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Imaginary Fantasies of Robotic Humanities and AI in Fictional Contexts

1.1. Introduction

Like many other hopeful technologies, representations of artificial intelligence are inherently Manichean. From its advent in the 1950s, to its socio-cultural and politico-economic entrenchment in the 2010s, AI has generated as much excitement as it has fear. This exacerbated bipartisanship seems to reflect the discourses that have always accompanied the history of technology and its implicit corollary, namely the movement towards technical progress, which is supposedly inescapable. In this respect, the Digital Humanities have been sharpening expert debates in recent years, as they have become involved in particularly broad research issues, themselves nested at the heart of disparate scientific disciplines. In the epistemological race to stabilize a concept that is still in a state of flux and whose definition remains open to question, we need to raise the question of what it means to be human in the face of the technologization of the world. To this end, in an exploratory and cross-cultural framework, Robotic Humanities propose highlighting the imaginary dimension in the construction of a future in which robotic technology is perceived as a saving force (notably in American cinema, and Japanese manga or animation). The Information and Communication Sciences (ICS) do indeed question the fictional and imaginary dimension of media productions, in an approach borrowed from gender studies 1. It therefore seems worthwhile to propose an analytical deconstruction of the mechanisms behind this idealization of post-humanist thought, in which the power of social representations plays a central role in the study of human-machine fusion through the prism of AI, both on the part of directors-creators and spectators-receivers.

1.2. From Digital Humanities to Robotic Humanities

For some years now, the term Digital Humanities has been particularly popular in French research, particularly in the fields of Computer Science and Social Sciences. As for the Information and Communication Sciences, they seem to be legitimately equipped conceptually to take an innovative, distinctive and interdisciplinary look at this polyform research object, the limits of which have yet to be defined, given the plethora of issues at stake. Some authors have attempted to define the field of Digital Humanities, drawing up an "inventory of French research in the international context" (Dacos and Mounier 2014, author's translation). Numerous scientific journals2 have emerged more or less recently, proposing an editorial in line with this concept. Academic literature has also positioned itself on this promising subject, giving rise to a multitude of books, thematic issue3, as well as colloquia, conferences and other study days dedicated to DH4. More recently, work in the information and communication sciences has proposed "questioning the Digital Humanities" (Paquienséguy and Pélissier 2021) through a theoretical, epistemic, ethical, political and methodological approach, in order to grasp the many issues at stake, particularly in terms of training students in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The interest in Digital Humanities seems to be shared, heuristic and perennial.

And yet, the question of what comes next, the need for a more in-depth approach and analytical framework specific to the Digital Humanities, is already being raised. This is the proposal that will be developed here, by highlighting the robotic dimension of Digital Humanities, as human-machine interactions continue to grow and strengthen, ultimately leading humanity towards a fusion that appears increasingly inescapable, and for some, largely desirable5. This future of "the uncertain individual" (Ehrenberg 1995) should not, however, be seen as a foregone conclusion that human beings are doomed to become machines. This is not yet a reality. For the time being, it is essentially the cultural industries and certain biotechnology lobbies that are fueling the circulation of cultural and ideological flows aimed at legitimizing human-machine fusion. Nevertheless, there are many culturally identified forms of resistance, which bear witness to the hold of culture over technology, demonstrating that the latter, "however powerful, remains dependent on strong cultural variables" (Oliveri 2011, author's translation). Despite these observations of distancing, the weight of the imaginary remains decisive in the nature of the relationship that unites human and machine, partially explaining the prevailing technophilia when it comes to imagining a human being, technically augmented by technology.

1.3. Transhumanism as evidence of a diminished humanity

As an innovative and promising topic in a public and scientific debate exacerbated by sudden notoriety, the theme of "augmented human" (Kleinpeter 2013) has, for over a decade now, given rise to a number of highly contradictory accompanying discourses. A current of thought such as that of transhumanism, for example, supported by a willingly technophile media environment, relies on a particularly marked idealization of technology, in order to enunciate a desirable convergence between the organic and the technological. One of the core points of this imaginary seems to lie at the heart of various artistic currents, which actively feed it in terms of social representations. Patrice Flichy rightly points out that "the study of the technical imaginary shows that it always has two functions: to construct the identity of a social group or society, and to provide resources that can be directly reinvested in the preparation and implementation of projects" (Flichy 2001, author's translation). The resources evoked by the sociologist can then be understood as the spiritual material permitting the passage between a current representation and its future concretization. Ray Kurzweil, a computer scientist by training, theorist and media figure of transhumanism, agrees, considering "that the pace of technological change is accelerating, and that the next fifty years will see not only radical technological advances, but also a technological singularity, an inflection point that will change the very nature of man" (Kurzweil 2005, author's translation).

The projectivist aspect of this type of discourse draws intrinsically on a fictional universe, as it is indeed a speculation on the future, where the imaginary appears particularly attractive in order to determine a future, which by nature escapes us. Furthermore, transhumanism, beyond its fantastic promises, is above all exposed to what Patrice Flichy has identified in his work as a "mask-ideology" (Flichy 2001). In other words, the inability of a utopia to lead to a concrete, viable, tangible project, which is ultimately only of the symbolic order. In a more contrasting approach to the future of humankind, posthumanism seems to question this issue in greater detail. The temptation to use technology to compensate for the physiological limits of a human being who is by nature diminished is pressing. Behind the proselytizing of some, or on the contrary the distance observed by others, artistic culture bears witness to the propensity of futurologists, roboticists, designers and other engineers to work directly or indirectly on the development of this "technological singularity" (Kurzweil 2005). To do so, they consciously or unconsciously draw on an imaginary world of technology and robotics, the contours of which artists (of all genres) have already shaped through their many works of fiction.

In this respect, American cinema and the world of Japanese anime in particular are the art forms that have best given shape to the fantasy - finally realized - of the human-machine fusion. For example, Figure 1.1 shows the main character of the Robocop film series, the first part of which was directed in 1987 by Dutchman Paul Verhoeven. This futuristic film and its sequels (1990 and 1992) depict the daily life of a Detroit policeman assigned to the city's slums, accompanied by his partner. Seriously wounded during a traffic stop and left for dead by unscrupulous hoodlums, he benefits from a special scientific crime-fighting program designed to rid the city of thugs once and for all. He becomes Robocop, "50% man, 50% machine, 100% cop"6. This feature film is an opportunity for the director to criticize a society in which violence is omnipresent, accentuated by the complacency of the media and advertising7. In this future, individual freedoms are tightly controlled by a strict security policy. The role played by machines in these films is highly ambivalent, as they appear both as a technical advance necessary for maintaining order, and as a constant threat to turn against and eliminate their creator.

Figure 1.1. Robocop.

Figure 1.2. Rex, from Rex Bionics.

We noted the many similarities with Figure 1.2, which shows the lower part of an exoskeleton 8 produced by Rex Bionics of New Zealand. The metal-like covering, the knee joint and the specific shape of the hip, attest to a desire for this walking aid, designed for people who have accidentally lost the use of their lower limbs, to echo a...