Vatsan’s Ramblings

A long time ago, during freshman year in Chennai, I was thrilled to have access to a real library – The British Council Library, or BCL. There, I renewed my passion for fiction and read voraciously. Sometimes I wonder if that was where the seeds of all of my today’s troubles were sown

I discovered Marge Piercy’s novels at BCL. I was, and still am, very interested in science fiction. I found a title “Body of Glass” and couldn’t resist exploring the book (In the US, this is published under the title “He, She and it”). This is the story of Shira, who falls in love with an illegal cyborg, Yod. Yod sacrifices himself to save the people he (it?) loves. The story is interspersed with a tale told by Malkah to Yod. Malkah is  Shira’s grandmother and Yod’s teacher and lover. The tale is that of  a Golem, Joseph, created by a Rabbi to protect the Jewish community in Prague from Christian mobs, and how the Golem develops feelings and emotions, and how he is rendered back to clay after serving his purpose. Both stories raise the question of what it means to be a human and what it means to be a person.

Besides this, there are other famous characters  – Data and The Doctor from Star Trek, and various Asmiov robot characters – most notably R. Daneel Olivaw.

I was just watching a random movie on Disney channel – Pixel Perfect. This is the story of a ‘hologram’, Loretta, who is created by the movie’s protagonist Roscoe to save his band. She develops a personality and feels emotions,falls in love with him, and eventually sacrifices herself to save Roscoe’s belle Samantha. Don’t see this movie – esp. if you only like unequivocally happy endings. Although technically a happy ending, Loretta-The-Hologram’s demise isn’t exactly how I’d have wanted it to end. It have preferred it if somehow she (it?) could have possessed Samantha’s body and lived happily ever after with Roscoe.

This is all a pipe dream – the idea of Artificial Intelligence that is conscious, self-aware and capable of feeling and having an individuality. So the question of human-AI equivalence is probably so far out that it might be several millennia before it comes up for a real discussion. But if I had a vote, I’d vote for equal treatment of any system that can exhibit sentience and sapience.

In the meanwhile, I’m hopeful that as humans, we are capable of creating something that is much greater and grander than ourselves. Some day, we will give birth to a consciousness that will complement our own existence. Some day, we will be Gods !