AI and Robots in Science Fiction Movies: Why Should We Trust in AI?

Introduction

It is not difficult to resist the impression that digital technologies have played a leading role not only in capitalist expansion but also in the conformation of digital society in recent years. Today technological breakthrough has created not only more creative minds but also small players which impact directly the check-and-balance institutions (Naisbitt, 1994). Some voices speak to us of a global paradox which is accelerated by high-technologies. While high tech has invariably accelerated the decision-making process -at best processing faster the available information-, it has led to a gridlock where small players determine the daily life in society (Sorensen, 1995). As Manuel Castells puts it, technology has successfully altered society in the constellations of three fields: economy, power and experience. Technology has molded the ways people perceive the external world whereas laying the foundations towards a radical understanding of identity. Societies operate in a tension between the self which is expressed by the Id, and the net formed mainly by others. Needless to say that this net denotes the structuration of groups around a set of institutions and organizations integrated horizontally in a decentralized form of production-consumption (Castells 1986; 2010; 2020). Having said this, Castells toys with the belief that in the information age lay-people has liberated their minds but at the same time, the growth of capitalism has created standardized and mechanical forms of relations which need further scrutiny (Van Dijk, 1999; Bell 2006).

As the previous backdrop, in the informational platform, artificial intelligence (AI) and humanoids have occupied a central position in recent decades. AI has revolved around health issues applied to the expansion of life expectance, adjoined to the improvement of surveillance tech or simply Front-desk robots welcoming guests at hotels. Some studies have emphasized the negative effects of AI and robots unless owners-vs-workers relations are not ethically regulated (Ivanov & Webster 2020). What is more important, laypersons strongly believe they will be losing their jobs if robots are systematically introduced in their organizations (Korstanje, 2022). More efficient and cheaper than humans, robots have been engulfed in the modern labor market as never before. In the mid of this grim context, we interrogate furtherly the inevitable tension between humans and AI in popular opinion. In so doing, we examine the plot (basing our argument in content analysis) three well-known movies: the Terminator, Matrix and HBO Saga Westworld. Each one, though from different angles, deals with the problem of AI, technology, the notion of reality and alterity. Their plots situate us on a dystopian world where Mankind is enslaved or dominated by AI and technology reducing its autonomy as well as conditions of subsistence. The conditions of survival are given only to a marginal utility in a hybridized world where machines rule. At a closer look, we keep on the discussions left by senior philosophers Jacques Ellul, Jean Baudrillard and Paul Virilio regarding the future of mankind in the digital society.