December meme: Almost Human!

[sapote]

toft asked for my thoughts on Almost Human. I have only seen the first three episodes, but I did, in fact, have thoughts! They are not the best organized, but they here follow.


So it is pertinent to this story in a very roundabout way, but when I was a child I was very, very conscious of not being good at facial expressions. I could get the RL equivalents of :( and :), pretty much, and I would spontaneously smile when I was happy or look sad when I was sad, but producing a socially appropriate face for the situation? Forget about it. (This was particularly drawn to my attention when I was supposed to look contrite for something. I would try! But my face would not cooperate.)

When I was a little bit older I was really fascinated with the Turing Test - we had a documentary about it that got busted out in science class a couple of times, where humans would chat on old Apple IIes with a computer program that could simulate talking about the weather and pets, and then they would all vote on which ones they thought were people. (I always thought the woman who was easily taken-in by the computer that talked about pets was kind of a fool, because she wasn't suspicious that a purported 38-year-old dude working in Silicon Valley would name a cat Precious. This was about the time in the news, of course, that we were supposed to be wildly suspicious of anything we were told by people on the internet, so I was already pretty keen on reading for inconsistencies.)

The thing that was the most interesting to me in the pilot of Almost Human was that the words "synthetic soul" aside, Dorian has very specific technologies that allow him to mime being more human than equivalent robots. He can make facial expressions more or less appropriately. Instead of saying the most logical and accurate thing, he has a routine that allows him to use vernacular and work out the degree of detail that's most pertinent to the person he's talking to. He can make intuitive leaps, yes, and guesses: this is the thing that people always bring up about humans versus robots, and I think it's very interesting that in Dorian's case it's a question of an operating system that could work absolutely perfectly with no errors being modified to sort of wing it - to work more chaotically and haphazardly, to have gaps.

It would be interesting if Dorian is no more there than the MXs are. It would be super interesting if the difference is that Dorian is simply better able to act out being there for the benefit of humans than the MXs are, so he doesn't get shoved under cars, and his partner feels weird letting him go get shot.

My favorite line of the pilot was when John tells Dorian he's not like other AIs and Dorian says "I should take that as a compliment." This could be taken a whole lot of ways. I took it the way I'd take it if someone told me I wasn't, idk, bad at math even though I was a woman. I took it as Dorian criticizing that thing that John had just said because it fundamentally devalued who and what Dorian is. And it extended recognition to him conditionally, based on things that were, to everyone else in the canon, operational flaws.

Since I am firmly in the headcanon that all MXs are, to some degree, sentient, I also imagine that they have MX activities - some IRC channel where they gossip the shit out of who had noodle breath or didn't in order to maximize their work efficiency through data sharing, some game where they donate their spare processor cycles to competively perfecting actuarial tables, something - and Dorian is probably not invited, and everyone knows it, but MXs don't have the programming to act out something being awkward.


The nature of consciousness aside, I am really enjoying this show as an oldschool buddy cop Slashy Show. I mean, quirky super smart dude/lonely soul with anger issues was basically the format anyway, and then we get to look at Michael Ealy pointedly making facial expressions for forty minutes, and that is terrific. They bicker! They bicker charmingly! They have to work to build trust across a really serious gap! Dorian likes cats! Dorian likes 80s pop! AUGH DORIAN. So far the crimes have been interestingly dramatic without seriously interrupting my enjoyment of the two main characters bickering in cars, and the supporting actors seem good, though I notice that there aren't any policewoman MXs. I wonder if there have been in-universe arguments about that.

I do think that the words "like BBC Sherlock" were said at several points in the writers' room, and that that tone is going to continue in how the show handles, basically, slashbaiting. I am probably going to end up developing an elaborate metaphor for how Kennex is actually saying "no robo" and the whole thing is just a self-conscious reflection of the tropes of the genre vis a vis intimacy. When I do this please feel free to tell me I'm making shit up.

Comments

[toft]

NO ROBO. I love it.

I'm very interested in these thoughts! Thank you! And I love your thoughts about the Turing Test. That is totally the thing I find interesting about the idea of very sophisticated robots, that being able to fit in with humans doesn't make them more like humans or more interested in being like humans.

[sapote]

Did you ever happen to read Embasseytown by China Mieville? There's some very interesting worldbuilding in there about living with what in the universe is called Turingware. The basic upshot is that you just never try to work out whether Turingware is conscious, because it's bad manners and no one wants to go into that whole mess again.