I Artificial Intelligence By Steven Spielberg: Movie Analysis

A.I Artificial Intelligence, a film by Steven Spielberg, tells the Pinocchio-esque story of David, a robotic boy who goes on a journey, in search of a Blue Fairy, so that he can become a real boy and earn the love of Monica, his human mother. Dealing with the idea of artificial intelligence and the question of whether or not a machine can have a mind, this film touches on the philosophy of John. R Searle - whose main thought experiment, The Chinese Room, argues that no matter how a computer acts, there is no way that the computer could have the mind or consciousness to understand what it outputs; a computer is nothing more than a machine that is able to act out its programming. Although this movie was thoroughly entertaining and is absolutely …show more content…
As much as we, as human beings, may want to believe in the possibility of robots expressing emotion, in the same way that David expressed emotion to his “mother” in the film, based off of Searle’s philosophies, it does not seem possible. What is plausible instead, is that the emotions that are acted out by machines and robots, are simply products of a “chinese room”; the emotions we think we see, are in reality inauthentic bits and pieces of programming. What we see may seem real, but contrary to what the narrative this film has created, it is not actually real. Even the strongest of A.I is just programming. The Chinese room argument, created by John R. Searle presents a hypothetical scenario of a person, who is not a Chinese speaker, locked in a room with two batches of Chinese writing - one entitled “script” and the other “story”- and a book of instructions in English. …show more content…
Artificial Intelligence was a great film, from a movie-goer perspective, and I more than likely will see it again. However, philosophically, the film was flawed. As great as it was to see this beautiful, emotional journey that David went through, it was also clear that a conscious decision was made to disregard the actual capabilities of artificial intelligence, as per the Chinese Room argument. David simply would not have been able to do what he did, had they kept in mind the pretty solid argument that computers are only able to do what their programming allows them to do. A computer cannot feel because feeling is a human capability. Artificial intelligence cannot do with intention because artificial intelligence cannot have intention. Intentionalism is a biological feature of living things with authentic brains. The only way a machine could have intention is if it had the brain of a human, and since David’s brian was nowhere near that, his emotional journey towards love could not have