Colin Randles
Journal Entry 9
I watched Ex Machina again the other day, and saw it from a different perspective. After going through this entire course, and formulating opinions on work, memory, ethics, and technology in all different time periods, I am able to critically think about the implications of the movie.
Reading Stars in my Pocket like a Grain of Sand told the tale of clashing cultures. We are seeing that in America on a smaller scale with anti-Muslim sentiments, and racial profiling. It is seen in the airports, movies, and speeding tickets. Now that we are creating automated vehicles, where we need to implement recognition technology into the vehicles, and program an ethical framework into the system. The car needs to be able to recognize faces, and make driving decisions based on what it sees and calculates. As you can imagine this will cause problems, because there is no chance that everyone will agree on a “correct” system.
Delaney also talks about multiple genders being present in the society. Many characters are racially/sexually ambiguous, and homosexuality is not an issue at all. With the introduction of robots, there is a good chance that some people will fall in love with these machines and want to mate/be with them. Considering that gay marriage was just legalized a few years ago, and the fact that many Americans are still against gay/interracial marriage, I do not think society is ready for robot/human marriage. It is unnatural, and if somehow babies were to come out of it, would they be considered humans or robots? Once we create conscious beings, we unleash an unimaginable amount of social and ethical problems that our world is not ready for. Many people see robots as helpful slaves to the human race, making our lives easier. While it may do this in the short run, the long run implications are far worse than any benefit we will receive. They will be more intelligent than us, which will displace jobs, create ethical issues, and uproot our social system. Is Earth in for a cultural fugue in the coming centuries?