14 - Artificial Intelligences: The Rise of the Thinking Machines

Summary

WHILE THE DEPICTION of powerful computer programs enabling total surveillance requires SF authors to stick to frighteningly realistic scenarios, the portrayal of artificial intelligences and the focus on the circumstances in which forms of AI may gain self-awareness and an ability to act beyond their programming leaves a lot more room for the imagination. The AI theme is highly popular in anglophone SF. Memorable examples range from Stanley Kubrick's computer Hal 9000 in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Dan Simmon's TechnoCore in the Hyperion Cantos (1989–1997), Ridley Scott's David in the film Prometheus (2012), Spike Jonze's Samantha in the film Her (2013), Alex Garland's Ava in the film Ex Machina (2015), and the “Synths” in the British television series Humans (2015–2018).

While some narratives focus on the singular moment when an AI becomes self-aware and its intelligence surpasses that of humans (e.g., the fateful moment Skynet becomes self-aware in the Terminator movie franchise), writers and directors love to explore the way AIs might differ in their thought processes, asking what makes us human. Obviously, there may well be a threat to homo sapiens, but there is also the opportunity for an evolutionary step forward that extends human knowledge and capability (not to mention the thrill of creating new life, even if it is not human—see chapter 17 below). In this chapter, I explore three recent German SF texts that imagine the emergence of artificial intelligences in order to gauge what they contribute to the discussion.

Richard M. Weiner is a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Marburg. Following his 2006 foray into fiction with a “science and crime novel” involving sinister goings-on at the CERN laboratories in Geneva where scientists are working on the miniaturization of objects (another favorite trope of SF films, e.g., Fantastic Voyage [directed by Richard Fleischer, 1966] and Downsizing [directed by Alexander Payne, 2017]), Weiner returned to SF in 2014 with Aufstand der Denkcomputer: Ein Zukunftsroman (Rise of the Thinking Computers: a Science Fantasy). In the near future, while discussions about Künstliche Intelligenz (artificial intelligence) are still confined to scientists and computer specialists, the psychologist George Wilson notices a number of statistical anomalies that seem to indicate that society is becoming increasingly secular as a consequence of the “Errungenschaften der Wissenschaft” (the triumphs of science, 44).