The first robot role is an automated robot that can replace people to complete tedious and dangerous tasks after the industrial revolution to solve tedious and boring work. After that, with the improvement of people's living standards and the rapid development of artificial intelligence, more and more such robots entered human daily life.
In the 90s of the 20th century, humans began to invent "super-intelligent robots" that can perceive the external environment through sensors and have the ability to reason logically, judge and make decisions, which can perform autonomous behavior according to external environmental conditions.
For example, the various service robots in "Automatic Customer Service" have a variety of service robots in a future urban town called "Sunset City" (Figure 3-14): responsible for providing various services such as beauty, entertainment, catering, travel and home cleaning, and providing convenience for the elderly in the town. Such robots can also replace humans to complete difficult military tasks, and are commonly used in the military and are called "super-intelligent military robots." ”
Based on the view of such robots, Stephen William Hawking has long warned that if artificial intelligence weapons with the ability to independently choose to destroy targets are developed and mass-produced, they will inevitably pose a huge threat to humanity. For example, the maintenance robot in "The Cage of Life" (Figure 3-15), the story tells the story of a fighter pilot forced to land in the rescue capsule of a desolate planet, the maintenance robot in the cabin has a system failure, will indiscriminately attack moving objects, the pilot is forced to be trapped in this "cage of life" to try his best to defeat the robot and escape the predicament.
Of course, functional robots also include robot mech warriors in Mobile Armor (Figs. 3-16), and various rat-killing robots developed by capitalists in Mason's Mouse (Figs. 3-17). Including the genetically modified mechanical grizzly bear from Killsquad mentioned above. The essence of the grizzly bear is a "weapon" of autonomous artificial intelligence, but this "weapon" combines mechanical technology and genetically modified organisms to make it more uncontrollable.
It can be seen that superintelligent machines can continuously learn and quickly improve themselves to complete upgrades, while humans are limited by slow biological evolution, which will lead to intelligent machines eventually surpassing humans. "With the full realization of general artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence will become an independent life form derived from human creation, but different from and superior to humans."
In people's conceptions, this artificial intelligence life form has the same human nature construction as natural people, that is, they have the same complete mind as humans, that is, they not only have the same intelligent system, emotional system and volitional system as humans, but also have stronger abilities than humans in these three aspects. This is the second type of robot mentioned earlier: robots with autonomous consciousness.
Nick Bostrom also mentions in his book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies that if the machine brain surpasses the human brain, then this new superintelligence will replace humans as the dominant life form on Earth. For humanity, this would be an existential disaster. ”
It can be seen that although the birth of robots can provide us with a lot of convenience, but in today's rapid development of science and technology, if human beings are not careful enough about this, then it may bring immeasurable serious consequences. However, in the "Three Robots" series, the author tells a humorous and lighthearted story in a way that goes the other way.
The story focuses on three robots with different functions and personalities (Figure 3-18), the little orange robot is a robot that cares for infants and toddlers, so he shows that he is curious about everything and has a lively personality; The tall white robot comes from a game console and has a stupid personality;
The triangular gray robot is a housekeeping robot with a calm personality, but a broken mouth. The story is told through a humorous dialogue between three robots, through the perspective of a robot bystander and satirizes the destruction of humanity due to hubris.
From living known creatures to mysterious unknown creatures
As a popular character genre that has continued in science fiction film and television creation, monster characters are all over various science fiction movies and science fiction animations. As a special type of sci-fi animation character design, monster images are the criteria for the success of character design with formal spectacle elements and visually stunning effects.
With the continuous exploration of unknown areas by human beings, the visual images of monsters in film and television works have gradually been enriched. Take the monster-like character setting in "Love, Death and Robots" as an example, it is roughly divided into several types: among them, there are monsters genetically modified by technology; werewolves with genetic variants alienated; There are legendary and bizarre species on Earth, and mysterious creatures in uncharted territory; and intelligent life forms on alien planets and so on.
Some of these different types and numerous monster images are born out of abstract descriptions of mythological epics, some are defamiliarized treatments of common creatures, and some are the product of the imagination of the creators.
In the second episode of the third season of "Love, Death and Robots" "Bad Journey", there is a huge crab monster, this monster is not very novel in the external shape, the main body of the shape is based on the body of the crab, and a scorpion-like tail is added behind the monster's body. This work focuses on the game of human nature in the plot.
and the werewolf characters in the tenth episode of the first season, "The Shapeshifter", who have unusual composure and self-healing physical skills, eyes that can see at night and physical strength beyond ordinary people, who can shed their human skin in the moonlight and transform into a strong and tall werewolf image with fangs and claws. The above crab monsters and werewolves basically have a high degree of animal image recognition, and the image of the animal in nature has not changed much.
In " Sonny 's Advantage " , " Conny " , " is a monster nearly three meters tall , " its body is wrapped in a black segmented exoskeleton , but roughly humanoid , with two trunk-like legs and a cylindrical torso. " In addition to this, five armor tentacles grew from the top of the torso, two of which ended with bone blades.
The tentacles are all shrunk up and tucked away in their sacs like a nest of sleeping pythons. The thick neck is twenty centimeters long and capable of winding movements, supporting a nightmarish black glow bone carved skull, a shark's mouth on the front with double rows of teeth, and a vital skull with deep creases and pits embedded in the top of the skull to protect the sensory organs."
Its opponent, the turboraptor, is a blue-purple dinosaur with its tail removed. "It has a pair of sharp horns half a meter long on its head, a pear-shaped body, and short and thick legs, which are difficult to dump. Its arms have five joints, are two meters long and very flexible. One arm ends with a three-toed claw, and the other ends with a strong bone fist. ”
19 Both of these monsters are the result of being biologically engineered in a biotechnology laboratory. In the ninth episode of the first season, "Dump", a huge garbage monster glued together by various garbage (Figures 3-23 is a figurative exaggeration in science fiction animation, transforming the increasingly accumulated garbage of humans into the appearance of a demon, devouring the people who make garbage and want to clean it up.
The story is also a metaphor for class differences and class struggle. The "man-eating monster" (Figures 3-24) in the eighteenth episode of the first season, "Secret War", is a summoning ritual of some kind of evil by the army. Summon monsters and use this evil force to defeat hostile forces.
As a result, these monsters are not controlled at all, let alone use them as weapons, and how to destroy them has become their biggest problem now. It seems to tell a fantastical ancient story, but it reflects our future.
We have created artificial intelligence with technology and made them available to us, but artificial intelligence will one day pose a threat to humanity, and they will soon be out of human control. The content is similar to the mechanical bear in Killsquad.
In the ninth episode of the third season, "Jibarro", the story of a banshee in the lake is told, and the banshee has the most primitive greed, beauty and wealth of human beings. The creator visualized the local culture of wealth resources into a person, the banshee "Jibaro" turned into gold (Figure 3-25),
She will make a seductive sound that will drive everyone into a rush. Here, the innermost desires of the colonists were expanded through the seductive song of the banshee, and the colonists who fell into endless greed began to kill each other in order to seize the wealth of the place. At this time, the male protagonist could not hear the banshee's singing due to his physical defects, and was mistaken by the banshee for not greedy, and developed feelings for him.
When the banshee was defenseless and took the initiative to sacrifice her body enthusiastically, she was stripped of his golden skin by the male protagonist, her body floated down the stream, and the blood turned into a red torrent in the lake, and finally the heartbroken Jibaro also dragged the male protagonist to the bottom of the lake. The animation uses stunning animation techniques as a metaphor for the hatred of indigenous peoples and colonizers.
Cthulhu has a huge size, a deep voice, octopus-like tentacles, countless eyes, when people look at its eyes, they are immediately affected by its powerful mental destructive power, and then there is a vision of life and corpses, and then a severe headache, and the mind is twisted and collapsed.
But in general, film and television works rarely show the image of Cthulhu directly, because the Cthulhu theme is usually "reflected in the invisibility and uncertainty of the source of fear, and thus constructs the instability of the narrative environment, causing human fear and anxiety towards the unknown." "The film is extremely challenging to fully present the Cthulhu image at the end, which is a test of the level of character design and animation technology.
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