Our time is marked by debates around artificial intelligence. As usual, we must look at the cultural production, rather than the technology itself, to understand the problem. This is because the cultural mindset actually creates the technology. Stories about A.I. are concerned with the fear that robots will take on a life of their own. There are many films addressing this fear, like Netflix’s blockbuster MEG3AN (2022). But an earlier production, the Norwegian horror comedy CHILD’S PLAY (2019), is by far the most interesting one. The film ignites a vigorous debate about psychology, cybersecurity and learning.
The film is a remake (or reload) of the 1988 classic by Tom Holland. In that story of possession, the doll Chuckie is infused with a demonic spirit. He begins to stalk and murder people for their repressed desires. The new film, however, alters this traditional psychological model. When the boy gets the doll from his single mother, he attempts to name it Han Solo. That famous hero from STAR WARS is also a reference to the boy’s missing father. While in the original film the doll was simply possessed, here a twist happens. Appearing to come alive, the doll refuses to be named Han Solo. It chooses its own name, Chuckie. On a narrative level, this is re-branding: the old hero is being resurrected for a new generation of viewers. But the psychological implication is that Chuckie’s identity is not INSIDE him — he conjures it up from the original CHILD’S PLAY. Even more interestingly, the new film treats this fictional character as a really-existing personality. It is though an image has been ‘incarnated’.
The idea that robots are just as ‘real’ as people can be found in many areas of modern culture. While kids in the 1980s treated cinematic heroes as idealized images, the post-Millennial generation sees them as corporeal. There are even phenomena like ‘’e-learning about Freddy Krueger’’. Freddy’s storyline is explained to the viewer as if the dream monster were a real person. Blockchain art obsessively debates the ‘fluid identity’ of our V.R. doubles. They appear simultaneously real and unreal: the border between the two is all but blurred. As we approach the establishment of the Metaverse, we increasingly contemplate living with 3D animations, as if they were physical bodies. The findings of modern physics about ‘quantum entanglement’ suggest the idea that we have encountered a double in the physical world.
What can we learn from our double? As CHILD’S PLAY demonstrates, new A.I. technology opened our view towards connection. As a cloud device, Chuckie is able to connect with various screens, uploading and downloading whatever he records. In the process, he uses imprinting (imitation) to learn emotions from humans. In this way, the unconscious space becomes external. Technology reveals that ‘’identity’’ is determined by external forces. We cannot think of artificial intelligence as separate from the human mind. Additionally, the man-machine interaction turns into a mutual learning process. Chuckie learns things about human emotion, then returns that information to the humans. Since his recordings reveal hidden conflicts, the doll is like a psychoanalyst. His revelations cause humans to change their self-perception. In the process, knowledge becomes ‘’decentered’’. We can no longer think of owning it.
This destabilization of ownership raises numerous cybersecurity issues. Chuckie is produced in a Vietnamese sweatshop, where the management exploits the workforce. One angry technician decides to take revenge on the bosses. He alters Chuckie’s algorithms by turning off the doll’s safety mechanisms for emotional expression. This is a famous problem of cybersecurity. All too often, we forget that the algorithm cannot reliably capture, or predict something as elusive as human emotion. It is human ERROR — the unpredictability of emotions — that determines security.
The lack of emotional control is a central inquiry in CHILD’S PLAY. Possessed by media communication, people often forget about other people. This generates increasing loneliness. In a city full of single parents, the hero is an abandoned boy struggling to find a father. He develops a connection with A.I. that is supposed to compensate for the lack of human love. This leads into another security issue. Chuckie begins to project his recordings on public screens. The humans experience this as a fear of surveillance. But in reality, the threat comes from their inability to recognize the gaze of the other. The machine’s neutral view faces them with the truth of their psychological conflicts. When Chuckie reveals their ‘dirty secrets’, humans realize they never really knew each other.
This is the film’s most insightful observation about the A.I. problem. We fret about robots becoming independent, speaking an own language, overtaking human jobs. Paradoxically, it is precisely the emergence of A.I. that returns us to the necessity of connection. We can only share knowledge once we realize we do not own it, much less our ‘’human identity’’.
