A major theme in Cyberpunk is artificial intelligence, or the sentience of a human-created machine. It’s not enough to create a robot and have it move due to code and lines of command, but instead to act on its own free will to solve problems or create its own decisions: that is artificial intelligence.
We see this theme pop up occasionally in many different films: Metropolis, Blade Runner, and RoboCop, to name a few. Metropolis and RoboCop‘s depiction of artificial intelligence is similar: the main robots of each respective film are modeled after a specific character. In Metropolis’ case, it’s Maria; in RoboCop, it’s Alex. However, both of the robotic versions of these characters don’t act like the people they’re based off of; instead, the robot Maria is a villainous character determined to get the underground city to revolt and destroy everything, while RoboCop himself only serves to enact the law before realizing who he is and going on a journey to find out more about himself (and later go against his own creators).
Blade Runner takes a bit of a different approach to artificial intelligence from the other two films, however. In Blade Runner, replicants aren’t robots. While they aren’t robots, they are still bioengineered creations, and they have their own free wills and thoughts. The plot of the film has these replicants being the antagonists – while they’re known for their destructive behavior and general threat to society, they only have a lifespan of four years; the film begins with them realizing the ends of their lives are approaching, and later goes into what they’re doing in order to prevent that from happening.
In the Introduction segment of War in the Age of Intelligent Machines, written by Manuel de Landa, the author writes about how in modern times, technology has evolved to the point where we can start thinking seriously about creating things such as pilotless aircraft and unmanned tanks — the purpose, of course, being to seek out enemies and destroy them. While not the humanized androids portrayed in science fiction, the purpose is generally overall the same (obey the commands of the creator, take out the competition/anyone that opposes said creator), though the actual execution is clunky and certainly not yet perfected. Manuel de Landa writes that the ones that exist or have existed currently, such as the PROWLER, has only been deployed for very simple tasks like patrolling a military base via a predefined path. Machines of this caliber cannot possibly be able to tell the difference between an enemy or an ally, and thus cannot be relied on in an actual war/combat scenario.
It’s because of the currently-imperfect nature of this machine that all it can do is simple tasks, but the fact that it exists and had a more dangerous motive in mind during its conception implies that as technology continues to advance, so will development on killer-machines. In Blade Runner, replicants were only banned from Earth after an off-planet mutiny occurred that was led by them – they no longer wished to be controlled by their masters. Once that mutiny occurred, the replicants were discarded and thrown away, thus they wished to seek revenge.
In RoboCop, while the titular character isn’t a war machine designed to kill as many people as possible (although he is capable of it), the film climaxes with RoboCop realizing his true identity and past self, and ends up revolting against his owners, much like the replicants in Blade Runner. While the real-life machine PROWLER is not capable of complex thought, real-life machines in the future may. Sentient robots going rogue and turning on its creators is a concept explored over and over again in science fiction, but if it were to happen in real life, maybe a designated kill switch should be factored into the design.
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Landa, Manuel De. War in the Age of Intelligent Machines. Swerve Editions, 2003.
Lang, Fritz, director. Metropolis. Ufa, 1926.
Scott, Ridley, director. Blade Runner. 1982.
Verhoeven, Paul, director. Robocop. Orion, 1987.
Rachel's Cyberpunk Thoughts 