In 1982 one of the most iconic science fiction films was released, Blade Runner, directed by Ridley Scott. Specifically, Blade Runner belongs to the subgenre of cyberpunk, an aesthetic and artistic style that refers to cybernetic technology; and punk, as a symbol of a society without law, dark and dominated by technology.
Blade Runner’s dystopian future is no longer a future as such. At this precise moment is the present, since the events that take place in this film are set in November 2019.
The film Blade Runner is based on the 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. But the final title comes from the novel The Bladerunner by Alan E. Nourse and the novel Blade Runner (a movie) .
In the year 2019 envisioned by Ridley Scott, the Earth appears to us as a hostile and highly polluted place. There are the so-called colonies of the outside world, places to which only the most privileged can emigrate; But most importantly: the development of artificial intelligence has resulted in replicants, human-like machines designed to perform the hardest jobs, or to serve humans.
After a violent altercation in one of the colonies in the outside world, the androids called replicants are considered illegal. The problem is that they are infiltrated in society, but an emotional test can be identified. Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a kind of cop, Blade Runner, whose mission is to identify and eliminate them. It must be said that androids, with the express goal of not evolving, have a limited life expectancy of only 4 years.
As well; some replicants, to the bewilderment of their creators, develop complex human emotions, such as empathy, lust or ambition. Herein lies the main thesis of the film: the debate around the nature of androids with emotions and free will.
This thesis has been repeated frequently in science fiction literature and cinema, even in the video game industry. One of the most visionary authors in this regard was Isaac Asimov, the greatest exponent of the popularization of science fiction, who wrote such famous works as Yo Robot or the Saga Fundación.
A more recent example is the video game Detroit Become Human, in which the player takes command of 3 androids that break the barrier that enslaves them to go from being a mere machine to experiencing emotions typical of the so-called divergent ones; And again, with the ability to bypass your programming to make decisions, free will.
In all these stories a classic dilemma arises: what do we consider human? Are biological animals of the species Homo sapiens sapiens? Or would those machines capable of emulating processes of the human brain also be? Is an artificial brain less ‘human’?
Even the Matrix trilogy, also cataloged in the cyberpunk genre, raises a similar debate in a dystopian future in which the human being is enslaved by machines; this time, around the concept of what reality is. Is a programmed digital experience less real?
Although today there are androids capable of performing cognitive functions such as perceiving and reacting to the environment, reasoning, learning and solving problems; even create works of art.
However emotions are a biological tendency to react to certain stimuli. They are a neurophysiological response in which hormones and neurotransmitters are involved. That is, they are much more sophisticated of what can be a cognitive process like the ones we have described above.
Let’s take an example. Imagine that you have a phobia of spiders. I can reason with you as to why you shouldn’t fear them (a cognitive process), but that probably won’t stop you from being afraid of them (an emotion).
Emotions remain one of the greatest mysteries of the human brain
Computers are not yet advanced enough to develop androids capable of emulating complex emotions. Another key characteristic difficult to emulate in a machine is judgments, or human morality (the concept of good and evil), unless these concepts have been expressly programmed into the machine to interpret certain situations.
But that doesn’t mean they can’t emotionally manipulate us. In 2017, a study was published in the journal PLOS ONE known as “Computers that pray not to die.” In it, each volunteer had to execute the order to disconnect a robot, while they begged not to kill them not only with voice signals, but also through gestures and body movements. Creepy, right?
Of the 89 volunteers, more than half found it difficult to turn off the robot and took longer than normal to do so, and 13 of them paid attention to their demands and did not disconnect it. What would you have done?
Returning to Blade Runner: as we can see, his predictions were not right around the complexity of artificial intelligence for the year 2019, but its development is so rapid that in not too many decades, human beings will have to face this philosophical debate with forcefulness.
The world of Blade Runner in 2019 stands out because humans are progressively leaving Earth to go to the so-called colonies of the outside world. A prediction that seems highly probable, according to scientists such as the late Stephen Hawking, who recommended looking for a plan B the moment Earth ceases to be a habitable place for life as we know it. And that, sooner or later, will happen.
In any case, for the year 2024 the Artemis mission is scheduled, which will place new men and the first women on the Moon and will establish a new space station, the Gateway, as a refueling zone, perhaps, between the Moon and Mars. This mission raises the possibility that the Moon will become a tourist area in which to spend a few days on vacation. There are already companies planning commercial flights or even land sales on our natural satellite.
And as for the flying cars … Drones are the closest thing to the vehicles piloted through the air that we see in Blade Runner. Taxi drones have been flying since 2017 in cities like Dubai. In addition, drones without a passenger are contemplated for many uses within the transport sector: from ambulance gifts to firefighting gifts.
Regardless of its approach or not to our present on a superficial level, Blade Runner is a masterpiece, famous for the topicality of the thesis it raises, and that we are forced to continue questioning as artificial intelligence develops.
Here is my prediction for the future. Human beings have two options: we learn to live with technology and use it to move to another corner of the cosmos, or one day the Earth will cease to be habitable and life as we know it will disappear. Like tears in the rain.
