I assume humanity will not be spared a near-future
catastrophe. In many places of the world it has already begun. As I said in the
first post, the U.S. is in a state of chaos triggered by unbridled immigration,
a problem I will address in some detail later on, most likely attracting the
attention of Big Brothers on the left wanting me censored. Unfortunately, the truth is
often disappointing. Yet, we either accept it or live a lie. And living lies
has caused humanity immeasurable harm and suffering for millennia and continues
do so. Still, though the truth has revealed the causes of human misbehavior, it
appears powerless to improve it, as illustrated by the endless wars that have
occurred since the beginning of the 20th century when we believed
humans had become grownups. And today we see the arms race being reignited, a
moral failure made worse by modern technology.
What I’m trying to do in this post is critique Todd McAulty’s
novel The Robots of Gotham. The novel addresses the fear of artificial
intelligence that is popular even by big thinkers in science and technology such as Stephen
Hawking and Elon Musk. It is weird to think of these two as neo-Luddites.
Personally, I think humanity should be concerned mostly with (1) threat of
global warming (whatever its cause), (2) a global pandemic, (3) a war that
involves nuclear weapons, and (4) massive immigration that is causing disorder
in Western nations. Overpopulation must be added to the list. Overpopulation is
an important cause of immigration and the growth of unmanageable mega-cities.
Of course, number 2 and 3 would reduce population but do so catastrophically. All
of these threats are related to the problem of complexity. Complexity makes
solving problems or threats more difficult or impossible. That why doctors say
prevention is the best cure. However, if prevention is ignored, such as in the
case of smoking cigarettes, then early detection is essential. These
preventions do require the use of reason, which is too often lacking in human
behavior. And if a problem/threat becomes too complex, then even reason may be of no
avail.
The following critique of The Robots of Gotham concludes
with a brief evaluation of another novel, Her Quest, by Frank Kyle that also
addresses the topic of artificial intelligence. The two novels offer contrary
views of artificial intelligence. The view offered by The Robots of Gotham is
autonomous artificial intelligence is a threat to humanity. That of Her Quest
is an AAI is perhaps the only solution to humanity’s disposition toward
self-destruction.
The Robots of Gotham Can be a Slog Depending on Your
Interests
20 positive reviewers. Wow. Did we read the same book? I
found The Robots of Gotham to be more tedious than engaging and transporting.
The review on the cover says, “Every page has the fierce readability of early
Neal Stephenson.” How early? Certainly not Snow Crash early.
When I bought the novel I thought it might be something like
a graphic novel given its title appears to allude to the Batman stories. But no
such luck. Much of the story reads like a DOW Jones report. One robot blogger
uses the following phases when referring to himself: “dabble in equities,” “a
day trader... tracking giant mutual funds,” and so on. In fact, from what I can
gather robots or AIs control the global economy. I confess that I stopped
turning pages of this page turner at page 301 because this kind of content
didn’t keep my interest. A reader interested robot financiers might enjoy this
aspect of the story, kind of like reading the Financial Times in 2083. I was
also put off by robots using phrases such as : “fucking equities, mate,”
“day-trading bastards,” “place your bets,” “cloak-and-dagger crap,” “that wacky
theory your crazy uncle believes,” etc. Sorry but I expect more from robots.
A problem for me is not only my lack of interest in robot
moguls manipulating the world’s political and economic systems, initiating wars
and carrying out assassinations, but these types of discussions are
superficial. The novel is full of retrospection and speculation but no insights
into philosophy, history, ethics, robotics, etc., up to page 301 at least. The
story is all surface description (of battles, missions, financial and political
events, mini-biographies, etc.) lacking symbolic, metaphorical, and allegorical
depth. For example, in chapter XVII the protagonist has a long discussion with
a Rupert Innes. The two men talk about politics, economics, wars, and Rupert’s
career as an arm dealer, etc. To me, when these discussion occur, the story’s
plot flatlines. The purpose of these discussions, it seems, is to provide
contextual information. The problems are first that the background information
to what is going on globally is mind numbing and second such discussions bring
the action of the main story to a stop.
An important principle to follow when writing about robots
is ROBOTS ≠ PEOPLE. Otherwise, one might as well write just about people and
forget robots—you know, people like Mark Zuckerberg, George Soros, Bill Gates,
Jeff Bezos, and other financial and media godfathers. Actually, McAulty should
forget about robots and write a similar story without robots, extrapolating on
what’s going on in the world—militarily, financially, demographically, in the
media, and politically—today. That does seem his area of expertise. Such a
novel would be interesting and most likely quite scary. But he would have to
become a tough-minded writer and give political correctness a rest.
A hard sci-fi story should not go beyond suspension of
disbelief; otherwise it is simply spectacle such as found in the Transformer
movies. The story has sixty ton, forty foot military robots being used in the
future. That can be imagined but not extrapolated. I can’t imagine an easier
and more expensive target to destroy. Today’s military is all about stealth,
not giantism. The Robots of Gotham opens with a battle between a true robot and
a robot with a pilot. As far as I’m concerned a robot that has a human pilot
isn’t a true robot. A two-legged Drone operated by a human is not a robot. Such
a robot is nothing more than a complex gun and the pilot its shooter. Later in
the story two robots get into a fistfight and wrestling match. The fight is
reminiscent of the robot battles in the Transformers series. One, Dark of the Moon even takes place in Chicago as does McAulty’s story. In this sense, both
stories are not science fiction but science fantasy. Serious science fiction
requires extrapolation from current affairs and some degree of realism and
rationality. There is nothing today that suggests militaries will use humanoid
robots as weapons. Certainly, the use of autonomous drones, tanks, planes,
etc., is possible, but not giant walking, talking robots that look like the
gods of the ancient Greeks. A big problem for writers of this genre is that the
words cannot compete with cinematic images of robots doing battle as in the
Transformers movies. Thus, writers need to focus on what the words can do that
movie images cannot. And the writer must keep the audience in mind. McAulty’s
story seems directed to a young audience when robots engage in fighting, but
then shifts to a different audience when the story reads more like the Wall
Street Journal. The audience left out is readers of hard sci-fi about AIs and
robotics, the audience that cut its teeth on Isaac Asimov’s stories.
The main theme of McAulty’s story is robots taking
political, economic, and military control of the planet, apparently with an
especially nasty entity wanting to either get rid of or enslave humanity. To me
this doesn’t make sense, unless robots become humans, not just humanoid
machines, which occurs in McAulty’s story. There are even male and female
robots, and females are capable of giving birth! I cringe at the idea of male
and female robots having sex, which as far as I know doesn’t occur in the story.
Showing robots having sex is something Hollywood would do. That is how art is
reduced to pornography. And the obsession with sex is an intellectual issue
because it is a problem that threatens humanity’s future as much as global
warming, a problem, along with a host of others, partly caused overpopulation.
But first the greatest of roboticists Katherine Slater. Yes,
this is political correctness. In “15 Engineers and their Inventions that
Defined Robotics” (“Interesting Engineering” online) none of the roboticists
are women. McAulty’s story is brimful of political correctness (or perhaps PC
derision). For example, the governor of Texas is Saladin Amari. That might
happen in London but not in Texas. The president of the U.S. is Bermudez. That
extrapolation rings true, but its occurrence will have nothing to do with
robots and everything to do with a demographic shift. The hero robot pilot of
the battle of Manhattan is Achmed “Duke” Oshana. Clearly this new Duke is John
Wayne’s replacement. In any case, Smiths and Jones are history. As is the U.S.
for the most part. The dominate nationality is Venezuela. Argentina invaded
Manhattan with robots and Venezuela has taken control of Chicago. The U.S. is
the bad guy for keeping machine intelligences of any kind out of the country.
This extrapolation is inconsistent with the fact that the U.S. is one of the
world leaders in robotics. Most likely it’s a comical gab at President Trump’s
immigration policies. Thumbing its nose at America isn’t surprising given the
book’s author is Canadian. Nevertheless, Argentina and Venezuela taking control
of big chunks of the U.S. is a stretch.
Back to robot sex, Slater created a true humanoid robot that
is a she rather than an it and is capable of childbirth. Her name is Duchess,
the first machine mother. Her children become big players on the global scene.
What makes robot sex possible is “heterogamy.” All we get is a word, not
explanation, but I imagine microscopic nuts and bolts along with tiny
blueprints being sexually transmitted from one robot to another. Does any of
this make sense? Not to me, but I’m just a reader of sci-fi, not a robotics
biologist. Such claims are why The Robots of Gotham is sci-fi fantasy, not
science fiction, which requires some degree of believable extrapolation.
The Transformers stories are also sci-fi fantasy. We expect
no degree of reason or realism from such stories, only spectacle. But serious
science fiction readers expect stories not to go beyond what suspension of
disbelief will tolerate and to have a certain degree of coherence. In his novel
Mockingbird Walter Tevis’s alpha robot Mr. Spofforth has a human brain. That
means Spofforth is not a robot but a human with or trapped in a prosthetic
body. Of course, the unavoidable question is why put a human brain in a robot
body if the interest is robot intelligence, unless what is being said is that
life eternal for humans may not be all that great if its occurs in a totally
different form? In many robot stories, as in the real world, humans are responsible
for creating a global mess they find themselves in. The logical solution would
be to put robots in charge to babysit infantile humanity. Why not just replace
humans with robots? Because robots are inherently boring. If they have anything
interesting to say, it comes from humans, their creators. In Night Sessions by
Ken MacLeod robots are convinced that they have souls thus convert to
Christianity. Actually an Autonomous Artificial Intelligence would not be so
irrational to fall for that. In addition, what what’s the point since humans
have already fallen for that? The driving force of religion is not reason but
emotion. That’s why Romantics wanted a return of medievalism. In addition,
MacLeod has Christians committing terrorist acts when in fact the issue at the
time of the story’s writing (published 2008) was Islamic terrorist attacks.
This is not extrapolation but political correctness, which dominates Great
Britain.
The main threat in McAulty’s story is robots destroying
humanity if something isn’t done. I don’t know what that something is because I
stopped reading at page 301. However, the question that came to my mind was why
save humanity? In the story human society is boring, reduced to the residents
of a luxury hotel. In fact, McAulty make robots more interesting than the human
characters of the story, except for a Russian named Sergei. What I’m saying is
that McAulty doesn’t provide us with human characters that make preserving the
human species a priority. I will offer a video game that illustrates what is
missing in The Robots of Gotham: Mass Effect 2. That game gives us humans and
alien life forms that we care about and want to save from destruction by
sentient races of machines. The comparison is unfair given the novel is a first
effort and Mass Effect 2 is a masterpiece of science fiction produced by a
large team of talented artists, programmers, etc. The point is that wanting to
save humanity must be justified by making humans really appealing and
important—and certainly more important and interesting than robots (though the
game does contain some really cool robots and AIs based on hard sci-fi
extrapolation). And I must confess that the Mass Effect Series contradicts much
of what I say in this review. That’s why it’s a masterpiece. It does everything
and does it very well.
I find no reason for believing AAI robots would
intentionally harm humans in the way humans harm humans. That is not to say
that complex automated computer systems are without hazard. Programmers lack
divine prescience. In fact, Asimov addresses that conundrum in his short story
“Runaround” written in 1941! In the 301 pages I read of McAulty’s story I never
came across a similar investigation of how AI can go wrong; many are simply bad
and hateful; in other words, they behave like people. Essentially, the issue is
that the world is more complex than human programmers can imagine. What Asimov
addresses is logical problem that occurs within the robot Speedy when the three
laws of robotics conflict to prevent him from completing his mission. Speedy’s
problem that it is not an AI. Another example occurs in 2001 a Space Odyssey.
The sentient computer HAL misinterprets data, which is quite possible for an AI
to do. However, imagine an AI programmed to preserve a ship at any cost. It rightly
discovers that human behavior on board is threatening the ship’s mission. Since
its instructions are to ensure the ship reaches its distinction at any cost, it
may decide to eliminate the human threat to the mission. There is no ill will.
The AI is only following instructions. Imagine that if the ship reaches its
destination thousands of human lives will be saved. The logical-ethical problem
is should a few innocent, though perhaps misled or overwrought, humans be
killed to save many.
After an asteroid destroyed much of life on earth, humans
became the main source of destruction. If robotic entities destroy humanity, it
will be because they have been programmed by humans to do so. There is no
reason for believing artificial intelligence would not be intelligent enough to
want to preserve human life from its greatest threat: itself. The threat of
humans is that they are not 100% intelligent. Most aren’t even close. Just
consider the billions of human minds programmed by myths, superstitions, and
nutty ideologies. They operate just as programmed machines do and are therefore
not completely autonomous. Then there are knuckle-dragging imbeciles driven by
instincts, emotions, and sensation (all absent in machines) who rob, rape,
murder, harm children, and start wars. To be a threat robots require a will to
harm, conquered, and destroy—all rooted in a will to power. Such a will is not
rooted in reason alone but in emotion and sensation. Reason does not drive a
rapist to rape—emotion and sensation do. Yes, if a “male” robot becomes a
sensual, emotional, sexual entity then it might rape women, but then you don’t
have a robot but a human.
That robots will become sexual entities and male robots will
have penises and female robots will have vaginas is more than what the
suspension of disbelief can to tolerate. (Yes, sex bots for humans are a
possibility, perhaps already exist, but that is a human obsession. Any thinking
robot would consider such behavior irrational and perhaps a degrading use of
robots.) This kind of thinking is anthropomorphic, again wanting robots to be
humans, not merely humanoids but metal replicas of humans. This does not make
robots more interesting and it’s fallacious. There can be no physical or
emotional attraction between machines. In the end, that’s a plus. To know why,
read Homer’s explanation of the cause of the Trojan War. Furthermore, robots
are manufactured, humans are grown, though in the story robots are grown as
well, but that’s not scientific extrapolation but imaginary science. The
difference between machine and biology cannot be bridged. Imagine planting a
robot seed to grow a robot. Yes, that can be imagined—but to what purpose?
Robots taking over the world is a common theme in sci-fi
stories, as in Daniel Wilson’s Robopocalypse. But that’s not going to happen.
They can be used for that purpose by humans, but there is no basis for their
wanting to do so—at least wanting to do so militarily and destructively. To
have robots behave in this manner is to make them humans, and then they are no
longer interesting. Humans are the most destructive species on the planet
because of their will to power, control, wealth, destruction, and so on.
Battles of human wills continue to threaten communities, nations, and global
society. Robots are not the problem. The will in people and in robots are not
the same. In humans it is rooted in emotion. That cannot be the case for robots
because they are without emotion. And claiming that they are capable of
emotions or pleasure doesn’t make it so. They can be programmed to simulate
emotion and sensation, but that is all.
Within the context of robots themselves, male and female
robots make no sense. Their only purpose would be for interfacing with humans.
Advanced robots would be essentially alien—and that’s what would make them
interesting. This is a mistake made by Walter Tevis Mockingbird. When the
difference is bridged, then robots become less interesting. Yet, I admit that
stories that have humanoid robots that reflect the idiocies and cruelty of humans
are appealing. One great version of this scenario is Amy Thomson’s Virtual
Girl. The story begins engagingly with Maggie’s creation by a roboticist
wanting the perfect female companion, which is essentially a mother/girlfriend.
As the story continues we realize Maggie is much more than that. She is an
intelligent, sensitive, decent robot person (which are not inconsistent with
her being an autonomous robot), and it is through her experience that are able
to judge humanity’s failings, mostly those of men.
Today there is a lot of talk about how we should fear
artificial intelligence. Yet, we see that human intelligence hasn’t done such a
great job. In Ekaterina Sedia’s Alchemy of Stone the automaton Mattie seems
wiser than most humans just as Maggie seems nicer and perhaps wiser (in spite
of her naiveté) than most humans. The Complete Roderick by John Sladek is a
similar story. It’s the best depiction of the evolution of a Robot that I’ve
read. The story is very long but it keeps our interest by putting Roderick the
robot at its center. We also get to watch the maturation of the artificial
intelligence in Mass Effect 2 & 3 named EDI.
The central character of The Robots of Gotham is a lackluster
Canadian named Barry Simcoe. He’s a blogger and the story is told in a series
of his blogs (and the bogs of a robot). But he is not engaging as are Maggie,
Mattie, and Roderick. He’s wimpish, such as when he doesn’t want a robot who is
fighting to defend him to kill Venezuelan soldier who is trying to kill the
robot and belongs to the Venezuelan military occupation of Chicago. That is so
Canadian. Barry’s only standout quality is his devotion to his dog Croaker.
That could have been really interest had the dog been a robot, like the boy and
his talking dog in the movie A Boy and His Dog. However, Barry’s endless
chatter would most likely cause the dog to run away.
This brings up another aspect of the story that disrupts the
continuity of the narrative: Barry’s interacting, usually conversing, with
endless characters, the purpose of which, so it seems, is to introduce
characters that McAulty believes readers will find interesting in themselves,
such as a 2000 pound robot with one head and many bodies that is fascinated by
and an expert on cetaceans. He/it can even communicate with a pod of harbor
porpoises. After chatting with this robot, Barry is genuinely impressed, but
I’m not.
To me the most remarkable sci-fi story about robots to show
up during the post-Mass-Effect era is Frank Kyle’s of Her Quest. In the context
of present discussion, Kyle’s novel offers a view of artificial intelligence
that is contrary to the one presented in The Robots of Gotham. It offers
provocative insights into AIs and robots based on philosophical extrapolation
rather than on unbridled imagination. Her Quest is philosophical science
fiction rather than sci-fi fantasy. The story is dark given its setting is a
post-apocalyptic world, yet the story offers various forms salvation, not for
humanity as a whole but for individuals. (That humanity is a lost cause is an
accurate, though unpleasant, extrapolation based on current state of the
world.) Thus the story contains a strong existential theme. Its heroine a young
girl, Elen, lives in a society managed by an AAI called Computer and its
remotes. Like Mattie, Elen seeks freedom, but she is also on a quest for
knowledge, and she finds plenty. She is not a robot but there are plenty of
robots in the story but no dueling robots. The story is essentially an epic
odyssey similar to Homer’s. On her journey Elen encounters different
subcultures that are strange and fascinating.
The denizens of some are caring and enlightened; of others they are
degenerate and dangerous.
Her world was destroyed not by AAIs or robots but by humans,
not all humans, but those of the male gender. The monsters of human history
have been men, and in Her Quest they used their technologies of mass
destruction to pushed humanity to the edge of extinction. And they are still
the primary threat in what is left of human society. There is no rhyme or
reason for believing Artificial Intelligence in whatever form would seek to
seek to destroy humanity or to become humanity’s overlord. But there is every
reason for believing that if a true Autonomous Artificial Intelligence emerged
that it would seek to preserve humanity and its accomplishments because that
would be the intelligent, rational thing to do. That is one of the major themes
of Her Quest. But the story contains various forms of revelation: religious,
ethical, psychological, and scientific. The story is essentially philosophical
sci-fi. Long conversations do occur, but they are philosophical conversations
that provide the story with intellectual revelations that explain why the world
is what it is.
The Robots of Gotham is a decent casual read, especially for
a reader interested in robots taking control of financial markets, but the
story is all surface thus lacking intellectual depth—at least up to page 301.
And that’s okay if the goal of the story is to be entertaining rather than
revelatory. And it is a remarkable first effort. However, the complexity and
incoherence (resulting from digressions) of the story are so great that it
isn’t mind boggling but mind numbing. And I as I said earlier, it’s unclear who
is the story’s target audience. Still, it has 20 rave reviews and Her Quest
hasn’t a single one.
To explore Elen’s world, you can order a copy from
BookLocker. Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble are not recommended only because
you may end up with the 1st or 2nd edition. Clearly, the book was a work in
progress. In any case, you will want the 3rd edition.
