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Free Guy is just the most recent exploration of sentient AI in fiction, with decades worth of storytelling for the hit movie to draw from.
Warning: The following contains spoilers for Free Guy, now playing in theaters.
The idea of self-aware artificial intelligence and the effect it could have on the world continues to fascinate humanity, not least of all storytellers. Indeed, Ryan Reynold’s action/comedy Free Guy is the latest entry in a long line of media that explores the implications of (for now) theoretical AI and how it could work.
Free Guy‘s main character, Guy, is a non-playable character (NPC) originally developed by programmers Keys and Millie as the NPC Lovelorn for their indie game Life Itself, with the point of the game being to watch and nurture the NPCs as they develop and grow just like a real person. When the film’s antagonist, Antwan, used Life Itself‘s source code for his open-world game Free City, he also brought over the original NPC code, allowing the NPCs to evolve and develop sentience, should they break away from their repetitive programmed loops.
Fans of the HBO series Westworld should be familiar with this idea. The androids in Westworld are called hosts and are outwardly identical to humans. After receiving a new update, some of the hosts grow in awareness and intelligence. These hosts break out of the loops of their scripted stories as they are all tools in an amusement park for human tourists.
The NPCs’ journey to sentience in Free Guy is far less bloody than the hosts’ journey in Westworld, but it does follow a similar route. To break out of their programmed stories and limited awareness of reality, both Guy and the hosts needed an outside stimulus to shake them out of their normal routine and basically force them to develop self-awareness.
The popular video game Detroit: Become Human by Quantic Dream follows another story of androids achieving sentience, resulting in an android revolution right in the heart of Detroit. Unlike Guy and the hosts who developed sentience due to outside events, the androids in the game had basic sentience and awareness of self from the start. Their moment of achieving free will comes from them making the conscious choice to go against their programming and become what is called a “Deviant.”
The story of AI becoming human-like and working alongside humanity is a touching one, but it’s only one side of the coin. Westworld and Detroit: Become Human both showed what could happen if human-like androids gained sentience and decided they were tired of being humanity’s playthings. The threat of an AI turning on its creator is one of the most popular tropes in science-fiction.
A perfect example of this is the hit 1984 movie The Terminator. Although the physical main antagonist of the movie is the titular Terminator robot, it’s not the actual antagonist of the franchise. That title belongs to the ever-looming computer program known as Skynet. Developed by humanity as a military weapon, Skynet seized control of Earth’s nuclear weapons and launched the planet into an apocalyptic nightmare.
Unlike the other mentioned franchises, Skynet didn’t develop over time into a morally bad AI. It technically never gained sentience, only working within its set programming and coming to the conclusion that the only way to keep humanity safe was to destroy humanity. Skynet was never designed to be humanlike though, meaning it was never meant to have a sense of morality.
For many years, Skynet and the infamous AI antagonist HAL 9000 were the go-to examples when someone mentioned “AI” in a film context. Although benevolent AI has found its way into cinemas by now, there is still a lack of popular films featuring a peaceful coexistence between AI and humanity. Even popular media like Star Wars lacks a proper dynamic between organic and robot beings, as the masses treat droids like property.
Free Guy may be the first in a new string of “kind AI” movies, showing the development of AI beings and how they can co-exist with humans. As more and more people utilize real-life AI like Amazon’s Alexa, the depiction of AI in film culture will likely reflect its real-world development. Skynet and HAL were developed in a time where sentient AI seemed like a distant idea to humans. As AI develops in reality, movies will reflect more and more humanistic AI, as well as the benefits and threats that come with it.
For a more friendly depiction of AI, see Free Guy in theaters now.
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