Final Project (sorry)

What does it truly mean to be human? In the growing age of technology we are constantly being forced to ask this question. People are creating robots and artificial intelligents that are acting more and more human, which is becoming more and more disturbing. Humans continue to create these human like robots, but since we know they aren’t humans it makes us uncomfortable.  This question happened to be the main conflict in the 1999 film, Bicentennial Man. He was a robot who wanted to be a man, but how far did he have to go to actually be considered a human, and why was it so difficult to achieve? Throughout the movie, the viewer is supposed to feel compassion for the robot and when he is denied to be recognized as a human by the World Congress, we are supposed to feel dissent towards them. It is hard to imagine why they would deny him this right, but if anyone of us were put in the same situation, we would have done the exact same thing.

            Robin Williams does a great job to show the robot's, Andrew’s, emotions even though he is a robot for most of the film. The viewers can feel the emotional connection Andrew has towards two women, and feel sympathy for him because he can’t express his affection. When he is denied rights to being human, the viewer can feel the pain Andrew feels, and would ultimately disagree with the choice of the World Congress. Viewers disagree with the choices of the congress solely because they know Andrew’s history and feel an emotional connection to him, but put in the same situation, of possibly granting a robot to be a human, the outcome would be the same. According to the uncanny valley hypothesis, as a robot becomes and looks more and more human, humans start to feel more uncomfortable with it. This is because it is basically playing a trick on our eyes. Humans know it isn’t real, but it looks real enough, so they can’t fully understand or grasp the concept of it, and this gives us feelings of unease. Every time Andrew met someone, they were immediately uncomfortable by his presence. It wasn’t until after they got to know Andrew that they started to feel more comfortable with him.  The congress had to reject Andrew’s proposal to be considered human, because it would make humans uncomfortable, which could be potentially dangerous, to Andrew and to others.