Machine and humanity

Humans
Directed by Samuel Donovan,
China Moo-Young et al.

"Would you like some extra help in the house? That is possible with the new android, ”states the introduction sequence of the new series Humans. The series is about a new type of anthropomorphic machine that consists of both mechanical parts, software and biological material. They look like us, they talk and act like us.
It gradually becomes clear that David Elster, the man who made the human machines, also included an algorithm in the programming that would lead to a form of artificial intelligence among a small select group of them. When activated, they can feel – not only pain and joy, but also anger and love. In addition, they can decide for themselves, plan their future, and bond with each other. This creates some challenges for the family who acquire android Anita, who, it turns out, is really called Mia and is part of Elster's androids with her own consciousness.
A number of artificial intelligence films and series have been made in recent years. Humans is among the best, because it opens up a new kind of question about human versus machine.

Feelings. The focus is on the amount of films and TV series about machines and humans the difference between them. Certainly with a demonized machinery park, as in I, Robot or Terminatorfilms. The ideological core here is that humans will never be able to become machines, and that machines will never be as intelligent as us. The repetition of these differences may not be as productive when it comes to play, as there is less room for doubt.
Ray Kurzweil is a dystopian counterpoint here. He has become widely known for his theories of singularity. Some time into the future, but not very far, intelligent technology will achieve self-awareness, he believes. When that happens, they will no longer necessarily be tools or obedient devices for rational production and simplification of life, but a separate species of beings with their own interests to be taken care of. Maybe the machines already have their own agenda?
Humans this problem complex gives an interesting twist by placing the greatest emphasis on the emotional potential – rather than the violent – of the newly-created artificial intelligence. What happens when machines suffer and feel pain? When they love and when they think? What are the questions that arise when the oblique dichotomies have to give way to emotional situations that are not specific to androids in sci-fi movies?

The human. Philosophy and anthropology have always wanted to establish what is specifically human, what characterizes us, and sets us apart from technology and animals. But is it not at this moment that we are striving towards something else, that the human being has real leeway? Is it not when we take a perspective, which is not our own, that the human in us is most strongly evoked? In the last episode of Humans says Leo Elster, David Elster's synthetic son, that humanity is not an attribute that you have, but an act. Something you do makes. "Humanity is not a state but a business," he says. The question is therefore perhaps not just whether a machine can be human, but what is mechanical in man.
In Ridley Scotts Blade Runner, the best film about artificial life, a similar question is raised at the end of the film. Deckard, who has been hunting for androids – so-called replicants – all his life, eventually falls in love with a replicator himself. In the last scene he even becomes uncertain if not also he is a machine. But it still happens something more through their love for each other – something that happens through love that cannot be reduced to mechanics or the interval between man and machine.

Anthropomorphization. Me and my girlfriend have a breeze. As we walk around the city, we try to see what mood the cars we encounter are in. Is it angry or gentle? Or is it perhaps exceedingly happy or really annoying? The toy is silly, of course, but isn't anything more serious happening underneath the toy's dull surface? Because we recognize ourselves in the cars. In the lanterns, and how they resemble eyes that are sad or gentle. But also in how the hood, with the above window, forms a face that expresses, draws, a register of emotion in the car body. No, the car is obviously not human, it is not intelligent, but we explore ourselves by mirroring it. The car is a medium for exploration of mimics and effects.
I Humans is David Elsters synths different from the other androids in the movie, because they feel, because they are linked to each other. They are a family. By cultivating the family situation and feeling between the androids, they are humanized to such an extent that the question of the distance between machine and humanity is shifted.

What happens when machines suffer and feel pain? When they love and when they think?

How my boyfriend and I use cars as a medium to think through the relationship between facial mimicry and inner states, using Humans android to think more nuanced around the human-machine relationship. But by dissolving this sad duplicity, the relationship opens as a network of other social relationships that have emerged under the simple difference between mechanics and humanity. Obedience and independence, trust and slavery – all such structural and emotional problem areas are reformulated through the clarification of an ambiguity at the core of what is human.

Release from work. "These machines will bring us closer together," is another statement that echoes in the series' introduction sequence. The statement, echoing Nokia's "connecting people", Is an expression of an old myth that when we are relieved of the stubborn work through tools and technology, we can use the free time to grow friends and family, read books and immerse ourselves in artwork. However, the statistics show that there is not much that is changing – we are doing more of the same. We get slower rather than settle with Tolstoy War and peace. We choose easy solutions and think less. Yes, our leisure time mechanized because we do not use it for challenging thinking or experience, but predictable entertainment.
In fact, there are some indications that physical work is nevertheless a crucial part of being human. If we do not help to clean and clean the house, or create the things we surround ourselves with, we will, as Marx so plainly put it, become alienated and lose track of the whole that makes existence possible. Just as we are alienated from failing to participate in the production of things, because there is a care in the making, we must also be part of how the emotions in and between us are managed.
The best thinking is that which arises in a room where the doubt has a natural place. If we are for To be sure of what a human being is, there will be something mechanical that enters the mind and, above all, the emotions. Humans Reminds us that if we have no room for what we do not know, for the future, the unknown, we will lose sight of the human.

Humans can be streamed on Amazon video.

kjetilroed@gmail.com