I’m somewhere between 8 and 11 years old. The back of my neck is covered in sweat; the kind that comes from an unexpected nap in the basement on my grandmother’s couch. My dad sits in a brown recliner next to me. It’s the third weekend of whatever month we’re in, and my dad plays sudoku, peering over his small square glasses. “I, ROBOT, NEXT ON YTV,” the announcer who lives in my grandmother’s TV states. Images of Will Smith and uncanny white robots flash across the screen, followed by a commercial for a pink Polly Pocket playset, complete with those chewy rubber clothes that were no match for me and my overbite.
Almost two hours (plus commercials) later, I think something along the lines of “Phew! Good thing this is fictional, and I probably won’t experience anything like this!” My mom comes to take me home in her golden grand caravan. I can’t help but think about the possible integration of robots—and their absolutely unavoidable revolution—a normal amount for a young girl (a lot). I say please and thank you to the Siri who lives inside my best friend's iPhone 4S, hoping she will spare me in the future.
A bit over 10 years later, now closer to I, Robot’s 2035 setting than to its actual release, the naive relief I felt as a not-yet-teenager dissipates more and more each day. To make matters worse, I am followed around by that god-forsaken image of Sonny, now a meme, that materializes every time I open any social media app. It reminds me that my reality is closer to this fictional piece of media than I ever thought it would be.
In this present moment, Artificial Intelligence at its best summarizes overly dense pieces of media literature and theory that I see every year of my degree (looking at you, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema). At its silliest, it makes me weird playlists that I never asked for—please look for your Gyat Mix on Spotify after reading. At its worst, it threatens my livelihood. I feel uneasy as I walk through my university’s subway station, a new Robocafé just installed, knowing I pay my rent making coffee. A new Coca-Cola commercial filled with fake landscapes, fake moose, and an eerie fake polar bear family leaves a bad taste in my mouth as I think about my peers, whose first industry jobs would have been in advertising.
It’s not that I’m scared of technological advancement, I just didn’t ask to be living in a time where it’s all happening so quickly; as though I’ve been launched into the future without being consulted first. And the fact that fiction is my only point of reference feels unfair. I hate to say that we are entering unprecedented times, but we are entering unprecedented times! That is, of course, unless you consider the many films about robots and AI to be prophetic. Was I supposed to know that these helpful robots would suddenly appear in my 20s, shopping for the Kardashians? I thought the only thing I was supposed to take away from I, Robot's almost 2-hour runtime was that being mixed-race (even if the races are human and robot) is hard, which honestly, I would have learned rather quickly anyways living in suburban Ontario.
I find myself reaching towards a slightly older Fresh Prince for reassurance. I wonder if Detective Del Spooner, born only 5 years before me, ever felt this way. Was he a 20-something year old dealing with the dread of an ever-growing technological landscape? Will I grow up to be a 37-year old, robot-hating, sarcastic, sideways micro-beanie-wearing cynic? Probably.
I’m somewhere between 8 and 11 years old. The back of my neck is covered in sweat; the kind that comes from an unexpected nap in the basement on my grandmother’s couch. My dad sits in a brown recliner next to me. It’s the third weekend of whatever month we’re in, and my dad plays sudoku, peering over his small square glasses. “I, ROBOT, NEXT ON YTV,” the announcer who lives in my grandmother’s TV states. Images of Will Smith and uncanny white robots flash across the screen, followed by a commercial for a pink Polly Pocket playset, complete with those chewy rubber clothes that were no match for me and my overbite.
Almost two hours (plus commercials) later, I think something along the lines of “Phew! Good thing this is fictional, and I probably won’t experience anything like this!” My mom comes to take me home in her golden grand caravan. I can’t help but think about the possible integration of robots—and their absolutely unavoidable revolution—a normal amount for a young girl (a lot). I say please and thank you to the Siri who lives inside my best friend's iPhone 4S, hoping she will spare me in the future.
A bit over 10 years later, now closer to I, Robot’s 2035 setting than to its actual release, the naive relief I felt as a not-yet-teenager dissipates more and more each day. To make matters worse, I am followed around by that god-forsaken image of Sonny, now a meme, that materializes every time I open any social media app. It reminds me that my reality is closer to this fictional piece of media than I ever thought it would be.
In this present moment, Artificial Intelligence at its best summarizes overly dense pieces of media literature and theory that I see every year of my degree (looking at you, Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema). At its silliest, it makes me weird playlists that I never asked for—please look for your Gyat Mix on Spotify after reading. At its worst, it threatens my livelihood. I feel uneasy as I walk through my university’s subway station, a new Robocafé just installed, knowing I pay my rent making coffee. A new Coca-Cola commercial filled with fake landscapes, fake moose, and an eerie fake polar bear family leaves a bad taste in my mouth as I think about my peers, whose first industry jobs would have been in advertising.
It’s not that I’m scared of technological advancement, I just didn’t ask to be living in a time where it’s all happening so quickly; as though I’ve been launched into the future without being consulted first. And the fact that fiction is my only point of reference feels unfair. I hate to say that we are entering unprecedented times, but we are entering unprecedented times! That is, of course, unless you consider the many films about robots and AI to be prophetic. Was I supposed to know that these helpful robots would suddenly appear in my 20s, shopping for the Kardashians? I thought the only thing I was supposed to take away from I, Robot's almost 2-hour runtime was that being mixed-race (even if the races are human and robot) is hard, which honestly, I would have learned rather quickly anyways living in suburban Ontario.
I find myself reaching towards a slightly older Fresh Prince for reassurance. I wonder if Detective Del Spooner, born only 5 years before me, ever felt this way. Was he a 20-something year old dealing with the dread of an ever-growing technological landscape? Will I grow up to be a 37-year old, robot-hating, sarcastic, sideways micro-beanie-wearing cynic? Probably.