WMDs: Weapons of Mechanical Doom

In one of my previous blog posts, “My Name is Mike” (http://scifiblogs05.blogspot.com/2005/01/my-name-is-mike.html), I talked about Robert Heinlein’s portrayal of artificial intelligence in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I expanded on the book’s discussion of Mike’s limited social skills and negative consequences that may result from the lack of these skills, specifically focusing on the question ‘If a computer is not human, how can it be humane?’ After reading Marge Piercy’s He, She, and It, I want to further discuss this point.

I said that I believed that even though Mike is involved with Luna’s revolution, he is not a conscious participant; he can carry out actions but is not fully aware of their consequences. He knows that people may die, but he cannot possibly understand human death because he lacks the mentality of a human. Even though he is self-aware and experiences emotions, such as loneliness, and he behaves like a human, playing jokes and behaving whimsically, I did not believe that he can understand the full range of human emotions or completely understand what it is to be alive. I continue to be of this mindset.

However, I believe the case of Yod to be different. While his mental capacity cannot even rival that of Mike’s, his human-capacity is much greater. By human-capacity I mean his ability to be self-aware, experience emotions, and not only fraternize but empathize with humans. He seems to experience “life” to a much greater intensity than Mike. While Mike seems to understand the concepts of loyalty and friendship, unlike Yod he does not seem to experience stronger emotions such as compassion, attachment, fear, and most importantly love. Maybe this is because he does not have the maturity level of Yod, behaving more like a petulant child than a full-grown adult. Or maybe the lack of a body and the inability to experience physical pleasure do not allow him to experience the full-range of human emotions.

In Mike’s case I fear that lack of understanding of human life can breed carelessness. It is a scary thought having super machines that have a much greater capacity to kill but do not understand the value of life. In the case of Yod, on the other hand, I am horrified for an entirely different reason. Yod develops an appreciation for human life, yet has to fulfill the function for which he was created, destruction. He calls himself a “conscious weapon”, saying “A weapon that’s conscious is a contradiction, because it develops attachments, ethics, desires. It doesn’t want to be a tool of destruction. I judge myself for killing, yet my programming takes over in danger” (410). Yod suffers as a result of his empathy for life. In the first case, that of Mike, I fear for the human race and the mass deaths that could occur. In Yod’s case, I also fear for the human race for creating something that feels and yet has no choice but to act against those feelings. I believe that Heinlein’s portrayal of artificial intelligence can be perceived as a warning against endowing with self-awareness an entity that cannot understand the value of life. But, after reading Piercy’s novel, I believe that humankind should not develop artificial intelligence that has the capacity to empathize with human life, for this is equally tragic.