*Spoiler alert: this article discusses the plot of “Free Guy”, a 2021 movie*
With movie theaters reopening, blockbuster hits such as Free Guy, starring Ryan Reynolds have been highly anticipated by fans. The movie follows Guy, a non-playable character in a videogame that follows the exact same routine each day. An NPC is a character whose actions are not directly controlled by the player, instead their actions and choices are based on a set of predetermined conditions. However, at some point Guy’s self-awareness is triggered and his actions are no longer solely dependent on these conditions. He can now make his own decisions, including some irrational ones. He essentially becomes a conscious piece of artificial intelligence (Pierce, 2021).
While the movie was received with great praise from fans, its technological accuracy might have been fairly cringeworthy to tech and game development professionals. At this point in time, technology has not yet reached a level in which artificially intelligent beings can be fully conscious and self-aware (Kelly, 2021).
The self-awareness of AI is called artificial consciousness. In recent years, more and more research has been done in this field (Chatila et al, 2018). SELFception is a project that involved three different robots in an experiment to see whether they could distinguish their own ‘bodies’ from others, which is a skill that humans develop when they are around the age of two. Being able to make this distinction is a sign of self-awareness (Wild, 2020).
The growing interest in artificial consciousness is a very interesting phenomenon, as it seems we have come full circle. Artificial intelligence was initially partially developed to remove human error and irrationality. Now, many years later we find ourselves wanting that these artificially intelligent beings become more human-like. The possibility of this happening, however, is still very far away in time. Simply because we do not know enough about human creativity, consciousness and emotions to be able to copy with actual meaning. It is interesting to think about the fact that human emotion and irrationality is something that possibly can never be taught or programmed, and even more so the question: should we even want to?
References
Chatila, R., Renaudo, E., Andries, M., Chavez-Garcia, R.-O., Luce-Vayrac, P., Gottstein, R., Alami, R., Clodic, A., Devin, S., Girard, B. and Khamassi, M. (2018). Toward Self-Aware Robots. Frontiers in Robotics and AI, [online] 5. Available at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frobt.2018.00088/full [Accessed 2 Dec. 2019].
Kelly, S. (2021). Free Guy: Why video game AI will always be stupid. [online] Sciencefocus.com. Available at: https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/free-guy-artificial-intelligence-npc/.
Pierce, R.J. (2021). “Free Guy” Artificial Intelligence: Can An AI Be Actually Self-Aware? [online] Tech Times. Available at: https://www.techtimes.com/articles/266396/20211008/free-guy-artificial-intelligence-is-it-possible.htm [Accessed 10 Oct. 2021].
Wild, S. (2020). Why robots are being trained in self-awareness. [online] Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/research-and-innovation/en/horizon-magazine/why-robots-are-being-trained-self-awareness.
Thank you for bringing this up! I just watched the movie recently and it is certainly interesting how they raise these topics of artificial consciousness behind the light-hearted comedic facade. What I always found interesting is the very common fear present in the society regarding the self-conscious AI. Going all the way back to Asimov and Gibson’s works about apocalyptic AIs to modern examples of Matrix and Terminator, it seems as if there is a certain paradox. On the one hand, corporations are looking to maximize the profits by becoming more efficient and hence use AI but on the other hand, we fear that at one point in the future AI might deem humans as inefficient and hence try to get rid of us. From a more psychological standpoint, perhaps it is a fear of the unknown, because while we may know how AI operates, we can never understand what it “feels” like being an AI. Of course, these are very sci-fi-ish topics but still very interesting from a philosophical point of view, because it makes us wonder what it really is that makes us human. So, thank you for writing this article!
Very interesting blog post. Thanks for addressing this topic, Jamila!
I have watched the movie and can completely understand if computer, especially, AI experts say the movie is “cringeworthy”. From the technical perspective, it seems to be very unrealistic that an NPC is developing an own life and acting irrationally. But for us as a society it is an interesting phenomenon to look at. Who wouldn’t wish for a personal assistant like Amazon’s Alexa to be more human, to be irrational, to say or do things no one expects because these are the things that make human interactions interesting and noteworthy. As long as AI doesn’t want to kill us, irrational AI would be a very refreshing research field. I don’t want to live in a world enriched with AI equipped robots that are acting purely rational as I’m missing the entertainment factor which only human humor can provide. Now, that you addressed the topic, I’m curious what science has to say about irrational AI. Thanks again, for bringing it up!
The topic of your post is very interesting! If I may, I would love to add some more insights about this topic. I agree that we are still far away from achieving artificial consciousness and self-awareness. In fact, I would even argue that it is close to impossible. Even if we assume a materialistic world that does not permit a mind-body duality, self-awareness and artificial consciousness would not be this simple. As individuals, whether it is an illusion or not, we are able to feel what it is like to be ourselves, and that is how we distinguish our bodies. American philosopher John Searle uses the Chinese room thought experience to argue against true consciousness in artificial intelligent beings. In the experiment, a man is sitting inside an isolated room with books containing full instructions in the form of code and symbols of how to correlate the inputted Chinese script the certain elements to yield an output in Chinese that makes perfect grammatical and logical sense. From an outsider perspective, it seems as if the man in the room knows Chinese, but in reality, he is only following arbitrary instructions to put together an output that seems like he knows Chinese. To relate this to artificial consciousness, even if the robot is able to recognize itself, it is merely able to follow the set of symbols and logical sequences and give an output where others may think that it has a sense of self awareness, but it is merely a complex code that it follows. In conclusion, in the process of making artificial intelligence more like ourselves we may achieve results that are indistinguishable from an output of an actual conscious subject, but the process behind it remains the symbols systems we use currently, that we are still a very far away from creating true beings who are aware like ourselves, not matter how aware they can seem.