Spielberg's AI: Another Cuddly No-Brainer

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Description/Abstract

AI is about a "robot" boy who is "programmed" to love his adoptive human mother but is discriminated against because he is just a robot. There would have been ways to make this film less of a no-brainer. The ambiguity could have been about something much deeper than metal: It could have been about whether other systems really do feel, or just act as if they feel, and how we could possibly know that, or tell the difference, and what difference that difference could really make -- but that film would have had to be called "TT" (for Turing Test) rather than "AI" or "ET," and it would have had to show (while keeping in touch with our "cuddly" feelings) how we are exactly in the same boat when we ask this question about one another as when we ask it about "robots."