The Human Resistance Report

Speculation has always been at the forefront of human story telling. Ever since we thought we figured out how mankind crawled out of the sludge and starting hunting for mammoths, we’ve been trying to retell the story. And if that doesn’t satisfy your yearning for enlightenment, we have  movies going even beyond our meager beginnings and foretelling the direction that evolution will continue in the future.  So here it is, the story of mankind from start to finish through the following five movies.

1. Walking with Cavemen (2003)

Walking with CaveMan

Here we see man at his earliest stage of life, discovering fire, learning how to use tools, inventing language, and perfecting hunting practices. It sets the pace as a good starting point for man. Here man’s challenges are documented as pre-evolutionary species of ancestors are cast aside until homosapiens emerge, conquering the world as the dominant species.  It is speculated in the film that our most prominent competitor was the Cro-Magnums and that they they were physically superior to Homo Sapiens.  The battle for supremacy however was won with brains, not brawn and eventually the Cro-Mangnums died off leaving behind a species that continues to use intelligence to tame the world around us.

 2. Citizen Kane (1941)

Citizen Kane was really about William Randolf Hearst

Thousands of years have passed and man has made much progress on the planet, but very little in the way of evolving physically. We seem to have evolved as much as we needed to adapt to life on this planet. So we  evolved the way we do things. Citizen Kane is great because it give a birds-eye view of what the modern world has become and takes place in a time when mankind is embracing media , and communications are becoming global, shrinking the world as we formerly knew it. Even more compelling is that  we see for the first time, the power of the media and the especially explosive power of media and money. The ability to manipulate world events with cameras sets the pace for a new society.  This important step in evolution is a prerequisite to the architecture that will allow those with enough money to rewrite history and influence the future of society.

3. Enemy of the state(1998)

Enemy of the State .. so real its scary!

In a world where surveillance cameras, information sharing, and satellite communications is normal and insignificant,  humans have become desensitized to big brother’s watchful eye. Given in to the idea that our safety requires no less, we are blind and blissful of how much of our world is being scrutinized under the watchful eye of the world’s computer data banks.  So volumes of personal data are gathered, and used in a variety of ways to extend the influence of those who access to the information.  Enemy of the State depicts a world that is exactly as it is today from a technological standpoint ( or at least it was in 1998). This is what makes this movie so scary and brilliant at the same time. The way that personal data, satellites, cameras and computers are used to profile, demonize, and politically assassinate anyone in its target is downright bone chilling. It highlights how easily a person can be tracked electronically,  shut out of financial assets,  lose credibility by use of  “out of context “video feeds, and basically leave you as a shut out , on the run from society in general . With the media spoon feeding us everything we want to believe and computers infallibly keeping track of everything we do, people are being reduced to pieces of information that can depicted anyway the media sees fit. With all of the world’s databases coming together and sharing data, all it takes is a few keystrokes to turn John Q. Public in to Jailbird Jimin the eyes of the public.

4. Minority Report

Think NATAL will be this cool?

The evolution of man continues as nuero drug experiements lead the ability to forsee  future events and an impresssive array of technology with which to prevent these future crimes from happening.  In this world , life is more cerebral, and experiences happen more in the mind than anything else. From drug use, to jail time, to sex orgies and fantasies – all of it happens in the minds of citizens under tightly controlled circumstances in a world were transparency is the norm.  This could be the first steps to a world where we have no use for our outer extremities, as we learn to experience more of life inside our own heads. Perhaps someday we will just give our minds over to the machines and let them take care of us…..which brings us to our last movie.

5. The Matrix

Daycare in the Matrix

Finally we have evolved to a higher level of existence. The machines, in performing their ultimate goal are taking care of our every need. The machines keep us alive and monitor our health, feed us with nutrients, dispose of any waste and even provide our mind a life program to keep us occupied. What more could one ask for from our future overlords? The matrix ask us to question whether or not we even exist or if we are simply living  out a program feed to our brains. Some philosophers ask “is this such a bad thing?”  I say yes, because if this is nothing but a program than I want to be able to change the channel when I want! In any case, this movie a prime example of how man supposes we could evolve  someday. In classic mankind style, we will fight it to the death before finally accepting it.

Given the intelligence and strength of an Artificially Intelligentandroid, raising robots could lead to some very serious consequences if a robot was not “raised” properly. Is robo-rearing  something that should this be left to people with specialized training? Perhaps in a future of AI androids, they will be raised in private training facilities, regulated by the law, and dispensed to the public in prepackaged, “ready to open” robot kits.

But if not, then how in fact, do you raise a robot? I suppose our first place we look to is the way we raise our own children. We must teach it right from wrong. We teach it about honesty and integrity. Perhaps we teach it the Three Laws of Robotics. We may even find that these new children androids come with the three laws already built in, like a in BIOS chip of some sort.

Behavior

All this makes for a great ‘Leave it Beaver’ relationship with your new mechanical kid. But what happens when the kid starts to get fussy. An android will not get any bigger or grow any taller, so if it is built with the strength of a child then we could limit the risks to humans. But even a child can land good blow now and then – and you can’t spank a robot, and you can’t really put it on time out ( do i really need to explain this?). So how do you punish or correct it?

Chances are, we will reprogram them as soon as they misbehave. After all, that is what we try to do with real children when they misbehave, We modify our behavior somehow to let them know and to program into their minds that their actions are wrong. With androids, we will be able to simply upload a new program that lets them know that certain behaviors are no longer in its program. But a really smart AI brain may re-learn bad behaviors and need to be reprogrammed, just like with real people.

Perhaps it will have an insatiable appetite for learning , so you can disconnect it from the internet to punish it temporarily. But would use its intellect to hack back in and use it unbeknownst to you?

 Play

What kind of games do robots play? Initially, just like toddlers, they may want large colorful toys to stimulate learning. Down the road they may prefer logic games like chess, and probably video games. They may find themselves running low on friends to play with though, if they beat the hell out of all their friends at video games.  Perhaps android children will even gravitate towards each other and befriend one another. They may give  a whole new meaning to playing ‘doctor’ and actually perform real maintenance on each other, even giving schoolyard upgrades like rowdy teens with a home-made fishing line tattoo rig.

Education

What of education? Do we send them to school? There is no way to predict how they will react with other children or possibly more important, the impact of  super intelligent students among normal human students. Will people begin to feel inferior? Will students grow up believing that’s robots are superior to  man, especially when they see them excel at everything in class. One can imagine a future where high school is filled with clicks of robots who are smarter than thou, perhaps even victims of other ‘less enhanced’ human students with a grudge.  Are they going to come home bruised up one day because it  out-shined some big fisted student short on smarts and on patience?

There may also be major changes in grading systems that grade on a curve since the curve will warp significantly. Also, it would also seem that there are going to be some very disappointed parents on Science Fair day when their kids volcano has to go up against a mini nuclear reactor. All the new inventions of the next century may be the result of science projects conjured up by androids.

Sports

This is where some of the human kids will get their redemption – that is until soccer dad decides that his lil’ kicker needs an upgraded leg. Android kids will probably be uncoordinated and gangly at first, much like members of the chess and glee clubs. But future upgrades will certainly render this a moot issue. Now your kids are going to be playing football with a team called ‘The Terminators’.  Androids will either end up being banned, or humanity will have to reassess the idea of using steroids to enhance ourselves, just to keep up with the machines.

Adolescence

What happens when its brain becomes a teenager and it wants independence, stuck inside a tiny mechanical body, the mind of an intellect yearning to assert its own identity and soon declare independence. Arguing with teenagers is already exasperating as it is, now imagine how an argument with a artificially intelligent robot would turn out. Unlike real kids though, you could have a remote control to shut it down or mute it when convenient ( I smile as I think to myself the look of indignity that would cross the face of a rabid human teenager that was suddenly muted by remote control to bring closure to a pointless argument).

When you consider the accelerated rate at which computers can learn , we may find that AI minds reach their ‘teenage years’  at 2 years of age or less. Unless there is some kind of limits put into place, supersmart android children may end up outgrowing their human parents only a few years after bringing him home.

All grown up

At at some point in time, he will even ascend beyond that. What?? our little robot is all grown up? but how did this happen, it seems like just yesterday you brought him home and turned him on, watching his big bright eyes look at the world for the first time. And now, though he is physically no bigger, his mind has outgrown the confines of childhood.

You have raised a robot. He will now go out into the world, a squirrel looking for a nut. What kind of jobs will be in store for him? Does he even need a job? well, he needs fuel , and from time to time maintenance. If he has been a good boy, there will be plenty of that on reserve at mom and dads.

But what about the bad kids? the ones who parents will not even open the doors to. These ‘bad eggs’ may have to resort to theft (never mentioned in the three laws) , he may even attack other robots for their supplies and other goods. Basically, you have the same thing human counterparts in the same situation are going through.

If in certain cases a particular AI mind needs to undergo reprogramming multiple times, then it may be scheduled for destruction. This would keep it from hitting the streets as a delinquent. In fact , when an android feels it is ready to go out on its own, then it can take a type of government sponsored psychological exam to be sure that it does not pose a threat to society at large. But would Android Civil Rights protesters step in? Demanding equal rights for androids.  Should androids even be allowed to walk the streets? Are they a danger to our women and children? Maybe we will see laws that force android owners to keep them at home, or pay for destruction if they no longer want it at home. Hopefully, they will not become a fugitive in their attempt to evade destruction.

As time passes we will have more and more androids walking around on the streets, not just a product of our invention , but of its environment. The way that they respond to society will be a direct result of what they are taught and how they are trained. Because these are not humans, but rather something altogether new and untested, the results may force us to really ask ourselves the question: How do you raise a robot?