WALL*E is a good movie, with what I consider to be moderately interesting characters. The two main ones are WALL*E (a 700-year-old clunky machine designed for a simple series of tasks, namely compacting trash and stacking the cubes into towers) and EVE (an apparently-new robot of extremely sleek lines, incredibly high-tech, and designed specifically to look for and retrieve plant specimens). These two robots meet and fall in love, and the tale continues from there.
“Robots that love” have been a staple of sci-fi for a while. The most recent major examples that I can think of off the top of my head is the “David” android in Spielberg’s “A.I.” the “Stepford Wives” and the human Cylons on “Battlestar Galactica.” However, most robots-in-love fall into one or both of two categories:
1) Robots that can physically pass for human , or nearly so
2) Robots that have been programmed for love.
“David” fits both of these, and the Cylons are so close to humans physically that even DNA tests can’t tell them apart. Point 1 is important because it makes the character at least somewhat sympathetic to humans; point 2 is important because, let’s face it, if someone or some thing is *programmed* for love, then it ain’t really love. The same principle applies in stories dealing with mind control… love potions, telepathy, hypnosis, magic spells, whatever, forcing one character to “love” another. Almost invariably the character not under control sooner or later discovers that what the other peson is feeling is not love, just a cheap and unsatisfying imitation. Generally, though not always, some effort is then made to reverse the “spell.”
WALL*E is different. In this case, neither of the robots is even remotely humanoid – in fact, there are no humanoid robots at all in WALL*E. WALL*E is a box with tank treads, graspers and cameras for eyes; EVE is a hovering ovoid Ipod. Neither has a face as such, nor much in the way of vocabulary. The only forms of expression available to them are their eyes (WALL*Es cameras can move, in imitation of human eyebrows and such, while EVE has a “screen” where her face would be that can project simple geometric shapes for eyes… circles, semicircles, moons, etc.), a few words (not even real sentences), their hands and body motion. Also, it is clear that neither robot has been programmed to love; they are machines designed to do certain jobs, and emotion is not part of the job descriptions. Still, in the movie the two fall in love… or at least a good approximation of it.
I suspect that some day – perhaps well within my lifetime – mankind will create a computer that can emulate human emotions and drives. On that day, we’ll think ourselves pretty damnednifty, and we may be right. But if the machine is programmed to love and laugh… then it’ll still seem like an imitation.
But what if some day some robots that were *not* programmed for such emotions find that they enjoy each others company, are actually *happy* around one another, are unhappy when separated and feel grief when one is lost? On that day, mankind will have truly created something awe-inspiring. It will have transcended its programming and its purpose; if you believe that humans have souls, on that day it will be difficult to rationally argue that that robot doesn’t. And then the last 10,000 years of human theological arguements will get stepped up to a whole new level. If we decide that robots have a soul, where did it come from? Is a “soul” simply something we merely decide is there? Since most humans who believe in souls believe that they are immortal and continue after physical death, will we believe the same about robot souls? And if so, is the soul simply the result of sufficent complexity, something that arises naturally? Or is it somethign that humans somehow endowed the robots with? Or do we assume that some god or other did it? If you think religious debates of the past few millenia have been harsh, wait till some mechanical factory worker decides it wants to take communion or an advanced UAV says it wants to get circumcized. And if an umannned main battle tank and small park service pooper-scooper bot fall in love… how the hell will that work?
There are a number of concerns that will arise, of course… primary being “what is our responsibility to this robot?” It’s one thing to make an automatic trash compactor that can self-repair and carry out its functions without guidance. But what of an automatic trash compactor that can feel love? Desire? Lonlieness? Longing? Grief? The first kind you can shut off, disassemble and melt down without the slightest twinge of guilt. But the second kind… that’ll lead to all manner of interestingness. The first kind of robot could well see you coming with a sledgehammer to destroy it, and it’ll just sit there and wait patiently for the end. The second kind might fight for its life. It might beg for its life. And what could well be the most jarring of all, it might beg for the life of another. What will we have created when we make a machine that would, of its own volition, beg to save the life of another machine, perhaps even offer to give its own life in exchange?
As with so much of science fiction that has come true – rockets, space travel, beam weapons, cloning – this could well be the sort of thing that happens well before we as a society decide to give it any real thought. A robot or computer that can produce true emotions, but which is not specifically programmed to emulate human emotions, could come up with love and hate and such… and it could conceivably come up with emotions that are entirely alien to humans. Love, as complex as it is, is essentially an evolved derivative of the mating impulse. Put simply and not entirely accurately… no love means no lovemaking which means no babies which means extinction. But robots not designed to do so will not likely have a “mating instinct.” So will robot love be the same as human love? Will it be recognizable? Will robots and humans be able to look at each other and at least comprehend the basics? I would certainly hope so. If robot love is too alien to be recognized, then we might well recycle one of a pair, and never know. And that could be tragic.
I’ve heard a lot of reviewers talking about the love story in WALL*E, and describing it as being sickeningly sweet. As a diabetic, I certainly have a desire to avoid such thing, However, while I thought the WALL*E/EVE tale was sweet and even heartbreaking in places, I did not find it at all sickening. The relationship between the two was understandable and carried out with considerable class. The scene with WALL*E and EVE dancing in space was just gorgeous.
It goes without saying that these images are the property of Disney or Pixar or whoever the hell owns ’em.
One Response to “The Philosophical Implications of WALL*E”
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Well, it seems that in Iraq and elsewhere soldiers feel grief when one of the simple robots they are using for, say, recon and explosive disposal, get destroyed or badly damaged. I think that at a certain point a machine can be perceived as living and this has in tow a full series of emotions, way of thoughts, reactions, and so on. The kind of problems (or simply, phenomena) that are foreshadowed in WALL*E are likely to occur well before a robot will prove to be capable of love.