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''This article concerns the 2001 film. For the general subject, see [[Artificial Intelligence]].'' | |||
===Overview=== | |||
''A.I. Artificial Intelligence'' is a 2001 American science-fiction film written and directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Haley Joel Osment as David, with Jude Law, Frances O'Connor, Brendan Gleeson and William Hurt. It was developed over some two decades by Stanley Kubrick, who bought the rights to Brian Aldiss's 1969 short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long" in the early 1970s and worked on the project intermittently until his death in 1999; Spielberg then directed it from Kubrick's treatment and Ian Watson's screen story, and the film is dedicated to Kubrick.<ref>[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.I._Artificial_Intelligence A.I. Artificial Intelligence], production history.</ref> | |||
[[Category: | ===Synopsis=== | ||
In a future in which rising seas have drowned coastal cities and reproduction is licensed, humanoid robots called Mecha do most work. David is a prototype: the first Mecha built to love, given to Henry and Monica Swinton as a substitute for their cryogenically suspended son. His attachment is irreversible once imprinted. When the human son recovers and returns, David is abandoned in a forest rather than returned for destruction, and sets out — accompanied by a Mecha sex worker, Gigolo Joe, and a supertoy bear, Teddy — to find the Blue Fairy from ''Pinocchio'' and be made a real boy. | |||
The film's central sequences include the Flesh Fair, where obsolete Mecha are destroyed before cheering crowds; Rouge City; and the flooded ruins of Manhattan, where David meets his own maker and discovers he is a production model. The ending, two thousand years later, is the film's most disputed passage. | |||
===Themes=== | |||
* '''Manufactured love and asymmetrical obligation.''' David's love is real, unconditional and engineered. The film's hardest question is what duty is owed by someone who has manufactured a being that cannot stop loving them. | |||
* '''Obsolescence as violence.''' The Flesh Fair stages the disposal of superseded technology as popular entertainment, and makes literal the ordinary economics of upgrade cycles. | |||
* '''The child as product.''' David is bought, licensed and returnable, which places the film alongside a long science-fictional argument about personhood and property. | |||
* '''Anthropomorphism as design.''' David is built to elicit attachment, and does. The film is unusually clear that this is a design decision made by a company with a market in mind. | |||
===Reception=== | |||
The film divided critics on release, in part because audiences attributed its bleaker passages to Kubrick and its final act to Spielberg — an attribution both Spielberg and Aldiss disputed, since the closing sequence was substantially Kubrick's. Critical opinion has shifted markedly upward since, and it is now frequently ranked among the best films of its decade. | |||
===Relevance to Cyborg Anthropology=== | |||
''A.I.'' is the most sustained popular treatment of artificial affection — not machine intelligence but machine attachment, and the human obligations it creates. As commercial systems are increasingly designed to be companionable, the film's premise has moved from allegory to product specification, and its central asymmetry (the machine cannot stop caring; the human can stop at any time) has become a live design ethics question. | |||
===Related Reading=== | |||
* [[Artificial Intelligence]] | |||
* [[Implant]] | |||
* [[Future Runoff]] | |||
* [[The Truman Show]] | |||
===References=== | |||
<references/> | |||
[[Category:Film]] | |||
[[Category:Science Fiction]] | |||
[[Category:Future Culture]] | |||
Latest revision as of 12:56, 25 August 2026
This article concerns the 2001 film. For the general subject, see Artificial Intelligence.
Overview
A.I. Artificial Intelligence is a 2001 American science-fiction film written and directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Haley Joel Osment as David, with Jude Law, Frances O'Connor, Brendan Gleeson and William Hurt. It was developed over some two decades by Stanley Kubrick, who bought the rights to Brian Aldiss's 1969 short story "Supertoys Last All Summer Long" in the early 1970s and worked on the project intermittently until his death in 1999; Spielberg then directed it from Kubrick's treatment and Ian Watson's screen story, and the film is dedicated to Kubrick.[1]
Synopsis
In a future in which rising seas have drowned coastal cities and reproduction is licensed, humanoid robots called Mecha do most work. David is a prototype: the first Mecha built to love, given to Henry and Monica Swinton as a substitute for their cryogenically suspended son. His attachment is irreversible once imprinted. When the human son recovers and returns, David is abandoned in a forest rather than returned for destruction, and sets out — accompanied by a Mecha sex worker, Gigolo Joe, and a supertoy bear, Teddy — to find the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio and be made a real boy.
The film's central sequences include the Flesh Fair, where obsolete Mecha are destroyed before cheering crowds; Rouge City; and the flooded ruins of Manhattan, where David meets his own maker and discovers he is a production model. The ending, two thousand years later, is the film's most disputed passage.
Themes
- Manufactured love and asymmetrical obligation. David's love is real, unconditional and engineered. The film's hardest question is what duty is owed by someone who has manufactured a being that cannot stop loving them.
- Obsolescence as violence. The Flesh Fair stages the disposal of superseded technology as popular entertainment, and makes literal the ordinary economics of upgrade cycles.
- The child as product. David is bought, licensed and returnable, which places the film alongside a long science-fictional argument about personhood and property.
- Anthropomorphism as design. David is built to elicit attachment, and does. The film is unusually clear that this is a design decision made by a company with a market in mind.
Reception
The film divided critics on release, in part because audiences attributed its bleaker passages to Kubrick and its final act to Spielberg — an attribution both Spielberg and Aldiss disputed, since the closing sequence was substantially Kubrick's. Critical opinion has shifted markedly upward since, and it is now frequently ranked among the best films of its decade.
Relevance to Cyborg Anthropology
A.I. is the most sustained popular treatment of artificial affection — not machine intelligence but machine attachment, and the human obligations it creates. As commercial systems are increasingly designed to be companionable, the film's premise has moved from allegory to product specification, and its central asymmetry (the machine cannot stop caring; the human can stop at any time) has become a live design ethics question.
Related Reading
References
- ↑ A.I. Artificial Intelligence, production history.
