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March 13, 2005

I, Robot

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I watched I, Robot last night. I enjoyed the movie as a diversion, and it did tickle my imagination: what if we could create machines that looked like man? What is the boundary between mechanism and “life”?

This morning in church, the Old Testament lesson was Ezekiel 37:1-14

Ezekiel 7-8: So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.

Ezekiel 10: So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet-a vast army.

I was riveted during the reading of the passage. Ezekiel was writing about redemption and in this case it was about redeeming Israel’s faith. But Ezekiel (inspired by God) used the incredibly powerfully metaphor of raising dead bones to life. He created hope out of the whole cloth of death and loss.

But in Ezekiel’s world God was experienced as an external force. In fact the very message of this passage is God’s promise to put His spirit in His people. But demons were “out there” in the same way God was. Man was simply who he was.

The Gospel lesson for today was John 11:1-45

John 11:43-47 When he had said this, Jesus called in a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man came out, his hands and feet wrapped with strips of linen, and a cloth around his face. Jesus said to them, “Take off the grave clothes and let him go.”
Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him. But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin.

Here we see the same message: Life created from death. Hope out of loss. God, through Jesus is the master of life. But there is an ominous note in verse 46: “But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done.” A group of men intended to thwart God’s will. This idea that men who worshiped God, but with differing ideology feel compelled to oppose God is completely absent in the Old Testament. In some sense, with the advent of God moving into men’s hearts, the potential for Satin to move into men’s harts as well became possible.

It’s not enough to know that a man worship's God: one must know how that man worships God. The possiblity that man can worship God incorrectly has been born.

And finally, in I, Robot, the same story of loss and redemption told using the metaphor of raising something from the dead, but with a terrifying conclusion: man has created “life”, and now must be responsible for creating good and evil in that life.

Clearly the possibilities the movie suggests are very far in the future, if possible at all. But the story and it’s challenges resonate today, and bring us face to face with the reality that as God moves from outside to inside, and from the heart to the brain, we must ask the question of how close we are becoming to God – not just in spirit, but in fact.

Posted by pgutwin at March 13, 2005 9:43 PM

Comments

Now you're talking. My all-time favorite movie "Bladerunner" was exactly about the tragedy of humans trying to find god and the meaning of life using the human-robots metaphor. And, the concepts don't have to be based in the future: are the computer game characters (realistic or abstract) we create considered to have life? When is life artificial? How do we know that a computer character, or an inamiate carbon rod, doesn't have life? And, what if you fail a Turing Test?

So, for an evening of fun, combine "Bladerunner" with "The Matrix", "Dark City", and "2001", (and perhaps some herbal supplements), and it'll really screw you up. Heck, I don't even know if you exist outside my own imagination. Do you?

Posted by: Bobby Mozumder at March 14, 2005 2:57 AM

Bladerunner is also a real favorite of mine as well - I think it's one of the darkest of the several you mentioned. Unfortunately that made it less approachable than the others which is too bad because I always though it was extremely thought provoking but was stuck in the distopian SciFi category (it really doesn’t belong there).

I agree the question of "what is life" isn't out in the future, it's right here. That was my point - movies like I, Robot are important to people today.

I thought the best lines from I, Robot was when Spooner is questioning the robot:


Spooner: Can a machine create a work of art?
Robot: Can you?

It’s not clear how we test for “life”. I think one of our (collective) fears is that the same test that we might apply to machines could be applied to people. Would every human pass? If not, what would we do?

BTW, you’re on – you get the movies and I’ll be there…

Posted by: Paul Gutwin at March 17, 2005 8:29 PM

I studied this in Philosophy a while ago, which was incredibly interesting. After reading articles by John Searle and William Lycan, I sided with Searle in that real, human brains are the only machines that can think. Maybe I'll re-evaluate my position in the future, though...

Posted by: Rebecca at March 18, 2005 9:49 AM