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| Credit: Pixabay |
The Thinker
"The Thinker" is the name of the domed city's ruling computer system in the 1967 book, "Logan's Run". In the movie adaptation, which was released nine years later, this AI ruler is unnamed making it that much more impersonal to its subjects. But the subjects don’t care. As with all utopian societies in science fiction, they have everything they want which is pleasure. However, this is only a so-called utopia.
Upon reaching age 21 in the book and 30 in the movie, the hero, Logan, finds out that the domed city he’s been living in all his life is really a dystopia. The two ages of the character between the novel and the movie are the age that the Thinker allows each citizen to live until. However, what makes this AI character so much more evil in the movie than in the book is that it steals four years of Logan’s allotted lifespan. It does this by changing his life status in its database from 26 years to 30 years before he’s actually reached the legal terminal age. So, the computer system virtually changes the reality of Logan’s lived-out lifespan simply by changing the data in its memory. In the book, the Thinker at least allows him to actually live out all his legal years of life.
So, the computer system in “Logan’s Run” provides everything that the citizens need and want. It just doesn't provide them with the ability to live out their full natural lives and therefore their full potential. And so, the citizens depend on computer technology for a life of pleasure, regardless of how short that life is.
Fortunately, we have no computer system controlling our lifespans. But we do depend on smart technology such as phones, televisions, and even entire home systems to make life easier for us and therefore providing a form of pleasure. This is a life that's made too easy and instead of allowing us to live out are full potential it really stops us from doing so since we are too easily bound to using these devices instead of doing things, including thinking, for ourselves.
Lately, I’ve noticed an example of this misuse of technology with the latest version of Microsoft Word that we use at my day job. The word processing software now offers the writer, in faded letters, the next word in the sentence or phrase they’re typing. When it does this, the user only has to press the Enter key and it types the word for them.
This version of Word is almost doing half the writing for the writer. It's saving us the work from having to type each letter of the word but, in doing that, it’s robbing us of our ability to think about that word and whether it’s the right one for the message we’re trying to convey. It’s only allowing us to recognise the correct term, taking away an opportunity to use our minds to remember its meaning and how to spell it. So, like “Logan's Run"'s Thinker, the program is, at least in part, thinking for us. By the way, I pass up these Word’s auto word offers and type out the whole thing myself. I am the writer, not the computer program. The computer program is simply a tool for the writer.
Box
The other AI terror in both the “Logan’s Run” movie and book is Box. In fact, Box is such a terror that an article at SyFy says he’s one of “the top 10 of terrifying dystopian artificial intelligence.” He is a cyborg, almost all machine, who the heroes, Logan and Jessica, encounter while they escape from the domed city into the outside world. But Box does not serve humans like robots have been made to do. He serves people in a different way--as food. In the current time of the story, he provides the citizens of a legendary city, Sanctuary, with food from animal sources saving them from having to produce food themselves. But he also freezes humans who flee the domed city to preserve them for when the non-human food sources run out. Therefore, Box saves human corpses as food for a future cannibal society. So, this is another case of overdependence on a machine to meet people's needs who don't want to work to sustain those needs themselves.
Fortunately, real-world AI technology hasn’t gone evil in the way the Box character does. However, AI systems have produced art and literature and also posed as humans on social media bringing us that much closer to a Box. It may not be a bad idea for us to mind the pun here.
A story like "Logan's Run" shows us that computer technology is a monster if we let it become so. The way we can let it become so is by giving it too many if not all of our human responsibilities, including thinking. If we do these things, we allow our computer devices to kill our humanity and so our purpose of being human. And, so, computer technology is only as bad as we let it become.
Author’s Newsletter and Upcoming Book
Do you want more examples of evil AI characters jeopardising the lives and dignity of humans? What about an AI program that doesn’t only offer a user the right word on the computer screen but does so by reading the user’s thoughts? You’ll find these examples in stories from my upcoming short fiction collection, “Bad Apps”. But you don’t have to wait two or three months until the book comes out. You can learn about these stories now in my free newsletter, "Night Creatures' Call", by subscribing to it!
What evil AI characters from science fiction movies, books or television creep you out most?
Until next time . . .
The Box does sound scary.
ReplyDeleteI never use that Word feature either.
You're right that computers are replacing our ability to think. Also our ability to communicate as people get together just to all stare at their phones.
Exactly. It seems like even when people get together in person they're still stuck on their phones. Today's smart/mobile phone addiction problem is like the equivalent to the television addiction problem of the 1950s through the rest of the 20th century.
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