AI in Pop Culture

Think of Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey, think of Ultron from Avengers: Age of Ultron, consider the Terminator and all other forms of artificial intelligence depicted in movies. When they come to mind, most of them are robots trying to take over the world, right? Why is the portrayal of a malevolent artificial intelligence so prominent in today’s works of science fiction?

While most of the instances of AI in pop culture are seen in more recent years, a famous story that predates the concept of a computerized artificial intelligence sets the tone for how we treat AI in pop culture today. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) is the earliest writing of AI that is known, and the public regards it as a science fiction-horror story that tells of this monster that was meant to represent the Industrial Revolution. Frankenstein was often used as a symbol as to why people should fear reform, therefore setting a tone of fear of machines that can think for themselves.

The progression of the fictional side of AI may have also contributed to the real-life development. “As [William] Blake once wrote: ‘What now is proved was once only imagined’ - and science fiction was exploring all kinds of possibilities long before they became realities,” says Chris Ferns, a college professor at Mount Saint Vincent University, “Space travel, for example, which Jules Verne and H.G. Wells were envisaging in the 19th century, long before the first humans in space in the 1960s - so you could argue that such dreams were a factor in prompting people to try to make them a reality”. So it is only fair to say that the fictional responses to AI also affected the evolution of how people feel about real-life AI.

This doesn’t explain why people originally wrote about AI as being malevolent though, just why people nowadays have concerns about it. The example of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein shows just how real-life events affect the literature written in that time period. Since people were concerned about how there were forces they could not control, there were stories written in order to personify those fears. Later on, during World War II, computerized AI became a legitimate possibility that the public had only heard about in the warnings of stories. People became uneasy at the prospect of a machine that could think better than they could. Art influences life just as much as life influences art.

This is informational and all, but what about modern concerns of AI? Now we have pop culture references of Terminator, and other beings that generally want to destroy humanity. Are these viable concerns for us to heed science fiction as cautionary tales? Looking at problems individually, we see that we should not actually be worried about many of them.

The big one: the Terminator; AI taking over and deciding to end human life. This won’t happen because AI does not have a goal. Yes AI is always on, your iPhone is always waiting for you to ask for Siri, but unless spoken to, the computer is not doing anything. When not given an objective to complete, the AI will not do anything in the background, including plotting to overthrow mankind.

Next, the idea that AI could transcend human thinking similar to the superintelligent computer from Tron. While this may be a possibility in the far off future, it is not likely to affect us because to the AI, humans appear to be bugs. Nothing that humans do will actually affect the AI, so the most likely possibility is that humans will be left alone.

Might AI take over jobs in the world? It could happen, maybe not now or any time in the near future, but as with any advancement in technology, new jobs will open up. During the Industrial Revolution machines ended up taking jobs of those who would hand craft products, but there needed to be people to oversee the machines. Also it relieved people to focus on new, more exciting activities. Even if AI were to start taking jobs, society is always changing and humanity will find new professions to replace them, so it’s not like AI will ever take over every job.

In general the fear of AI taking over anything is a concern of the public, but consider what would happen if any human were to try to take the power away from others? Throughout history there have been wars to maintain power over people. Humanity loves power too much to let it be taken away by artificial intelligence, those in power will do much to keep the AI from rising.

So why, despite the fact that the possibility of an AI takeover is incredibly slim, do writers of science fiction focus on the malevolent AI? This is simply because fiction requires plot and as Ferns says, “I suspect it's largely because having malevolent AIs has far more dramatic possibilities than ones which are benevolent: there has to be a danger to be fought against, after all, if you want to keep the reader's attention.” The world should not be worried about AI taking over, because the only evidence of this possibility are works of fiction that have been fabricated through the need for a plot.