The Bicentennial Man is a bio-futuristic movie that plays a twist on the circle of life. This movie was made in 1999 so the future in this movie, is our past. In the setting of the movie, it is 2005 and every house hold has a robot servant that does everything that the human master says, but a new model is made and this new robot will change the view of something that is living and something that is made to look alive.
"Andrew" is the name of the new robot model and a family has purchased this robot to fit in with the nuclear family idea of their time. After unboxing this robot it tells the three main laws that robots must follow: Robots must follow there masters commands, Robots can not harm there human masters, and Robots can not be ordered to harm any other humans as a command. Andrew does his job well and his masters begin to grow emotional connection towards Andrew. Little do they know that Andrew is a robot that was designed to have artificial intelligence. Andrew begins to show this by his creativity, after breaking a little girls toy horse he makes her a new one out of wood. Andrew also begins to make new things by carving and even begins saying the things he carves is from dreams he has. The people that created him do not like this and wished to terminate Andrew but his owner stopped them since he was the lead designer and the one that actually created the artificial intelligence in Andrew. Andrew lived over his owners life and would live his life alone so Andrew went to find a way to live like a human. then the rest of the movie goes like Pinocchio, a robot wishing to become a real boy.
The idea that a robot that should not have any emotions, can have ideas and creativity is a scary thought.especially when in our society we depend so much on technology. Especially when most people would wish to live forever and be immortal but a robot with that ability would give that up just so he can live like a human. Not to sound like humans are flawed or anything but a robot that is perfect has no worries of disease, death of natural causes and is excellent at everything it does, it is a twist that it would wish to be human. technology in this time is not very known to be much better that our own now, the most advance thing that have is Andrew and the servant robots. Although the design of Andrew is very futuristic and seems smooth and not as mechanical as most images of robots we imagine.
There is a point where the higher counsel refuses to accept Andrew because he is a robot. Andrew eventually finds a way to become human in every way and falls in love, has a family and eventually changes the minds of man. If this were to happen in our time I do not believe they would be so light on this subject. Especially fear, if robots were to ever rebel would a flawed being like man be able to defeat a perfect machine? What if a robot like Andrew appear, would people be willing to accept that, and the thought of making humans from scratch, we would be playing God and destroy the circle of life.
There are many questions we could ask but in the end Andrew touched the hearts of people. If a person was to ever have connection with a machine that was similar to a human, would we be out of our minds or human. Although there is a chance to give a robot human qualities, there can be a fine line between starting a new generation in technology and playing God.
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