I Am Mother: AI Dystopian Meets Immanuel Kant
Before diving straight in I should lay out a few crucial warnings to this post. 1. It may have some spoilers, but I’ll do my best to contain myself. 2. I am going to be tempted to fan girl over this work because I found it to be absolutely brilliant, but I’ll attempt to be as objective as possible, and lastly 3. If any story where kids get hurt / killed as a part of the story is a non-starter, this movie is not for you. With all that said, let’s dive in.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) destroying humanity for its imperfections is not a new concept. From the Matrix to many other stories like it, there is this fear of computer’s and robots outsmarting us and taking over the world to make it calculably perfect, which in many sci-fi writers depiction is without humanity in it. In many ways, this movie can seem like the same thing, but it’s a more elaborate puzzle than that.
Our natural reaction when the computers turn bad and kill humanity is to immediately impose a sinister, cold, and decisive motive to them, and often that shows in the writing as the robot act quickly to destroy anything that hinders their supposed “cleansing” of humanity. In this film however, there’s a clear focus and precision, even a restraint as multiple threats to this reborn world being cultivated by AI is threatened. We expect a reaction, that’s how human we are and we project that onto the robots we watch, write about and even create.
The first stroke of brilliance here is that even the reactions to a clear and present threat to their system the AI have created is calculated. A robot may act quickly, but never with more or less force than is necessary to achieve the task at hand. Time and time again we see this temperance in “Mother” and it’s this balance that even to the very end as she explains her reasoning makes her almost relatable because ultimately, her logic is sound.
The other surprising element of this story, and sorry, but this is a significant spoiler, is that ultimately the Androids are not “malfunctioning” or “misinterpreting” what they were designed to do, which is SUPER RARE in this type of AI science fiction. Mother was designed to raise humanity if it were to ever go extinct. She may have taken the liberty of having a hand in that mass extinction, but ultimately, her programming was to raise ethical, intelligent children who would be able to save humanity and create a better world, a utopia so to speak.
This design was carried out to the tee, especially since she handed down the proverbial baton down to the child she raised to be the perfect person. This battle of ethics and AI is genius in that is shines a spotlight on a truth to easily ignored by philosophers, and that is that ethics and philosophy themselves are not emotional, but calculable measurements of ultimate good and ultimate evil. That mixture of wrong and right being so closely tied to equations we can only manage on a very human level. In “I Am Mother” it explode as the writer and director of this film bring us a new perspective and ask,
If a computer were to run the numbers of what would help humanity reach ultimate good the fastest, what would they calculate?
That’s what this movie really poses. And if the calculation is correct, but many MANY people have to die to get there, is it wrong or is it right? That’s where existing philosophy comes in, like Kant. We’ve asked ourselves these questions before. Do you save the one person, or many. If you knew the one person, does that change your decision? They are tough questions, but in a world moving faster and faster into unimaginable data and technology what do these human calculations mean to the systems we create?
Like I said, I wanted to try and be objective, but I think I’ve mostly failed in that effort. This film will leave you with so many questions, but I think unlike its many brothers and sisters in the sub genre, this story will leave you either afraid of the potential of AI, or may even leave you afraid of who we are as humans if we continue unchecked. Do we ultimately deserve to live if healthier happier lives can flourish in our absence? Who knows, the truth is on a person to person scale we don’t really have control one way or another. However, we can be the best versions of ourselves today and if you can take that from a film, that’s powerful story telling!
