Machina ex Deus
by Andrew Collins
We live in a time when technology is advancing at a frightening rate – self driving cars, algorithms that write news stories, big data growing at exponential rates. And yet alongside such technological progress, racial tensions still linger to an ugly, frightening degree – as we’ve seen in Ferguson, the NYPD, and elsewhere.
Chappie, the latest film from director Neill Blomkamp, rises from this contradictory malaise.
Premised on the idea that a robot can be programmed to have the human attribute of consciousness – creativity, morality, and personality – Chappie is essentially a thought experiment encased in a Transformers flick. This is a shame, because it could have been a much more interesting and relevant thought experiment.
Set in a somewhat dystopian Johannesburg, 2016, where the ghosts of apartheid still linger, the film follows in the heavy steps of Blomkamp’s earlier film District 9. It could have achieved a heart-gripping profundity by wrestling with the question of consciousness. But such soul-searching ruminations largely end up drowning beneath a torrent of bullets, Molotov cocktails, and cluster bombs – all in glorious slow-motion.
That said, the film has enough substance to make it worthwhile – if nothing else because it comes as close as any film since Wall-E to making us weep over the plight of a robot. The idea of treating robots as characters harkens back to C3PO and R2D2, Blade Runner’s replicants, and HAL 9000. But Chappie brings a heightened sense of gritty pain and emotion.
As the first conscious machine, the robot Chappie (voiced and acted in semi-mocap by Blomkamp favorite Sharlto Copley) has a child’s mind – pliable and impressionable. Due to rather unfortunate circumstances, he first comes to life among a den of gangsters who are bent on using him for heists, so we feel for him as we would any innocent person thrust into the same situation. When a group of juvenile delinquents drive Chappie off with rocks and clubs, for example, I felt like I was watching bullies terrorize a young child. When Vincent (Hugh Jackman), an artificial-intelligence skeptic, slices off Chappie’s arm, I winced just as I would if I were watching a human arm being sawn off.
The philosophical implications of a truly conscious, free-thinking machine are not lost on the film. Part of Chappie’s consciousness involves a sense of morality, which his designer, Deon (Dev Patel), instills in him in their first conversation. Chappie loves and obeys his maker – until he discovers that his battery is running low. Because he was assembled from the damaged chassis of a police droid, his battery cannot be replaced. It dawns on him that he is mortal. Like any living creature, he does not want to die. The next time he sees Deon he asks him the fundamental question: Why did you make me, knowing I would die?
Out of the mouths of robots. What theist has not asked similar questions of his creator?
This makes for stimulating food for thought, but the story suffers from problems with probability and necessity. Chappie was constructed from the spare parts of police robots employed by the city of Johannesburg. The weapons manufacturing company that manufactures, programs, and monitors the police robots has a single chip that allows access to its police droids. Given such high stakes, you’d think they would have an intense security apparatus surrounding it, and yet Deon uses his security clearance to borrow the chip, no questions asked. No one notices it’s gone until a day or two later.
(SPOILERS BELOW)
The film also suffers from the bizarre and far-fetched supposition that consciousness could flow both from man imparting consciousness to machine, and from machine imparting consciousness to man. The former is what happens in the creation of Chappie. Deon makes the machine in his own image, imbuing it with uniquely human attributes like love, creativity, vengeance, and fear. In a more unlikely feat later in the film, however, Chappie uses his supercomputer mind to research and solve the mystery of digitally transferring consciousness. At the end of the film, as Deon is dying from a gunshot wound, Chappie uploads Deon’s consciousness into a test droid. In an unsettling reversal, we find the machine making man in his own image. It only takes Deon a moment to realize what this means: “I can be immortal.”
We get it. It’s a brave new world as we approach artificial consciousness. Man’s search for immortality is as timeless as humanity itself. But rather than settling for a conclusive meditation on the subject, Chappie leaves us with an open can of worms. Who really likes the thought that their being can be reduced to ones and zeros – a series of fuzzy smudges on a screen? Or let us pose the question in more concrete terms. Who would want to trade in food and sex for a battery and assembly line?
Deon (Dev Patel) contemplates his robotic progeny.
