Evolutionary emotion of AI and subjectivity construction in The Windup Girl

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is man-made with the purpose of serving humans. An emotional machine is designed to meet the demands of human emotion. Science fiction and films provide many stories about the emotional development of AI/robots/androids/clones. This paper argues that there is an evolutionary emotional process for AI and that humans should finally accept the coexistence of humans and AI. Paolo Bacigalupi, in his novel The Windup Girl, provides clues regarding AI’s evolutionary emotions and subjectivity construction. The novel describes how one AI breaks away from rules designed to elicit obedience to develop herself as someone who knows the world in her own right. This paper explains the concepts of AI and its embodiment, concurs with emotional theorists in stressing the relationship between embodiment and emotion, and argues that there is an evolutionary emotional process in the character Emiko—the main character in The Windup Girl—in that it is bodily pain and a sense of humiliation that prompts her to fight back. She wrestles with the expectation of mere obedience rule and with her own hatred. Biopolitics, including patriarchy and anthropocentrism, eventually urges Emiko to become an independent entity. Finding and creating people like her enables Emiko to be a completely new and independent being. Inherited genes and an unjust social environment provide the impetus for Emiko to be the opposite of a human. My paper concludes with the view that accepting otherness is the key step for determining the relationship between humans and AI. To be just and caring toward others is the ultimate solution.