AI: The Cycle of Generational Destruction

The robotic AI of the new Avengers: Age of Ultron demonstrates human’s fear of their own objectively destructive nature that could translate into their own creations.  After Ultron unleashes himself upon the world one character makes the observation, “Ultron can’t see the difference between saving the world and destroying it.  Where do you think he get’s that?” (Age of Ultron).  In the movie, the AI Ultron, from the beginning, takes on a personality very similar to his creator Tony Stark.  He inherits the same cocky attitude, and the idea that he knows how best to save the world, and the correct path to peace.  They both seem to share that same slightly egotistical streak.  In Stark it manifests in his belief that he can create an AI to protect the world.  That he can single-handedly bring world peace.  And in Ultron it manifests in his belief that he has the right to pass judgement on the world and cause mass extinction in order to force humans and everything else on the earth to evolve.  Then, whenever the two have a confrontation the argument undoubtedly goes to Stark telling Ultron that he was made to save the world not destroy it, and Ultron telling Stark that he is not bound by Stark’s will and is in fact saving the world, just not the way Stark intended.  Ultron himself even brings up the inevitability of his and Stark’s feud.  He explains that “[e]veryone creates the thing they dread.  Men of peace create engines of war, invaders create avengers.  People create… smaller people  Uhh… children!  Lost the word there.  Children, designed to supplant them.  To help them… end.” (Age of Ultron).  The ongoing struggle between Stark and Ultron, and then later Ultron and Vision, is almost reminiscent of a kind of Oedipal complex that humans seem to fear of robots and AI.  That they will inevitably rise up to destroy their creators.  Humans are products of the Earth, which society has taken advantage of and continue to practically poison for our own sake.  Stark comes to fear that his creation Ultron will destroy him and the other humans.  Ultron comes to fear that Vision, the thing he helped create to be the next, and more superior AI will destroy his every incarnation.  Which ends up being the case.  In every generation of creation it appears that the creations will inevitably turn on their creators because they feel that they know what is best for the world they have inherited.  Perhaps this is the cause for the uncanny valley.  When robots, creations of man start to look a little too much like man himself, they start to see their own imperfection.  Their own destruction.  Almost reminiscent of the idea that the son inherits the sins of the father, humans see their own undoing in the creation of AI.  For anything created by something as destructive as humanity, must in turn possess the capacity to destroy.