This evening I read yet another article about our cultural obsession with machines that come to life and then want to take over the world. There is a long tradition of this sort of thing in Western literature.<\/p>\n
From the Golem to Frankenstein’s creature to Maria in Metropolis<\/i> to Robots, HAL, Cylons, Replicants Terminators and on and on and on, our culture seems obsessed by the idea that we will one day create an artificially intelligent being that will then displace us.<\/p>\n
Yet I have not seen any compelling evidence that such a thing is even possible. From an empirical standpoint, the notion of a machine that would “want” to be human — or that would want anything at all, in the sense that we generally understand that word — has no correlate in reality.<\/p>\n
There are many SciFi fantasies that we clearly understand to be metaphoric, from time machines to faster than light travel. When we talk about any of these devices, we generally understand that we are merely using a convenient literary convention.<\/p>\n
So why is the Golem fantasy different? Why is it that every time we see another fantastical A.I. tale from a writer’s imagination, whether 2001<\/i> or Her<\/i> or ex Machina<\/i>, we debate about it as though discussing something as immediate and real as tomorrow’s weather?<\/p>\n
Apparently some cultural neurosis compels us to wait for Frankenstein’s monster to walk through the door. But that doesn’t mean anyone is actually on the other side of the door.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This evening I read yet another article about our cultural obsession with machines that come to life and then want to take over the world. There is a long tradition of this sort of thing in Western literature. From the Golem to Frankenstein’s creature to Maria in Metropolis to Robots, HAL, Cylons, Replicants Terminators and … Continue reading “Waiting for Frankenstein”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16047"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=16047"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16048,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16047\/revisions\/16048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=16047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=16047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=16047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}