Rise of Artificial Intelligence and Crisis in Humanism in Machines Like Me and Ex Machina

Abstract

Rise of Artificial Intelligence and Crisis in Humanism in Machines Like Me and Ex Machina Bhattarai, Guru prasad Bal Bahadur Thapa Central Department of English. This present dissertation examines the representation of crisis of Renaissance led version of humanism invited by the rise of humanoids empowered by Artificial Intelligence in the novel Machines Like Me by Alex Garland and the film Ex Machina directed by Ian McEwan. In the selected primary texts, the representation of humanoids with the human traits is problematic. Renaissance humanism keeps human in center, emphasizing on human potentiality and achievement. Human as rational, creative, endowed with ethical and moral aspects. This account of human version can be in challenge by humanoids enhanced with Artificial Intelligence. This research, therefore, analyzes and interprets the novel and the movie focusing on their representation of the growing development of artificial intelligence in humanoids and its impacts on humanism. Regarding the research problem, the present study argues that humanoids with artificial intelligence may subvert human thoughts and behaviors in the near future. Though artificial intelligence has enhanced human life on several fronts, the humanoids with the enhanced human qualities like consciousness can surpass human beings and thus cause human beings to question their own identity. In this way, this research is a speculation on the verbal and visual representations of the futuristic world in which human beings may be reduced to slaves to humanoids with the hyper programmed consciousness. This study derives insights to the position of human from the scholars like Rosi Braidotti and Francisco Ferrando to develop a theoretical framework. One of the key propositions of this study is the role reversal between machines and human beings. Machines show traits of humans and vice versa. Both the primary texts, as per the present dissertation, are representations of the futuristic high tech modern world, where human beings barter their consciousness and emotions with machines for the latter’s efficiency and thus undergo an identity crisis. As Artificial Agency will be able to counter human account of supremacy and the conceptual identity about human uniqueness will be in re-definition. Keywords: Artificial intelligence, humanoids, humanism, posthumanism, human identity