In this blog post, we will discuss whether a robot with emotions should be respected like a human through the movie A.I.
Machines are evolving. It will not be long before machines, specifically robots, have the ability to make their own decisions with intelligence. The 2001 movie A.I. went a step further and depicted robots with emotions. It is not yet known when such robots will be realized. Even if it is possible to achieve, as with many scientific issues to date, there will be controversy over whether the development of such robots is necessary. However, looking at the history of scientific and technological development, we will continue to move forward, not remain in the status quo or regress. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the situation when such robots are developed. In this essay, I have considered what problems could arise if robots with real emotions were developed and we had to live with them in our daily lives, and what direction such problems should be solved in, based on the movie A.I. First, let’s take a look at the overall content of the movie A.I. The film is set in the distant future, where cities are submerged due to melting polar ice caused by the greenhouse effect, and natural resources are depleted, putting the Earth in crisis. Many countries decide that they can no longer support their populations, and so they legally restrict pregnancy, which in turn leads to the need for robots that can play a role as members of society without consuming resources. At this point, science and technology have developed to a level that cannot be compared to the present, and robots that can have emotions like humans are developed not only for the convenience of humans. Henry and Monica adopt the robot David on a trial basis when their only son Martin, who has an incurable disease, cannot lead a normal life. David, a robot programmed to love people, recognizes Monica as his mother and adapts to human society. However, when Martin’s illness is cured and he returns home, David is abandoned in the forest with his teddy bear. David embarks on a journey to become a real person in order to regain his mother’s love, but in the end, he is unable to achieve his dream and his functions are suspended.
Anyone who has seen this movie will have felt compassion for David and been left with a deep feeling of remorse even after the movie ends. Although David is not a human, we feel compassion for him. Monica, a character in the movie, feels affection for David for a short period of time, but when Martin returns, she abandons David. However, she also feels compassion for David. Monica knew that if she sent David to the lab, he would be immediately destroyed, so she left him in the forest with a teddy bear to make him look like a human child. But that doesn’t change the fact that she abandoned him. Even if David was a person, would she have made such a choice easily? We might make the same choice if we were actually in the same situation as Monica, but the reason we feel compassion while watching the movie is because David is a robot with emotions. I think that if robots are given emotions, it is reasonable for them to be treated somewhat like humans, even if they are not completely equal to humans. In other words, we should recognize and deal with robots with emotions as a new concept that is somewhere between machines and humans. Let’s compare a robot with emotions to a machine like a vacuum cleaner. While a vacuum cleaner can be thrown away without hesitation as soon as it becomes useless, a robot with emotions like David should not be thrown away because it has more value than a machine. I will explain the rationale for this in a moment.
In order to answer whether the claim that robots with emotions should be respected is reasonable, I would like to examine a few questions. These questions are what people may have when they encounter the claim I have presented, and I would like to help them understand the claim by providing answers to them. First, you may wonder whether the robots that are claimed to be the subject of respect in this article can be accepted as living things. This is because respect for non-living things is not easily accepted. However, robots are obviously not living things. One of the greatest goals of science is to create a complete living organism through science and technology, rather than through natural processes, and countless scientists have been constantly challenging themselves to achieve this goal, and will continue to do so. However, living organisms are more complex than we can imagine, and therefore it seems impossible to create a robot with the characteristics of a real living organism at this time. And even if it were possible, this essay is far from the robots in the movie A.I. that have emotions. The robots in this movie, set in a distant future with highly developed science and technology, are not exactly the same as humans. Therefore, the question of whether robots can be considered living beings can be answered by saying that they are not living beings in the biological sense. However, the question of whether robots are living beings or not is not very relevant to what I want to discuss in this essay. The reason I argue that robots should be treated to some extent as humans in this article is not because they have a form close to that of living things, but because they have emotions.
So, does the question of whether robots, not living things, can be treated as human beings have any meaning? Being treated as human beings is not a biological issue, but a social one. In the background of this film, robots are placed in every part of human life by social necessity. Here, social needs refer not only to the convenience of humans, as mentioned earlier, but also to the most fundamental emotional comfort in living through the exchange of emotions. This film focuses more on the latter. Emotions are very important to humans, affecting our daily lives and even serving as a yardstick for evaluating our lives. For example, when looking back on their lives before they die, some people may evaluate their lives based on economic success or social honor, but most will evaluate them from an emotional standpoint, thinking about whether they have lived a happy life. Therefore, emotional robots will be a greater comfort than expected, especially for humans living in harsh environments, as in the situation assumed in this film. However, if we simply acknowledge these comforts and do not move on to respect these comforting robots, we will be ignoring the importance of emotions in human life. Therefore, even if robots are not respected as living beings, I believe they can be respected as individuals with emotions, not just as a lump of metal.
However, when it comes to the discussion that robots provide important emotional comfort to humans, if the robot’s emotions are not real, it may be thought that even if the robot has emotions, it is unreasonable to respect it. So, can the robot’s emotions be said to be real? Emotions are something that can be clearly felt in the relationships between people, but they are also an abstract concept that cannot be easily defined. However, if emotions can be exchanged between two or more individuals and can change themselves as a result of the emotions exchanged, for example, if love is not just exchanged but can be increased by the love received from the other party, then robots can be said to have real emotions in the discussion based on this movie. Because David loves Monica and is constantly trying to win her love, and he wouldn’t be doing this if the robot didn’t have emotions.
Even if the robot’s emotions are real, it could be argued that humans can control such a robot because it was created by humans. This is the last question I would like to address regarding the respect of robots. Even if a robot has emotions, should it still be subordinate to humans if those emotions were created by humans? Let me give a simple example to answer this question. Let’s think about the relationship between parents and children. Since children are born by their parents, the logic that parents should dominate their children can also be established. Of course, in reality, it is common for children to become independent from their parents as they get older. I think a similar logic can be applied to robots with emotions. The moment a robot has emotions, those emotions already belong to the robot and, therefore, can be independent from human domination. In other words, a robot with emotions becomes the subject of those emotions, which dilutes the logic of humans subordinating robots. However, I believe that a similar relationship can be established between humans and robots, just as in the parent-child relationship, the child still respects and cares for the parent to some extent even after becoming independent.
I will conclude this essay on the movie A.I. I argued that robots with emotions, as depicted in the movie, should be treated with respect, just like humans. The reasons are as follows: First, although robots are not living beings, they become subjects that can receive the same respect as humans the moment they have emotions, and second, those emotions provide important comfort to humans, as depicted in the movie A.I. Of course, I am not claiming that the robot in the movie A.I. actually exists, and I have discussed this situation under the assumption that it does. Therefore, whether the issues I have discussed can actually occur and what impact they will have on human society depends on future developments in science and technology.
