The “killer robot” narrative is…popular. That is a more neutral way of saying “tired”. Let’s recap – someone invents a robot, an android, an AI…and it somehow promptly becomes a killing machine.
Predictable? You bet. Important for survival of mankind, a true “cautionary tale”? Not so much.
Over the years, I have written about this phenomenon more than I care to discuss, and at least for myself, the debate is slowly becoming exhausting. The reason being, not much has actively changed in robotics that should make us worried that the real killer bot is in fact around the corner; but the use, abuse and misuse of tech is real, and that’s not changed significantly. If anything, it has been a foreseeable path : when something exists, it is abusable. The more easily abuse is conceivable of, and the less skill you need to implement it, the easier it is to do so. Would it be possible to essentially create a killer robot, android, AI? Yes, quite likely, if the robotics were far enough (Shelly Palmer mentions this as well as delves into the debate on hows and whys of good vs bad behaviour in his Wednesday stream here ). Should we be concerned about this possibility, that one day, robotics will be far enough and the evil robot will finally just happen? No if you are talking about the robot that is self-aware, as most of these killer machines seem to be; absolutely yes if we are talking about turning a tool into a tool for murder.
And this is where the problem with M3GAN starts. Not with the Uncanny Valley phenomenon; not with any number of social, cultural or minority related statements or questions (which offer interesting glimpses into how we form identity in the most unusual places). The problem with M3GAN is that it is so popular.
This may be a weird sentence, but hear me out. In a time when misuse, abuse and technology collide in such clear and predictable ways – drones used in crime in many ways; when weapons that are easily smuggled due to their make can be created at home, when social media is being used to serve hate groups (this topic is too big to give one simple example, but is easy to search online), popularity of what is essentially a sentient or semi-sentient personal killing machine sounds…worrying. While M3GAN undoubtedly falls under the trope of the evil robot, the response to it, calling it an icon, is concerning because it not only puts violence on pedestal, but confirms that we are, regardless of what our societies are experiencing at present, not only happy to condone of extrajudicial violence, we embrace it as something to cherish and look up to.
In other words – M3GAN, unlike the previous killer machines, is no longer an Other. She may have started out as Other, but we are willing and happy to embrace her as an Us…an identity that we wouldn’t mind seeing provided it served our purpose. This not only means that we might be more willing to utilise technology – or any other tool – as a weapon…it means that, judicially, socially and personally, we are happy to condone of others’ use of it, including for murder, if it pleases us or seems to be on “our side”.
This is how radicalisation starts.
I’m not suggesting that M3GAN is as such responsible for this development. I am merely cautioning that the popularity of the film, of the character, and the imperviousness we seem to have developed to violence as a means to an end, or even for pleasure (highly important in both bullying and online sexual abuse cases) shows where we, as a society, currently sit.
M3GAN is certainly not an icon. In a way, she is a tool – one warning us that we are forgetting what it means to be human.