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Review - Bicentennial Man
In the last few years, Robin Williams has gone from being one of the funniest movie stars in Hollywood to one of the sappiest, so there is reason to be suspicious of "Bicentennial Man," which was previewed in some theaters across the country this weekend.
The movie is plenty syrupy, but also surprisingly faithful to the Isaac Asimov story that it's based on, and to many of the issues it raised. Like the evolution of artificial-intelligence (AI) machines, questions about whether they can possibly have emotional lives, and their relationship with human beings.
Williams plays a household-appliance robot named Andrew who develops human-like characteristics - friendship, loyalty, humor, creativity, and faces some tough questions as a result? Is he a human or a robot? Are his feelings real, or simply the pre-programmed responses of neural pathways? Is he an appliance or some new form of life? Does he have rights and can he in any way be called human?
Probably the central question, and one Asimov often raised in his wirtings, was how exactly, creations like "The Bicentennial Man" are supposed to live in a culture with enough gee-whiz technology to create them, but that typically hasn't given a though as to how they'll get along in the world.
Andrew is programmed to live forever, at least theoretically, and this puts him in conflict with the life he wants to lead, especially the fact that he feels much more human than robotic, and that everyone he loves grows old, then dies.
Most humans see him as a machine, but spurred by a sympathetic and ethical owner and his daughter, Andrew sets out to hone his evolving skills and - one can see this coming from the first scene - ends up having a lot of heart and wanting a real one (in one hilarious and self-knowing scene, a fellow robot taunts him by singing the "Tin Man" song from the "Wizard of Oz)." Andrew decides that he needs to be free to figure all of this out, and he sets off on a quest to find his place in the world. It's at this point - three-quarters of the way through, that the plot begins to unravel, and stops being even remotely plausible.
The movie is at times gorgeously-shot, and makes innovative use of computer graphics to render cities, hospitals and offices of the future. It also deals sensitively and intelligently with a lot of the issues many suspect are coming, if even only a fraction of the predictions about AI machines come to pass.
Williams can't help but lapsing into the most wide-eyed, saccharine dialogue and character-development.
But this doesn't keep the movie from being surprisingly thoughtful and touching. And prescient, raising issues about technology and the future that hardly anyone in the United States really wants to talk about.
Having said that, I was surprised at how good the movie turned out. I knew that it wouldn't be true to the original, because I don't expect the mass of moviegoers to understand the three laws and their implications. Take, as an example, my non-geek fiance. She loved this movie. Heck, she cried. I thought she was crying over the romance, and the father/daughter story, but was very surprised when she said that she loved the robot.
d
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
They were excellent. Very thought-provoking stuff.
I haven't seen the movie yet, but my expectations are not very high (though it gives me a reason to check out the new THX theatre that just opened up near me).
One, that super-annoying girl from the Pepsi commercials is in it. That's an indication that this is designed to be all cutesy-pie.
Two, Chris Columbus. He did the Home Alone movies. 'Nuff said. Not exactly thought-provoking, or even entertaining, stuff.
Three, Robin Williams. Look at the movies he's done recently, and notice the Mork connection. That's enough for me.
If you're looking for a really good movie right now, I'd recommend Sleepy Hollow. Burton even managed to throw his continuing obsession with gadgets into it. Really cool, and visually amazing.
I think Asimov would have liked it. The film covers the kinds of issues that Asimov brought forward in his robot stories, although there are a few big gaps in the story. For example, what happened to the three laws of robotics? Did Andrew just outgrow them or what?
Still, the film is basically sound. The science is, as always with film, its weakest point. There will not be household robots to do your cooking and cleaning by 2005, but what the hell, this is fiction.
"Robert Burns N6 and ZC series robots and Harley Davidson Paraphenalia" The sign on the shop in San Francisco is the best sight gag in the film.
This is a safe movie - it won't challenge any of your beliefs and it's quite safe to bring children to. The references to sex are few and very tame - there's no real bad language. The view of the future is presented very simply and without real change to society except that neckties look even stupider.
Whatever special effects crew did the robot effects - the masks and/or CGI - deserves an Oscar. It's amazing to see a bulky metal robot that is still clearly and obviously played by Robin Williams, not by some animatronics master or a computer program.
Oh yeah, for those of you out there who are not Asimov fans, the name of his fictional company (which appears in very many short stories and novels) was the reason that a certain modem company chose a certain name for themselves.
That freaked me out I realised it when I was ~13.
I won't call you stupid. I'll call Ebert and his crony stupid. They're so used to sci-fi being for children (witness the insanity that was SW:TPM) that they seem to have not thought about this movie being for adults. Over the lifespan of an effectively immortal robot, people will die. If the robot became attached to them, he has to come to terms with that, and that's called "character development", something you rarely see in movies anymore. If the movie treated this in a somewhat mature fashion, it would add to the experience, not detract from it. Sorry for not sugar-coating the world for you, Ebert. Who listens to movie critics anyway?
Communication is only possible between equals
She was also in "The Insider" and did a bang-up job.
I have a feeling that she's a good actress, and it's just unfortunate that we all know her from the friggin' Pepsi commercials.
(OT)I'm so glad I have a Mute button on the TV remote. That, and those new Gap commercials. Oy..
Pope
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Just because it's likely to be a big part of this discussion I'll mention Asimov's 3 laws of robotics.
Asimov's robot books dealt a lot with these laws and the conflicts arising from them. His primitive robots had trouble understanding the subtleties of the laws and dealing with the problems when the laws conflicted. The more advanced robots knew how to weigh the importance of the order. For example, for a robot to destroy itself, the order to do so would have to be very forceful otherwise the third law would prevent it.
Anyhow, I loved all Asimov's books, esp. his robot novels and highly recommend them to anyone who likes *good* sci-fi, detective stories, and deep thinking about what it means to be human/alive/sentient. I doubt this movie lives up to the amazing quality of his books, but maybe it will at least be a way to introduce people who wouldn't otherwise read an Asimov book to his work.
True to the vision? I'm not so sure...
First off, before going any further, let me state that Bicentennial Man is a pretty damn good movie and an excellent example of sci-fi effects-laden blockbuster without a single gun or explosion I can remember. That part -- Asimov's trait of writing "humans being, not humans doing" -- is remarkably intact for a movie coming out of Hollywood.
The original story itself (and the lengthier
collaborative version "The Positronic Man" with Robert Silverberg that the movie is based on) deals with humanity on several levels; the emotional, as seen in the movie, and the social, which is just barely touched on, mostly during the last act of the movie. The original dealt at length with the legal and social ramifications
of a machine joining society (the infamous scene
where two men command Andrew to dismantle himself
on a roadside springs immediately to mind) which
are excised completely from the story, leaving
basically a huge tear-jerker of a film. I left
ever-so-slightly disappointed at the fact that
Asimov's excellent fable had been mutated a little
too close to its Pinocchio origin. I wanted more depth, I'm afraid.
Nevertheless, this is an excellent film with
very subtle and interesting special effects. My med-student fiancee couldn't stifle an "oh, COOL!"
during one scene with closeups of artificial
organs...
In short, see this movie, read the book.
d.
I haven't seen Bicentennial Man, so I'm probably going to put my foot in my mouth, but what I object to about the premise of this movie (and also with the similar quest of Data in Star Trek TNG) is the sheer arrogance of the notion that robots and cyborgs would want to become human!
:) What will humans do when confronted by irrefutable evidence that they are not special.
:)
This is a very common theme in Sci-Fi. Man creates robots. Robots develop self awareness, introspection, and thought. Robots (for some reason) lack "emotion" and "sensation". Robot seeks to become more human.
In my mind this is insufferable anthrocentrism. Humans, completely without proof, cling to the idea that they are unique and special in some vague and undefinable way. Even as we push the boundaries of self-definition through such methods as philosophy, natural science, and hi-tech, we continue to relish a feeling of superiority over the rest of the universe, that, as far as I can tell, is completely foundless in any empirical fact.
Mark my words: some day there will be programs that can write stories as well as humans. Programs that can put that delicate twist on Chopin as well has humans. Programs that can paint marvellous painting that express deep meaning as well as humans. You know this is true - we already have mechanisms that can translate like a third-grader and write stories like a fourth-grader. How much longer can it be before our marvellous intellects are mimicked by an algorithm.
I adhere in some ways to the Behaviorist notion that what matters about intelligence is a) what goes into the machine and b) what comes out. There is nothing else. If you feel that there is more going on inside you than what can be summarized by your external stimuli and your external reactions, then you are mistaken. You are only observing an internalized output to external stimuli. The feedback you would normally express in the outside world is instead being piped directly to your brain's input valve.
Please tell me why machines cannot do this.
Sooner or later we will be confronted by the fact that everything we do is completely replicable, from the works of great geniuses to the droolings of cretins. (Hey - we already have the latter down
My guess is, they will ignore it. They will continue to posit superiority over their made mechanisms, even if those mechanisms can produce beauty and song superior to those of the most spiritual human. We're like that - intolerably arrogant and blind.
So, remind me again why a self-aware machine would crave to be human?
Ok, that's my rant. Now I have to get some real work done
-konstant
-konstant
Yes! We are all individuals! I'm not!
I counted three (maybe four) violations of the Three Laws:
Christopher A. Bohn
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
Christopher A. Bohn
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
I adhere in some ways to the Behaviorist notion that what matters about intelligence is a) what goes into the machine and b) what comes out. There is nothing else. If you feel that there is more going on inside you than what can be summarized by your external stimuli and your external reactions, then you are mistaken. You are only observing an internalized output to external stimuli. The feedback you would normally express in the outside world is instead being piped directly to your brain's input valve.
There are serious problems with behaviourism.
First of all, if behaviourism were true, we could teach pigs to sing. We can't. There are built-in functions in the brain that make a difference in intelligence.
Second, human children learn language in a fashion which behaviourism can't account for. Children will learn whatever language they are exposed to. They learn the rules of their language without ever understanding them as rules. They do not make the type of mistakes a trial-and-error behaviour renforcement model would require of them. They always group words into structures, even in highly inflected languages and even when they get the fine points of syntax wrong. Furthermore (and most damningly) a human child can become fully functional in a foreign language in under a year, while few adults can do so under any circumstances. The most parsimonious theory that includes these facts is that humans, like other animals, have biological mechanisms in the brain that enable them to do these things.
Thirdly, there are growing bodies of evidence that large areas of human behaviour are biologically influenced. Several forms of psychiatric disease can be clearly traced to biochemical roots. Human sexual behaviour has clear biological roots (I doubt anyone would much bother with sex if their brains didn't force them too.) Even areas like anti-social behaviour are increasingly believed to have partially biological origins, possibly hereditary ones.
That means that humans are not tabula rasa as the behaviourists believed. What goes on in our brains is not a simple function of external stimula.
Now, that does not mean it isn't possible to understand these parts of the brain and program computers to emulate them effectively, but if we do so, we are emulating a human, not creating a truly new machine intelligence.
I can easily imagine a machine pretending to be human wanting to become fully human. Such a machine would likely have emotional states, since we are unlikely to be able to separate these genuinely human conditions from an abstract intelligence. We don't even have a good definition of intelligence, and even if we fully understood the biology and functioning of the brain, we are unlikely to be able to discuss intelligence apart from it's structural framework.
An AI that thinks like a human is likely to want the range of experience and the level of autonomy that humans enjoy. It's not implausible that it would want to be seen and treated as an equal to humans. It is conceivable that it would view itself as superior, but I find it hard to believe that any probable AI would wish to reject the ensemble of human experience in the way you suggest.
Slashdot is a community, and in a community, there are standards of behavior that are created and enforced. The restrictions on posting are there because we, the community, would rather be subject to rating and moderation than have to read many hundreds of lame, pointless posts like yours.
Your suggestion that you're plastering your crap all over this discussion in order to "SHOW ROB AND THE REST OF THE GANG THEIR STUPIDITY" and "[show] WHAT A POS THE SYSTEM IS" is complete bunk. This is like a vandal smashing windows to demonstrate the fact that the police cannot stop every crime - true, but it's a rationalization for juvenile behavior that completely lacks a logical backing.
If you want to be a part of this community, you're going to have to follow its rules voluntarily - this is why the Slashdot community works, and this is why society works; most people follow the rules despite the fact that they know that the rules may not get enforced.
You suggest the system is broken. That comes from the premise that the system should be able to stop any type of lameness that comes into it, and that's a completely wrong interpretation of what the moderation system is there for. The problem isn't the (very well-thought-out) technology that Rob et al have given us to rate one another, it's the hostile element which doesn't want to contribute, the people who just want to force their immature ranting onto everyone else.
You aren't pointing out what's wrong with the system in your post. You are what's wrong with the system.
I think you missed a "not" in your Zeroth Law. Basically, robots must protect /humanity/ above protecting individual humans. (Although I can't find a list of Robot novels, so I don't know which ones to read to discover this.)
Roger Allen McBride has couple of really poorly-written novels that rip up the Three Laws, point out their problems and their resulting effects on humanity (!), and then proceed to create four New Laws.
The actual examination of the Three Laws is really well done, but unfortunately it's the only good piece of writing in the novels.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Actually no..
The movie sounds like it's based more on the book than on the short story..
Okay, background info:
The short story, called "The Bicentinial Man" is in "Robot Visions" and a few other of Asimov's robot compilations.
The book, called "The Positronic Man" was made by Asimov and Silverberg and based on the short story, but more fleshed out and longer.
I believe there was a book also called BM by Asimov alone, but he re-vamped it into PM later. I'm not sure of that though.
---
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
As I understood it, the robots didn't obey a set of black-and-white rules. Rather, the instructions guiding them were incredibly intricate and deeply ingrained within them. A robot may not harm a human being, but if a human orders a robot forcefully enough, a robot could probably be instructed to cause a very mild amount of pain, or to place a human being in a situation of slightly more risk of harm than the robot would otherwise permit. Likewise, a trivial instruction that a robot kill itself could probably be ignored.
In these situations, the robot would probably be under a bit of duress, but the point is that these situations tend to be represented as *potentials*, or "voltage levels", if you will. "Acceptable risk" is an acceptable synonym, in my opinion. Without this ability, I agree, robots obeying these laws would probably be useless.
A robot would theoretically be capable of a tremendous amount of observation and prediction. If a human were to run and jump out in front of a car driven by a robot, the robot would either be able to see this and prevent it, or there would be nothing he could do about it. A sufficiently advanced robot would survive either way. Since (in the Asimov world), most (all?) cars were driven by robots, and the robots could communicate between each other, it's easy to see that the act of navigating by car was relatively safe. Pedestrians alongside the road are another matter, but you're right -- a robot wouldn't do it if there was such a large chance of harming a human being. The logical conclusion is that the robots didn't see such a chance for harm, or if there were a small chance, the potential introduced by orders from the 2nd law would override the 1st law concern (but only to a point).
Is that the robots took those laws and postulated the Zeroth Law (which is, essentially, that robots are more responsible for protecting HUMANITY than they are any one person)... and then humanity was ultimately enslaved by robots, for a time.
The idea being "I have to protect you, whether you like it or not, and controlling you is the most efficient way to do it."
At least, that's what the later Foundation books seems to suggest. That's why robots are illegal in the Galactic Empire and post-Galactic Empire...
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
Or check the card catalog of your local libraries.
Ok, I haven't seen the movie or read the book (though I've read and enjoyed many Asimovs in the past) but it seems to me quite unlikely we'll have any high-tech machines any time in the near future that regularly outlive us. How old is that machine on your desktop? Your car? Your household appliances? The only significant artificial object you frequently associate with that is likely to be older than you is your house/apartment, and even that is not a given. Humans have been dwelling in houses for thousands of years, and we still build so many new ones each year, and tear down the old. My guess is it'll be a thousand years or more before robot design stabilizes to the point where models a hundred years old are not obsolete, and by then us humans will probably be living a lot longer too.
Energy: time to change the picture.
Gasp. Another Williams vehicle that aims only to warm your heart and ignore your brain. Like its competitor The Green Mile this movie begs for Oscar attention with its brain numbing simplicity. Remember when Robin Williams was cutting edge? Remember when he was funny? Yeah, neither can I.
What's this KatzSpeak about computer animation becoming an artform of its own? That would be nice if it was viewed as fine art, but its mostly used for movies which are about as far as you can get from fine art. Snazzy animation has replaced the only thing worthwhile in SciFi - the story. I've seen bubblegum anime with stronger plots than most big budget sci-fi flicks. Great graphics in the hands of today's filmmakers has more or less ruined the genre. I say they rename Sci-Fi Com-Ani and be done with it.
This was a movie. It had some special effects, was based on a book and raised some issues. Robin Williams was in it.
C'mon, admit that all you've seen is the trailer.
*smirking*
-nme!
Specifically, they - although they're supposed to be encoded at the lowest level of the robot's "positronic brain" - are stated in terms of high-level concepts; "human", "harm", "orders", "inaction", "protection", "conflict" and so forth. (Needless to say, Asimov himself was quite aware of this, and all of his Robot stories involve juggling the exact definition and application of these concepts.)
When the 3 laws were first written out - in the early 50's AFAIK - the prevailing view of consciousness, the mind, and AI was upside-down from what we think today. Namely, concepts, analogies and calculations were supposed to be low-level "intelligence" operations, and robotic (or human) consciousness was built with these as building blocks.
Instead, today we view consciousness, concepts, analogies and even mental calculations as an emergent property of a great number of low-level functions which seem to be simple feedback loops, pleasure/pain learning circuits, perceptual functions, and what linguist George Lakoff calls "conceptual metaphors". One of the points to the modern view is that, probably, an AI would have to be taught to do mental calculations, and probably would do them with same speed (and the same accuracy) as a human.
So, when practical robots come about, they'll be built on physical metaphors, basic learning circuits, and will have to "learn" the equivalent of the 3 laws once they can grasp the abstract concepts involved - and they'll probably want to argue a lot about the implications.
Remember in the book when Andrew's law firm decides to not to pay one of their janitors "...because he's obviously a robot..." due to the fact that he has a prosthetic heart. An absurd claim indeed, but deliberately made to set a precedent that blurs the line between human and robot, thus facilitating Andrew's growing claim on his own humanity. Too bad they just cut the scene out; it would have been useful to the plot engine to ambiguate (is that even a word?!) the boundary between Andrew and the human race.
Solomon Kevin Chang
Database Design and Programming
Disney Televentures
(Yeah, sorry, it was my parent company that did the film)
"Twice half-assed makes an ass whole." --Solomon K. Chang
Well, if a machine didn't have emotion, it couldn't /want/ to have emotion. Organic systems have a goal - survive. That goal gives them will, which translates into wants, desires.
I disagree. The evolutionary value of emotion is as an additional stimulus to act, one not based on the rational processes developed in human brains. When we lack enough data to rationally decide, we fall back on earlier mechanisms: emotion/instinct. Emotion itself is a combination of impulses based on past history not conciously processed, plus biochemical impulses that have been subject to the process of natural selection for thousands if not millions of years. There's an evolutionary value to acting without sufficient data, and a process that mimicked this in computers might be equally useful.
That's my theory at least.
--LP
In fact, Mr. Asimov is credited by the Oxford English Dictionary, with the creation of 3 words:
'Positronic'
'Psychohistory' - which has a different meaning then that given in the Foundation series.
'Robotics'
This information comes from the "Yours, Isaac Asimov: A Lifetime of Letters".
Personally, with regards to movies, I'm hoping to see the "I, Robot" movie done. The script, written by Harlan Ellison, is pretty good.
Compare Neuromancer with, say, 'Imperial Earth' by Clarke. The tones are utterly unlike. Both books conclude with a clear finishing point, but again they're totally unlike. The Gibson book concludes with a big conceptual leap played very deadpan, and the idea is on a cosmic scale, also nihilistic (as it will mean very little to the protagonist who's left behind by the lessons of the narrative). The Clarke book concludes with a small choice played up for effect, and the idea is small and personal and rather sentimental- but will affect everyone in the story, and (it's suggested) for the better.
Why would the latter be _worse_? It's hard to argue that the William Gibson universe is better than the perhaps sentimental Clarke universe (or indeed Asimov's universe). It is as if people wearing Nike sneakers and waiting for their stock options to vest want to find a vicarious nihilism through modern SF writing, a bleakness that they are looking for and not finding in their own lives. One might well wonder whether there will be a recurrence of hope and meaning in SF literature in the next five years- since the Real World is poised to deliver another wake-up call.
Of course, if you read and believe 'The Long Boom' voodoo happytalk, you might as well get heavily into reading the most nihilistic and meaningless cyberpunk you can possibly find: it might be your subconscious trying to tell you not to be too much of an idiot :)