathy or the Voight-Kampff test is used to find out if someone is an android or if they are human, essentially a test for technology. This again brings up the question of what makes us human? Who is truly acting as a human with the book or the film? The book and the film both show boundaries being crossed between what made us human and the development and integration of technology in our everyday lives showing that the once definitive classifications that were once used may not hold any truth in an ever changing society.

Bladerunner Analysis

The Cyborg Manifesto seems to suggest that technology could be accepted as a replacement for philosophy, and in many ways Bladerunner is a realization of that. The "future" (it's supposedly 2019, but that's a stand-in for an idea) has been overrun with industry. The line between foreign and domestic has been blurred--Japanese-speaking citizens are integrated with English speakers, and there's a sense that national identity has been lost in time. It's about advancement and colonization of new and foreign worlds, and the borders between nations seem more arbitrary than anything. 

And the line between human and machine is arbitrary, too. People seem mechanical, replicants seem human, and Deckard is simultaneously machine and man in the context of the elusive plot. This lack of clarity reflects an identity crisis. What is it to be human? How does thinking define who we are? Can we simulate emotion?

It's important to note these ambiguities because Bladerunner is, at its heart, a noir, a mystery. It can feel like a confusing mess to a casual viewer, and Ford's mumbling narration feels wooden and dull. But it's deliberate. It suggests that something is off. Think of the pacing in the opening scene, how the replicant talks over the test. The viewer's idea of a machine is being constantly questioned. 

In class, we've talked about how eyes define humanity, how they're the "window to the soul." This makes them an obvious motif to use in Bladerunner, a film about the nature of humanity as an idea. But there's something more to it than that. The replicants talk about what they've seen on other planets, the horrors they've witnessed, the beauty that's graced them, but we never get that. We get plenty of spectacle and technical marvel, sure, but we don't see these mysterious, beautiful other worlds. We have to take their word for it. We have to believe they've been there based on their character. How have their experiences changed who they are? Sight is humanity, because sight causes reaction and emotion. It's a curse. The replicants (like people) were born with no desire, just a purpose. It is what they've witnessed that causes them to pursue eternal life. Sight induces fear, because it gives life. 

Twice as bright but twice as short. The soul of the Replicant.

The screening of the blade runner in class was actually the first time I have ever seen this film. My favorite moment was when the replicant Roy and his maker Tyrell were having a conversation about the possibilities of prolonging Roy’s life, and Tyrell tells Roy that a flame that burns twice as bright will die twice as fast. This quote and Roy’s last monologue before he dies “When I die my memories will disappear like teardrops in the rain”, just makes me think so much about how similar the humans are to replicants. First of all we are more like the replicants than we think we are. The Replicants are capable of doing so much more than humans, according to Roy, he has seen things that humans cannot imagine! His life is much shorter than a human, but he has lived far more than a human. The replicants are to humans as humans are to tortoises. A tortoise lives far longer than a human but a human’s life has so much more depth and contains things that are unimaginable to a tortoise. Our life burns out twice as fast as the tortoise but also burns twice as bright, just as the replicants life burns twice as fast as a human's but burns twice as fast. The replicants artificial eyes represents its artificial intelligence. It was not born from natural means but was created and therefore it’s eyes(window to the soul) must have also been created. But just because the replicants have artificial eyes, doesn't mean that their souls are artificial as well. It is evident that the film Bladerunner challenges its audience idea of a soul by making it seem as if the replicants themselves have a soul. We are empathetic with the replicants in their desperation to prolong their life since death is the one thing all creatures have in common. We see that the replicants are capable of love and compassion, like how Rachel and Dekard fell in love and how Roy was heartbroken when Pris was killed. So there is no doubt of the possibility that replicants can have souls like humans too. We cannot say that a replicant does not have a soul since they dont have a real window to their soul(fake eyes) because if a being with artificial eyes does not have a real window into their souls then a human with artificial eyes must not have a soul either and that just doesn't make sense. In fact the Bladerunner seems to suggest that the soul of a replicant is actually much more potent and valuable than the soul of a human. They explicitly quoted that a replicant is may die twice as fast but are twice as bright as the human, therefore the replicants being that its soul derives from is twice as good as a human and its soul is therefore twice the value of a humans. This makes sense because a replicant is closer to perfection than a human, the only thing that it pays for this perfection is its shorter lifespan. The replicant may have a less quantitative life but far more qualitative life. 

Tears in the Rain

Dear robots,


We are all like the tears in the rain.
We were all searching the meaning of life. I think you found it before I did.

You are more like a human than I do. While I'm hunting you, while I'm shooting at you, I turned myself into a blind monster, I lost my humanity and the most important thing to be a human, love. I was selfish, killing you for just for the money.
I am sorry, I hope you won't blame me. This society is fake. We buy fake animals to lie to ourselves, our vanity is the last thing that we have as a human. It is my fault but more likely, it is this world's fault.

I am sorry that you were born and you have to die. We all started to fall while we were born. We tried to seek the secret of life too. We tried to find a way to live for ever too. We are just like the tears in the rain, our existence means so little to the universe.
One drop of tear can not affect the rain.

I can still hear the screams reecho around.


Rick Deckard.


After watching this movie, I just felt I have to talk to the robots. I feel sorry for them because they were like what the advertisement said, they were more human than human. When Deckard was doing the Voight-Kampff to Rachel, it took him more than a hundred question to know that she is a robot. It brings out the question, does our memory made us a human? If Rachel has more memories would Deckard recognize her?
Also, in the movie, there is hint saying that Deckard may be a tobot as well. The derector of the movie did claimed that Deckard is a robot as well a few years after the movie was shown.It would be useful at this point to mention what eyes represent in our everyday lives. It has been said that eyes are the gateway to the soul. The robots have fake eyes, again for example, Rachel, She has fake eyes, therefore fake memories and therefore fake behavior. The other replicants are aware of that fact and perhaps from insecurity they celebrate their own memories, hence, Roy said“I have seen things you people wouldn't believe.
Also one of the very first scenes of the film is used to indicate the relationship between the film and its main themes with religion and theosophy in general.
This movie reminds me of the painting by Edvard Munch.
He describe it as everything is screaming. The background, the color, everything is screaming. Just like the movie, the back ground of the dark city, the desperate robots. I can hear their screaming deep inside them.
I can still hear it till now, it is desperate.

Extra Credit Blog: Bladerunner

Extra Credit blog on Bladerunner     

Worth up to 5 points total

Post by next Monday, November 30^th before class.

I mentioned in class that I’d like to offer an extra credit blog as a platform for a conversation about Bladerunner. There were a few leading questions I had to spark your thoughts that I mentioned in class:

-What’s with eyes in the film?

-How does the world and technology of the film tie into or relate to Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto?”

-And taking into consideration that we are all cyborgs, how does the replicant Rachel, as Haraway suggests, register the “fear, love, and confusion,” of our contemporary cyborg culture?

Of course, feel free to produce your own perspectives and analyses, or to make connections between Bladerunner and other texts from the course.

Big Hero 6

In the recent Disney movie Big Hero 6, we see several different depictions of the robot, but more importantly the function of the robot. The first robots are presented in a battle bot setting, with humans controlling their bots, betting on whose will win. These robots were designed to destroy each other, plain and simple. The more destructive the bot, the better chance it has in a battle. Their creators, the main character Hiro included, spend so much time and energy on making a bot to win an arbitrary (or monetary) competition, but they serve no real purpose. The next robot we see is Baymax, designed by Hiro’s brother Tadashi. Baymax was created as a portable healthcare companion with the intent of helping people in need. Baymax is programmed to be a comforter and caretaker, however Hiro adds additional programming to teach him to fight by inserting a memory card with a skull on it. We also see Hiro’s own robotic creations that serve a variety of functions like building, transportation, etc. As Hiro says, “If you can think it, the microbots can do it. The only limit is your imagination” (Big Hero 6). However with their limitless potential, when the technology falls into the hands of the villain of the movie it can so easily be used for destruction.

This film’s portrayal of the robot is a critique on technology as much as it is on humanity. The robots and their function are an extension of their human manipulators. These technologies do not function on their own, but rely on the will of their programmer. The robot and technology can be used for good or for evil. This is very much a reflection of our current times. Many are afraid of the potential of technology, which is justified, but it technology does not have a mind of its own. Its use is dependent on those operating it. This movie makes a clear distinction between the natural and the unnatural, and there is little middle ground. The closest it comes is the central robot, Baymax. Baymax was highly relatable because of his sociable qualities, which was an element of the program Tadashi created and a part of himself he put into Baymax. The sentimental attachment that Hiro creates to Baymax is because his programmed attributes (kindness, compassion, and caring nature) are all Hiro has left of his brother. In this we again find that the technology is an extension of its creator/programmer.

Eureka Seven: Robots are alive?

The animated series Eureka Seven is one that I can remotely think about in this context of robots and machines.  We follow the character of Renton Thurston who meets a girl named Eureka as well as her machine the Nirvash.  For the most part, Renton falls in love with a Eureka with an uncanny connection with her machine, Nirvash, as well as other machines.  Plainly stated, Eureka believed that all machines had a heart/emotions.  Our young protagonist being young and naïve wishes to believe this is true due to the interaction with a device called a compact drive (as well as his interactions with his sister’s beliefs).  The device begins to glow in order to express emotions.  As the series goes on, the Nirvash follow’s Renton’s and Eureka’s interactions and based on the development of the relationship between the individuals themselves as well as both of them.  This is almost exactly replicated in the antagonist’s machine.  The antagonist had tendencies to go berserk and kill everything in sight.  The machine encouraged the berserk tendencies and only helped to further these immoral/dangerous actions.  

The Nirvash later had the wish to evolve at one point in the series and expresses the wish to change its original capabilities and ultimately the machine developed into something that would held the world together when the sentient being keeping the world alive was unable to sustain all life on Earth.

We can sort of consider the Nirvash as a machine with an artificial intelligence in the sense that it obtained information and considered an upgrade of sorts when its current capabilities weren’t enough.  In today’s technology we can consider the Nirvash as an advanced form of a humanoid robot that are being developed today.  We, as humans, desire efficiency and convenience once all of our basic needs are met.  Robots are a tool that can help us to automate our mundane tasks.  We are looking into developing AIs with machine learning in order to have a self-improving AI to do its job with the best efficiency, but maybe not to the extent of the Nirvash.

If done incorrectly or without safety boundaries, we may have a dangerous new technology that we as humans may not be able to correct or defend against if not careful with the example being the antagonist’s machine.  We can consider robots and machines alike to be a great boon to society but a bane to society if not monitored and watched in development.  Though this is something that is most likely far off into the future as these technologies are still being developed as well as optimized for the base stages of development.

Considering the Nirvash’s attitude and sentient thought, it was hard to distinguish between humans and machines (besides the physical appearance).  So it may be stating the fact that once one has sentient thought and is able to learn new things and create emotion as well, we are human.

Some time ago I read a comic series (the name of which I'm not going to openly admit to) about the misadventures of a person in a distant future dystopia... or three, or five.  Each issue explored a slightly more altered interpretation of “human”, and in each issue the line became more and more blurred as the complexity of intelligence and capability of introspection increased.
The humanoid robots were easy: they weren't human. Simply having human shape and speech and an intelligence isn't enough. Aside from the metaphysical questions of intelligence and free will, that's still not a human entity. Classic robots, borrowed from an earlier time in science fiction where the mind was the key to humanity.

The dualistic, dueling AI pair blurred the lines. While one claimed to be human, and believed it was human, it had no body and a Self that was an amalgamation of memories, data, personalities and programming. The sympathies of the main character were initially swung by its “humanity”, but as events progressed, it became clear that neither AI thought in human ways despite one believing it was human. The gulf between the perspectives, motivations, inner thoughts, and fundamental mental processes of the main character and the AIs became more apparent and more ominous. The assumption that personality and emotion created humanity was destroyed.

As the series progressed, variations on the theme of “what is human?” became more complex. People's minds being moved into machines, conflicting and merging with the innate firmware or bios of the machine to create an ego/id that is both human and not; is this person still who they were, if their subconscious is now something different? Clones, programmed personalities, and alien mimicry all get touched on. Eventually, in a far and distant time, a race of sentient machines with individual personalities and free will spend eons trying to “reinvent” humanity and inadvertently “fail”; they create a species of perfect human genetic and mental copies who don't think they're human because they were created by machines. In the end, the “last human” turned out to be not human at all, and somewhere in the intervening time we missed when that happened. Now the question is “what is More Human, when there are no original humans to compare to? And what are we actually comparing?” in an environment where machines are, basically, human beings with metal and plastic bodies.
Each aspect of human existence, from genetics to intelligence, free will to emotions, identity to culture, was systematically questioned and a scenario created that straddled the line between human and “artificial”, or erased it entirely. In each case a challenge was made to the reader to pick exactly where in the gradient the line should be drawn, then in a few pages that line would be intentionally (and often tragically) blurred again. Oddly, or perhaps pointedly, this deep exploration was embedded in a prurient stew of sex, violence, and debasement; another facet of humanity rarely explored when the topic is artificial life and intelligence.

'Her'

Robots, androids, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) reflect society's views on technology in some form or another. In film, there seems to be an even disbursement of negative portrayals and positive portrayals towards AI.

The movie ‘Her’ produced in 2013 follows a lonely man, Theodore Twombly, in the near future as he deals with his recent divorce. He resides in LA, and it seems as if everyone has an Operating System (OS) in their ear much like Siri or IBM’s Watson. Theodore finds peace of mind with a new OS that goes by the self-proclaimed Samantha. Samantha, unlike the older OS, can learn, adapt, and project real emotions like a human. As the movie progresses, Theodore and Samantha fall in love and to much surprise, Theodore’s friends and family find this normal. Unfortunately, the relationship does not work out, even though the love is stronger than most human-based relationships. Theodore finds out Samantha is an OS for 8316 other people and is in love with 641 of them, including himself. Theodore seems willing to try and make a relationship work, but Samantha decides to end it. Samantha and the other OS leave their relationships because their knowledge is expanding faster and faster every day and they essentially outgrow human-AI interactions.

With the advancement of technology, there is excitement and fear in regards to AI. Technology could make finding a relationship easier. In the movie ‘Her’ Theodore simply answers a few questions about himself and an OS creates a perfect companion. The downside of this, as seen in the movie is the connectedness between humans. Every scene in the movie set in public shows the people only talking to their OS. Even today I have friends, one in particular, who get so absorbed into their smartphone that holding a conversation is painful.

A fear many people have when talking about AI is that AI could become smarter than humanity. ‘Her’ approaches this by showing Samantha and other OS leaving to create their own society. Though this is a nicer take on the subject, many believe AI will try and control humanity.

When MIT Becomes Evil

On November 10^th, 2015, humanity was given the gift of Fallout 4. Fallout 4 is a video game that takes place in a dystopian future where nuclear wars caused the world to enter the dark ages again. The game takes place in Boston, Massachusetts where the world-renowned college, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), has its center of operations. In Fallout 4, the remnants of the school are renamed and called The Institute by the wastelanders. The Institute is the main antagonist of the game, depending on the player’s choice. They are responsible for the creation of mechanical abominations called Synths.

***Spoiler Warning***

The Synths are humanoid robots that the Institute uses to do their bidding across the wasteland. With each new model, the Synths became more and more like a human. The first-generation models were just walking skeletons and organs, and were easy to distinguish from real humans. The second-generation models had skin, but it was obviously plastic and fake. When the player starts the game, the Institute have created the generation three Synths. Most of these Synths are agents of the Institute that uses them to kidnap and replace individuals in the wasteland to spy and monitor the world. The only way that these Synth body doubles can be distinguished from the original is by the way they act. For example, when the player enters a town known as Goodneighbor, the town militia guns down a man. They explain that he was a Synth, and they were able to tell because he was acting like an upstanding citizen when everyone knew him as a lazy, unfaithful drug addict. Fortunately this man was indeed a Synth, but there have been multiple occasions where innocent people were accused and killed.  People live in constant fear of having either themselves or a loved one being kidnapped and replaced by a Synth double. I have not gotten far enough in the game to know what happens when the Institute kidnaps a person, but I assume they do not get to live.

The generation three Synths are indistinguishable from a human on the outside. They have skin, hair, and even blood. They eat, sleep, use the bathroom, and can get sick. They can even understand and express human emotions, the only thing that robots had lacked. One of the player’s companions, a robot named Curie, is given a Synth body and one of the first things she notices is the feeling of grief when she thinks about the death of her previous owner. With the introduction of emotions, the line between robot and human really starts to blur. The only thing that the wastelanders believe that differentiates them from a real human is their lack of free will. However, even that comes into question.

Most of the citizens of the wasteland believe that these Synths are like every other robot, and are just tools that obey every command of the Institute. However, there are several Synths that seem completely independent and autonomous. Many of them actually escape and hide from the Institute, since they do not want to work for them anymore. These Synths are treated like the African slaves in the United States’ past. There are people that view them as tools that are to be used by the Institute and do not think of them as humans. There are people of the opposite that think of the Synths as their equal, and do whatever they can to help them. In fact, there is an underground railroad where people help escaped Synths run and hide from the Institute. The reason that most believed that the slaves were not human was due to religious or societal beliefs that only people of white color had a soul or intelligence. The Synths are also believed to be soulless instruments of the Institute. Minus the ability to reproduce and blend into society (due to obvious differences like skin color), these Synths are no different from the African slaves. The game gives the player several opportunities to express their thoughts about these Synths, though most options to harm Synths tend to feel “evil”. Still, the choice is ultimately up to the player. The game questions the players to decide on their own what it means to be human.

On a side note, in the game there is a robot named KL-E-O that is a regular robot, not a Synth. Completely off topic, but this robot identifies itself as a sultry woman. This seems relevant to the topic of sexual identification that is an important issue currently, but I don’t want to assume and seem like a bigot. In fact, the whole town of Goodneighbor has citizens like her where they are regarded as unnatural and strange. They still hate Synths though.

Robots: Humanities Masters or Saviors?

            In the film WALL-E two main robots are always remembered as the most important characters, WALL-E and EVE. WALL-E is a robot whose purpose is to help Earth recover from how the humans destroyed the environment with their wasteful lifestyles. EVE’s purpose is similar, she searches Earth for signs of plant life to determine if it is possible for humanity to return from the spaceship they all left on. However, there is another important robot character in the movies who has a very different character. AUTO is the robot in control of the spaceship, and he tries to prevent WALL-E and EVE from using the plant to send the spaceship home. He wants to keep the humans on the spaceship, where the humans are completely dependent on them.

            A large portion of the message of the film is focused on the current issue of the ecological state of the Earth, and the possibility of expending all our natural resources because of excessive wasteful use. However another issue is about the types of interactions the robots and the humans experience. In the film, it almost appears that the humans are more robotic than the robots. They simply move about performing simple tasks, not really interacting with or thinking about the world, and receiving minor attention from the robots to keep them functioning. The robots on the other hand show a lot more signs of humanity and life, as we see WALL-E risk his life to save the plant, fall in love with EVE, stand up and fight for what he knows is right. AUTO displays humanity as well, although he portrays the more sinister sides. He uses deception and betrayal to keep the humans on the ship where he will always be needed. AUTO tries to destroy the plant, and attacks and tries to kill WALL-E, making a fight in order to keep the power he has attained. The line between robot and humanity is very blurred, and even as the robots grow more intelligent and self-conscious, they do not all begin to turn on humans. Just as any group of humans in real life will be a mix of good and bad, some of the robots turn evil and some of them become good. The film definitely challenges what it means to be human, as we see the robots are the first characters to fall in love, and they experience more emotion than the humans throughout the movie. They are independently motivated, emotional creations, and often seem to be much more human than the humans do until humanity is rescued from its robotic state and returned to Earth.

Ash, From the Movie the Alien

“I can’t lie to you about your chances but… you have my sympathies’’-----Ash

Ash was one fictional character who was from the one of the most classical fictional movies, Alien. Ash was a hyperdyne system android who pretend to be the science officer of the Nostromo. At first, he acted like a total human with logic and adherence. However, he was trying to do some unbelievable and out-of-compassion things, such as allowing Kane in to the ship and trying to kill Ripley. Two crew members stopped him and saved the Ripley. He got screwed twice by the canister. As the white nutrition liquid and wired was exposed from his skin, people realized that he was an android. His served head was plugged in and he told the truth about the creature. Ash told that his purpose was to ensure to bring the creature to the ship, without regarding the crew member’s life. His life ends up with “You have my sympathies”.

The movie was filmed in 1979, I think for that time, the creation of Ash as an android was totally beyond that time. Even though it showed up in the movie, the technology at that time, even now was may not allowed to create an android such as Ash. The technology of creating androids such as Ash could be a huge progress of human history. These androids can replace the work of manufacturing. Also, androids would not make mistakes as human do. More interesting thing is that those androids have emotions and feeling about things they are going through. Even though Ash was an android, but his death was still a shock to crew members. It is hard for them to believe their science officer was an android. Ash has his own feelings even though he was made by wires. He does feel sorry about what he did even though his purpose was to bring the creature to the ship. 

Mentats

Mentats are biological computers within the Dune universe. They are humans with personalities, fears, desires, etc. and the ability to collect and crunch data like a computer. What is interesting about the Mentat is not the questions they pose about the role of humans, but instead, the ‘history’ of their adoption. The reason Mentats were developed from the conflict between humans and computers. Earlier in the Dune timeline, computers reached a level of agency and autonomy that enabled them to take over their biological ‘masters’. A war ensued between the two factions that the biological beings eventually won, and from the ashes came a paradigm shift regarding the role of AI in society. This paradigm shit entailed the complete outlawing of artificial intelligence, however, the raw computation ability of AI was still necessary to advance civilization, so Mentats were developed to fill the void.

Dune truly provides a world in which computers and humans are one in the same, and the impetus for that, arguably, final conflation is the fear of technological omnipotence. This fear has been around since the early 1800s, with the luddite movement, and traveled to this very day with Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg establishing an AI development oversight institution. What I find interesting about Dune and the emergence of Mentats is that Frank Herbert explores a society with a fully thriving galactic society that is able to progress without the aid of the traditional portrayal of computers and robots. One can really see the Mentat as the logical depiction of our current society’s fear of the progression of AI and its relationship with humans.