{"id":11856,"date":"2020-03-25T18:30:59","date_gmt":"2020-03-25T18:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/?p=11856"},"modified":"2020-04-28T12:19:02","modified_gmt":"2020-04-28T12:19:02","slug":"the-apparently-disobedient-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/en\/the-apparently-disobedient-machine\/","title":{"rendered":"The (apparently) disobedient machine"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I must have been about 15 the first time I saw Blade Runner<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was in philosophy class, in high school. Until then, like many kids, I had fantasised with constructing my own machines. I remember especially how, a few years before, after seeing an episode of Doctor Who<\/em> in which some extraterrestrial robots appeared (the Daleks<\/em>), I turned the house upside down looking for shoe boxes, sewing thread and cardboard egg-boxes to make my own contraptions that I moved myself, imitating the robots on the TV. But what occurred to me after seeing Blade Runner<\/em> was different. I didn\u2019t want to emulate these machines, because they were too much like \u201cus\u201d. And that terrified me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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There is something atavistic in the fear that humans feel towards progress and technology. A general fear of a future that talks of replacement. Of the replacement of our race<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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There is something atavistic in the fear that humans feel towards progress and technology. A general fear of a future that talks of replacement. Of the replacement of our race. This fear has given rise to classic stories like the golem or Shelley\u2019s Frankenstein<\/em>, in which a handful of foolhardy people played God, creating beings to which they gave \u201csouls\u201d. For me, the interesting point was that to try to manufacture beings, or machines, similar to us, these foolish and ambitious fictional scientists would first have had to discover what we are like<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

I feel intuitively that the same is true in real life of specialists in robotics or artificial intelligence. Surely, they must also try to achieve the squaring of the circle: to find the \u201cformula\u201d that defines the essential characteristics of our way of being, physically and psychologically. Personally, I find the intention of mimicking human behaviour especially fascinating. In this sense, one of the central themes of Blade Runner<\/em>, as in much fiction about robots, is the impossibility of free will. A parable about human freedom itself: Is it possible for a human being to overcome the pressures of the system? Of society? Of our emotions? Above all, can we escape from our own chemistry?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two decades after first seeing Blade Runner<\/em> and after the random quirks of life, my first science fiction work emerged: Eve<\/em>. The film is set in a future in which social machines are everywhere. Robots intended as companions, to combat loneliness. To me, this question, loneliness, seemed at the time to be a pressing reality. And it is even more pressing now. It is no secret that isolation has become a health problem of the first order, especially in the West. It is an epidemic that is growing exponentially. A few examples suffice to demonstrate this[1]<\/a>1 \u2014 El Pa\u00eds. Negocis. 12\/24\/2018. \u201cLa factura econ\u00f2mica de la solitud\u201d.\n<\/span><\/span>: <\/p>\n\n\n\n