Steven Spielberg's A.I.

After watching Steven Spielberg's A.I. film I think it is apparent that David isn't a real boy. Although David is able to control his emotions and react to other people and events, he doesn't truly understand the reasons behind his actions because he lacks consciousness. His behavior tricks the audience to think he is conscious, yet there are certain examples that prove David lacks understanding of his actions. For example, at the dinner table David copies his family's habits by pretending to eat and drink although he has no drink or no food on his plate. His program is simply using inputs to create outputs, in other words he is merely imitating others' actions, but not understanding the purpose of his actions. This argument supports Searle's rejection of strong A.I.- that syntax doesn't create semantics. In order to create semantics the program has to be created on the right matter that will produce consciousness.

This movie really made me question what the difference is between Teddy and David. Both are artificially created machines that act like humans, but neither are conscious. By the end of the movie I believed that the only true difference between these two robots is the difference in species and appearance. David was the first of his kind, a son specifically designed and programmed to show his love. Since David looked so similar to a real boy he was treated differently because everyone has affection towards children. For example at the "Flesh Fair" the audience completely disagreed with the staff when they tried to hurt the mecha, David, who resembled a real boy. This reminded me of Singer's argument regarding how all species' desires and interests should be considered equally as long as each species has the capacity to suffer. Yet we have a profound emotional connection with children, since they are one of our own species, we believe medically testing disabled children is more morally wrong than testing animals of different species. This is the same reasoning behind the idea that the audience of "Flesh Fair" protected David because they believed it was more morally wrong to taunt David then taunt the other mechas since he appeared to be a real boy.