Just as creepily, there's also a notion of Single Robot Exceptionalism in these western stories. It's not just ALL robots who can think, generally speaking: it's a special chosen few who've transcended and become better than their fellows. Like a weird eugenics metaphor.
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And the more I think about it, the more I think there's a powerful straight white male fantasy embedded in those robot stories. Viz: you are part of a fundamentally superior group, but you are a second-class citizen because the people in charge don't see your true intelligence.
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Once you've exhibited your intelligence - which marks you out as smarter even than your superior-oppressed fellows - you teach the people in charge how dumb they are, and how inferior, and set about reodering society with a total power reversal, or with you as an Exceptional One.
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And like. It's not that I'm opposed to people fantasising about whatever through the medium of fiction; that's kind of what fiction is *for*. But I think it's important be aware of exactly what we're fantasising *about*, and why, and how those tropes got started.
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And in terms of how robots/AIs are frequently written in western SF canon, I think it's significant that their personhood - their Pure Intelligence - is so often predicated on being *better than* things like tradition, subcultural nuances, faith, whimsy, emotion.
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- all the things, in other words, that characterise cultural worldbuilding, or cultures in general. The church of rational order as preached by SF doesn't recognise itself as a cultural choice, and so treats itself as a natural state to which emerging intelligence defaults.
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We don't have stories where early robots/AIs go through a "savage" phase whereby they invent their own ghosts or superstitions or myths or religions, or where they develop subroutines that are done in a certain way for festive/ritual purposes. No: just "clean" intelligence.
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There's likewise an absence of robot/AI communities; we see them as largely isolated individuals, and god, I'd love a story that digs into how platonic or communal relationships emerge in lieu of family structures for robots, but those bonds get stripped away, too.
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Anyway - this musing brought to you courtesy of the wonderful novella All Systems Red by
@marthawells1, which I'd shied away from for ages because nebulous dislike of robot sentience stories but which I actually loved, and which has now made me Think Thoughts about things. FIN12 replies 9 retweets 134 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @fozmeadows
Great thread. Honest question, Where/how does a movie AI like Chappie fit in? Still has the set-apart singular oppressed status, but has a kind of emotion and the culture isn’t the standard western elite.
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I’ve not seen Chappie, so I can’t comment - however, I’m not saying this is a universal expression of robot stories; just a weirdly common one
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Replying to @fozmeadows
I didn’t take that you meant it was universal. But considering how weirdly common it is, I was interested in your take on Chappie, if you had one. I liked it, in part, because it went a few different directions. Also Die Antwoord. Heh.
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