Video Game Imagines Humans Relying On Robots
In the 1950s, Isaac Asimov imagined a future in which sentient robots are built to serve and protect humans, but end up doing the opposite.
Almost seven decades later, artificial intelligence and robotics technologies have brought that scenario closer to the realms of possibility.
Detroit: Become Human, a narrative adventure from experimental studio Quantic Dreams is the latest work to imagine the consequences of relying on such super smart machines.
Set several years in the future, the game takes place in a world where androids have taken over most menial tasks and humans are figuring out what to do with all their leisure time.
The major manufacturer of Replicants, CyberLife, says its machines are safe and under control, and everyone is happy to trust them. But when a small group start to show human-like awareness, fear and resentment grow. Detroit: Become Human gives players control over several of these awakened droids as they form a kind of underground movement and start demanding some rights.
The idea for the game span out from a tech demo named Kara, produced by Quantic Dream in 2012. It showed a robot on a production line who gains sentience as she’s put together. The company’s creative director, David Cage, saw promise in the concept and inspired by the theories of futurist author and scientist Ray Kurzweil, started working on a full game around the idea of droids developing emotions.
In 2016, the company produced a trailer showing an AI cop named Connor attempting to pacify another android who has taken a young girl hostage. The trailer shows several outcomes, depending on player actions, but all emphasise the themes of sentience and emotion, and the potentially deadly friction between humans and robots.
For E3 2017, Quantic Dream revealed a new sequence from the game in which another android character named Marcus has joined a group of rogue robots who have formed a refuge known as Jericho.
They want humans to acknowledge them as equals, to stop exploiting androids as cheap labour, but they’re not sure how to get their message across. Marcus turns out to be a valuable ally: he has the ability to “convert” other androids, cutting them lose from CyberLife control and turning them into thinking beings, just by touching them – one of many subtle religious allusions that seem to litter the game.
The irony of human players taking control of android characters who are rebelling against human masters with ideas about control, subservience, reality and humanity, makes it worth waiting for.
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