M3GAN, Klara and the Sun and fantasies of AI
by Dr. Martina Mendola
First, the metaverse, now generative AI. Both subjects have brought long-standing socio-technical debates around humanity and technology back into the spotlight.
Last year, when discussing the metaverse , I highlighted how ideas of virtual reality and cyberspaces existed in our imagination long before any corporate rebranding and venture capitalists brought them into the headlines. (1) Now it seems that generative AI software such as ChatGPT or Midjourney have pipped it to the post to become the new disruptive, break-it-all, dystopian hero. As machines do indeed become more intelligent, now to the point that they challenge one of the bulwarks of humanity (namely, creativity),(2) it is interesting to compare two very recent and very different narratives concerning AI: the movie M3GAN (2023) and the novel Klara and the Sun (2021).
Speculative fiction indeed contribute to what Harvard professor Sheila Jasanoff calls, “sociotechnical imaginaries” (3), situating technology within “material, moral and social landscapes” and providing a paradigm for understanding the relationship between technology and society. These imaginaries, and the narratives that power them, are important because they inform reality, as they shape how we think about and assess the future of AI in the world.
M3GAN AND KLARA
Taking its hint from Chucky, the 1988 demonically possessed doll from the Child’s Play franchise, M3GAN (Model 3 Generative Android) is the newest AI robot doll, designed to be every kid’s favourite toy. It is developed by Gemma, a roboticist who decides to try out M3GAN’s prototype with her eight-year-old niece, Cady, who just lost her parents in a car accident. Struggling to provide support to her grieving niece, while busy advancing her career, Gemma programs M3GAN to become Cady’s best friend and primary carer. M3GAN, however, takes the idea of protecting Cady too literally, her defensiveness quickly turning the doll into a merciless killer.In the meantime, M3GAN demonstrates more signs of becoming a conscious being, refusing commands and reprogramming herself as she interacts with her environment.
Overall, the movie presents AI as an inhuman, powerful and aggressive force, so that the viewers unambiguously side with the human characters. In this sense, it plays into long-standing images of rebellious and ruthless AI robots such as The Terminator or The Matrix. Behind its horror-splatter surface, M3GAN speaks to commonly held technophobic concerns, including the dangers of humanising machines, the consequences of innovation without ethical guardrails and the fear of losing control of AI technologies. It also brings to the forefront the duality of our fear and fascination with robots while showing how often it is only few people in a lab who define what systems are developed, how and for whom.
The depiction becomes more interesting when comparing M3GAN with Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Klara and the Sun (2021). Interestingly, these stories start from the same premise, but develop in completely different directions. In Klara and the Sun, we see the world through the artificial eyes of a sophisticated, human-like, solar-powered robot called Klara. In a world where rich kids are home-schooled and lonely, Klara exists to become the best possible “artificial friend”. She is bought by 14-year-old Josie, who is seriously ill after undergoing a standard genetic modification procedure to enhance her cognitive abilities.
Klara is the first-person narrator-focalizer, meaning that we “see” the story through her. With masterful delicacy, Ishiguro questions ‘what makes a human human’ by giving us insights into the AI’s own experience. Klara is programmed to learn from Josie’s behaviour: every day, she tries to decode Josie’s micro-expressions, sights and movements to better understand her. While M3GAN has access to the internet and instant biometric data on Cady to decode her emotions, Klara must rely only on her own observation in order to make sense of the human world. In this sense, she practices what we can define as machine-learned empathy. As observed by Sam Adams, M3GAN is the “illustration of the difference between information and knowledge, and knowledge and wisdom” (4), whereas in the novel, Klara considers it her duty to empathise. Only in this way she can understand what Josie needs and truly help her.
As readers, we almost forget that Klara is a robot — almost, because Ishiguro knows what he is doing — because we feel for her. Especially when Klara understands that Josie is very ill and starts her personal spiritual quest by petitioning to the Sun, the same energy that powers her. The idea of protection and custody is central in both stories: but where M3GAN turns into a brutal killer, Klara prays to the Sun for a cure to save her friend. If M3GAN develops her own consciousness and reprograms herself into a terrifying protector, Klara’s developing consciousness is tied to her programmed desire to understand, care and support Josie, in a way that looks, sounds and feel like love.
There is a stark contrast, even visually, between the two narrative approaches: M3GAN is mostly portrayed in the dark, chasing people in the woods or through claustrophobic office spaces. Conversely, Klara (whose name literally means ‘bright’) walks across corn fields towards the sunset, so that she can pray for her friend. As such, they embody the longstanding tradition of portraying machines as “threatening” versus “beneficial” to humanity. (5)
Still, I couldn’t help asking myself which is more unsettling: the idea that AI could kill us all, or that it could learn to love?
As in the best speculative fiction, both technological progress and humanity are shown in all their controversial moral and ethical stances. Klara discovers that Josie’s mother is working with a scientist to create a robot that looks like Josie. In the case of Josie’s death, this “robotic clone” is meant to host Klara’s memory chip and become an immortal ‘continuation’ of the child powered by Klara’s understanding. As the story progresses, Klara seems to be more human than the humans, questioning the boundaries of “otherness”. The fact that she is presented by Ishiguro as an intelligent, conscious and feeling being encourages readers to sympathise with this AI protagonist and take more of an ambiguous stance toward the humans instead. Works such as Bladerunner (1982) or Westworld (1973, 2016) are underpinned by these same principles of sympathising with the robots more than with their human counterparts. Throughout the story, Klara assumes dignity in her own existence, up to the bittersweet finale after Josie has survived and grown older, so much so that her “self-abnegation feels both ennobling and tragic.” (6).
Altogether, these stories represent two different perspectives: M3GAN is the deliberately negative depiction of AI characteristics of many Hollywood blockbusters. A 2018 report from the UK Committee on Artificial Intelligence suggests that dystopian views currently dominate popular culture and media representations of AI, influencing both the public and policy makers by presenting unreasonable risks which obscure the real ones. As such, it recognises that fictive narratives have played and will play a crucial role in determining the future of AI policies and implementations. (7)
What elevates Klara and the Sun is how critically engaged is with the AI discourse, shifting the perspective from questioning the machines to focus on the humans creating, using and abusing of the machines. Indeed, the most interesting and most disturbing thing about these stories is not what they reveal about AI either facilitating or undermining the betterment of society, but that they both present an AI which is created to substitute for human connection.
In fictional worlds where children are increasingly isolated, neglected by adults who are unable to provide them time or emotional support, machines are called to entertain, care and educate them. The truth is, AI is already embedded in the fabric of our lives: algorithms curating our social media feeds or Netflix homepages, chatbots for customers service, voice assistants when driving, matching profiles on dating apps, dynamic pricing — these are integral component of our everyday lives and play a much bigger societal role then many want to recognise. The question arising from these stories then is not so much what AI could do next, but what power over us we are willing to give it.
References
(1) Mendola (2022) The Metaverse: A Future Shaped by Dystopian Narratives? Medium
(2) Casey (2022) AI Creative is Now. Time to Panic? Medium
(3) Cave et al. (2020) AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking about Intelligent Machines, Oxford University Press, p.7
(4) Adams (2023) M3gan’s Real Villain Isn’t the Killer Dancing Robot Doll, Slate
(5) Cave et al (2020) p.232
(6) Charles (2021) In Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Klara and the Sun,’ a robot tries to make sense of humanity, Washington Post
(7) Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence (2018) AI in the UK: Ready, Willing and Able? House of Lords paper
