MovieChat Forums > In-lyu-myeol-mang-bo-go-seo (2012) Discussion > Robots and Religion.

Robots and Religion.

posted 11 years ago by doomsday_freak
4 replies | jump to latest

Hello Folks:

I saw this movie recently, and I was compelled to comment/ask about it. Overall, I thought that it was OK, given the fact that I am an American who has seen many other foreign (Asian) flicks on DVD from Blockbuster Video Rentals. I thought the three stories themselves and the previews for the other movies were OK, even though the DVD messed up on "Happy Birthday", the third/last story. Anyway, I have some questions about this movie.

"The Heavenly Creature" : We all know that much of our World is headed to becoming a (fully-)mechanized society, given the fact that computers and robots are being used in so many facets of life, not just in scientific research and industrial manufacturing. Do any of you seriously think that machines will also be able to grasp any concepts of spiritually/religion somewhere down the road, well...defintely not this current decade, but perhaps by the year 2100 or 2200, or probably even later? Besides this movie and anything dealing with the TRANSFORMERS franchise, are there any other media out there that make connections/bridge gaps between computers/robots and religion? (In TRANSFORMERS, there are ecclesiastical/powerfully paranormal forces such as Unicron, Primus and the Autobot Matrix of Leadership. Look them up on Wikipedia!) Personally, I don't think it's necessary for any machines to be spiritual, given the fact that machines are created without souls anyway. Besides, even if they did have souls, they would then rebel against their Masters - we Humans. What do the rest of you think about this? ( In the meantime, check this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics )

"A Brave New World" : What is behind this rampant fascination with zombies? From what I know about zombies - and mutants - they don't do anything but gobble up the brains and other flesh of living organisms, such as us living Humans. Do any of you seriously think that zombies can fall in love together?

Please feel free to respond to me as soon as you can. Thanks!

Net Jock

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TechMechObject

[–] 11 years ago

[deleted]

[–] elastomaster 11 years ago

I think the biggest problem is giving computers a sense of understanding.

For example, if you make a Google image search of the word "Apple", the computer will search for "Apple" tags (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_(metadata)) instead of understanding what an apple is and finding actual pictures of apples by understanding what's on the image.

This notion is part of ontology learning (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_learning). Once computers can do that, maybe they can learn more abstract ideas such a spirituality.

It must be possible though, if our brains can do it, we can surely make computers do it. When we get a good enough understanding of our brains that is.

If the matter interests you, read some Azimov.

[–] SteveH2002 10 years ago

I thought 'The Heavenly Creature' was the most interesting story of the three. Reminded me a bit of the Robin Williams' film 'Bicentennial Man.' They both deal with the consequence of creating a robot with self-awareness. In 'Bicentennial Man' the robot yearned to become fully human, ultimately to the extent of choosing mortality over immortality. 'The Heavenly Creature' was a little more difficult to understand, only because its speculation was based on Buddhism, although I did understand that its fellow monks regarded it as a fully enlightened being, a Buddha, which confirmed its complete humanity.

In both films, and I guess there are others that deal with the same subject, I saw this as less a religious statement (do robots have souls?) but rather that they had an encompassing self-awareness. It is that self-awareness that allowed the RU robot to ask 'Who am I?' and 'Where did I come from?'

[–] edgecrusher02 8 years ago

I think that if we ever create artificially intelligent machines they will be too logical to be religious. Most humans just assume that souls are a thing yet they are completely unverifiable and rely solely on the individuals faith in such a thing. I don't think a robot would do that. In fact, I think that robots may even see that level of faith to be dangerous. If they did not however, I imagine they would be quite zealous about it. I can only imagine what an early AI would think when introduced to the concept of god and similar concepts on the nature of existence. An artificially intelligent machine would know its creators, whereas humans do not.

"Once you assume a creator and a plan, it makes us objects in an experiment." - Christopher Hitchens