The story of A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) is the story of David, a child mecha created as a prototype by Professor Hobby, a human scientist and inventor who steers Cybertronics, a giant in the artificial intelligence industry. Living in a society that has survived extreme climate change and the loss of seaboard cities like New York and Amsterdam, humans have thrived by limiting human population growth, licensing human pregnancies, and relying on mechanized beings (mechas or robots) because they use a finite number of resources. Now Dr. Hobby has proposed creating child mechas for whom “love will be the key by which they acquire a subconscious.”
**Spoiler Alert: The remainder of this post explores various theological questions and topics that are present throughout the film's storyline**
One of the earliest theological questions in the film is creation. Someone asks if a robot can love, what is the responsibility of the human to that robot? And Dr. Hobby parries, “Didn’t God create Adam to love Him?”
A second question exists around end-of-life questions. The family into which David is “adopted” had a young son who was in a coma-like state for five years; the parents continue to visit him in a sterile, clinical setting waiting for his condition to change, and then, resigning themselves to his condition, agree to adopt David.
Shortly after his arrival, the mother gives David “Teddy” a supertoy teddy bear who accompanies David everywhere he goes. Teddy had been their son’s constant companion. Perhaps, he appears here as a paraclete?
Miraculously, the biological son Martin recovers and returns home, and tragically but not surprisingly, a sibling rivalry begins. In this context, a fourth set of questions about difference, biological vs. adopted, and race, organic (human) or mecha (robot) are raised. The mother reads Pinocchio to the boys and David becomes convinced that if he were “a real boy” his mother would love him more.
His dilemma raises several more questions, including “What does authentic relationship look like?”, “What does unconditional love look like?”
After an accident involving the boys endangers Martin, the parents decide to return David to Cybertronics, where they know he will be destroyed. Destruction is inevitable because when the parents adopted David, they implemented a protocol that “triggered” his love; it was irreversible, unconditional and unalterable. In this iteration, he could only love the person who implemented that protocol; that person was the mother.
So now we encounter questions about covenant and the cost of breaking covenant. The covenant is first broken when the parents decide to give up David. However, the mother fails to return David to Cybertronics; instead she leaves him in the woods theoretically to protect him from destruction. With her actions, she breaks the covenant she had with the company also.
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