Androids are a staple feature of science fiction. Metropolis, one of the first full length science fiction films, centers around one. The popular Terminator franchise centers around several models. Often, these works feature them wanting to be more human-like. But why is humanity the endgame?
The reimagined Battlestar Galactica features two android models. Guess which is one of the more “perfect” models.
Perhaps it’s something that makes human-like robots frightening. The inability to tell the newer Cylon models from humans except at a cellular level drives fear into the hearts of Battlestar Galactica‘s human characters for much of the first seasons. The Cylons wish to eliminate all of humanity and are close to succeeding in this goal, and not knowing if someone is a Cylon spy is good for paranoia and building suspense in the series’ survival story.
Other times, they may serve to ask that question science fiction is so fond of: what makes humanity, well, human? The Cylon models have a form of religion unique from the humans’ and this religion informs all they do. Each model group believes in varying senses, ranging from devout to non-believer to radical extremist. They doubt their mission in life, they are capable of falling in love (often with disastrous consequences), they envision futures for themselves as individuals, they formed a social structure and vaguely democratic way of governing themselves. The question is raised in later seasons, is a Cylon any less of a person because it is an artificial life form?
Other works raise similar questions. In my favorite example, The Sarah Connor Chronicles‘ Terminator model Cameron is told of what makes humans distinct from the Terminator cyborgs, including that humans create art. However, Cameron easily meets the qualification: she loves to dance and often does it when alone, solely for herself. Asimov’s own Robot Visions is filled with stories of robots wishing to be indistinguishable from humans, to the point of replacing as much of their metal parts with flesh and bone to achieve this.
Humanoid robots are iconic in their genre because they are an easy way for us to attempt to figure out what makes humanity unique. If we create something that is able to conceive of its own aesthetic standards, of morality and ethics, of religion and spirituality, of an individual purpose in life that it can then go on to question, what makes this artificial life so different from our own?
