Oh the Humanity

In the ongoing lockdown there is time to sample yet more “overlooked” scifi television shows. The British series Humans is not short-lived in the usual sense. There are three seasons. Yet, the show never did build a sizable audience either in the UK or US. I caught a couple of episodes on AMC back in 2015 but, while intriguing, they were non-sequential mid-season episodes, so the story arc was confusing. Whatever intention I had of restarting the series from the beginning to clear up the storyline was soon forgotten – and stayed so until this past weekend. Season 1 is on DVD and the following seasons are on streaming services including Amazon Prime. So far I’ve watched only season 1, which consists of 8 episodes.

Questions about Artificially Intelligent (AI) humaniform robots are as old as the word “robot.” The word was coined by Czech playwright Karel Čapek and appears in his drama R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) published in 1920. Rossum’s robots are intelligent but not conscious, which is to say they don’t experience that meta-state of not only knowing but knowing that one knows. They don’t, that is, until a do-gooder who is worried about their exploitation (a concept the robots simply don’t understand any more than your car understands it) arranges to tweak the manufacturing process so that they do have consciousness and a sense of having rights. Naturally, the robot uprising swiftly follows. The trope has recurred in scifi ever since including the Terminator franchise and Battlestar Galactica. I’ve written a couple short stories myself, e.g. Circuits Circus. There is life in the notion still, abetted by the voiced worries of such serious people as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk (among many others) that AI poses an existential risk to humanity.

In Humans, the stakes are much more personal than in most examples of the genre, and the show is better for it. The setting is an alternate present in which technology is basically the same as our present-day real world in all ways except AI robotics. The robots (“synths”) have permeated factories, offices, homes (as domestic servants), hospitals, and (of course) the red light districts. Humans have become economically dependent on them, yet many resent the loss of purpose they feel because the machines can do their jobs better. Many treat the machines in ways that, because they look human, are disturbing. The household models are apt to generate jealousy because most are attractive. (Is it cheating if a spouse employs a non-conscious machine for erotic purposes?)

Anyway, the Hawkins family (husband, wife, and three kids) acquires a domestic synth (Gemma Chan) that, unknown to them, is not a new machine but a stolen, repackaged, and illegally rebooted device. It behaves oddly for a synth, demonstrating a capacity for empathy and for telling white lies. The synth is actually one of five that were upgraded to full consciousness by a rogue scientist named David Elster before his death. They scattered to avoid discovery. The conscious synths fear that humans will fear them (remember R.U.R.?) so they try to remain undercover. The rogue scientist’s son tries to help with that. There are subplots involving each of the conscious synths (all five have distinct personalities), an ailing former colleague (William Hurt) of Elster, police detective partners, and a hunter who believes conscious synths exist.

The show is smartly written. It raises questions about the nature of consciousness, nature versus nurture, and what it means to be human. Is a biological body necessary to qualify? What of human rights? Are they literally that or do they belong to any being able to truly understand the question and demand them? The personal dramas, meantime, are credible once one allows for the incredible premise.

I doubt we will face such questions for real anytime soon. The old joke about fusion power (20 years away: always has been, always will be) is easily modified to be about conscious AI (50 years away: always has been, always will be). That is, however, just a joke. If not ourselves, our descendants may well face them. I’d actually give better odds on that than on fusion power.

Thumbs Up on Humans, but watch the show from the beginning as I neglected to do in 2015.

Humans: Trailer Season 1