At the time when the general public was discovering ChatGPT, horror movie fans were rushing into theaters to discover the latest gem from Blumhouse: M3gan (pronounced Megan).
Pretty doll
We have seen several horror films based on dolls. We will obviously cite the saga of Chucky, the three Annabelles, but also Robert or even The boy. Common point: these stories had their sources in demonic possessions. M3gan changes this genre: the doll is an entirely human creation. There is no demon, no serial killer addicted to “Voodoo for Dummies”, just a robotics engineer, who works in a toy company.
That’s what makes the story so compelling: the story could take place a few years from now. After all, Japanese hospitals have implemented robots to help nursing staff with these daily tasks. It seems that for the moment, the experiment is not conclusive. However, what will it be in ten years?
We envisaged robotics as a support for human, mechanical and alienating activity. For some, we can delegate the most boring tasks to robots, as long as they are well configured. This would lighten the burden of work, reduce the resulting suffering and, why not, improve productivity.
Robots and men
We also saw the emergence of sex robots, Black Mirror had already more or less outlined the thing in its first season. The novelty, with M3gan, is the use of a robot to fill the emotional gap of a child.
Following a car accident, Cady becomes an orphan. His aunt Gemma becomes his guardian. Thirty-year-old overwhelmed and passionate about her work, she doesn’t know how to handle a child, even less a child who has just lost her parents and who finds herself forced to move to another state, thus losing all her bearings.
To help him emotionally, Gemma brings out a project scrapped by her superior: a mechanical doll, with very advanced learning capabilities. Cady takes a liking to M3gan, who becomes a true friend, but also a kind of mother. Little by little, Cady blossoms. Unfortunately – or rather fortunately, because we are still watching a horror film – things are going to go very wrong.
Technological anticipation
Why connect ChatGPT to M3gan? In the film, it is about artificial intelligence and the doll’s potential to learn on its own, like most applications we use today. However, the film gets ahead of technological reality and if you are a daily user of ChatGPT, you know exactly where the limits are.
The democratization of ChatGPT or Google Bard has unfortunately meant that the answers are becoming more and more stupid. Depending on the options and requests, the answers provided are increasingly eccentric. We had already noticed that ChatGPT was completely inventing certain elements. Bard does not necessarily do better, as evidenced by a personal research project.
As part of the Arcadia Project, I am working on a type of comparison of national parliaments. Simple question asked to ChatGPT and Bard: what is the parliamentary allowance of a German MP? Both tools ended up responding that individuals’ remuneration was an element of privacy and that they were not able to provide the information. In reality, the remuneration of a parliamentarian is perfectly public information, which is intended to be accessible to everyone. As for the information itself, it was on one of the Bundestag web pages. Suffice it to say that I did not continue my research attempts with ChatGPT and Bard. I went back to the old way of journalism, which was talking to people.
Lack of context and outlandish answers
In a sense, this failure is very reassuring. Some companies have decided to liquidate part of their workforce, to replace them with artificial intelligence tools. We understand the movement, but it remains quite stupid. We keep repeating it: IT, in the very general and very global sense, is only a tool. It must be configured, maintained, used to remain relevant and for that, it still needs humans. When it comes to information, without humans, there is no information. Let us return to the example of the compensation of members of the Bundestag.
It is €10,591.70 gross per month. This may seem like a lot. But, did you know that it is almost automatically indexed to average salaries in Germany? There are specific calculation rules, which provide context to the information. However, at present, neither ChatGPT nor Bard are capable of providing context. Moreover, the answers given to the question “Why do German MPs earn €10,591.70 per month?” » are false.
In the film, M3gan learns on her own, without any errors – well, almost, you will understand when watching the film – and ends up becoming completely autonomous. The film is far ahead of our technological capabilities. Beyond the technical question, there is an ethical question in the film.
Cady has lost her parents and her bearings and the doll fills this gap that Gemma cannot yet provide. Unlike current dolls or toys, M3gan looks like a real person and can do just about anything a human would do. The question is whether this is desirable.
We were already asking ourselves these types of questions for sex robots, but we are talking about adults. What will be our reaction to toys that would be capable of supplanting humans among children? That’s the beauty of this film. It is very well shot, well written, well played, but it also pushes us towards certain reflections that we would not have thought of.
For the moment, the film is available on DVD and we recommend it for Halloween, especially for the bonuses. You will see how the technical team worked to create M3gan. It’s as interesting and fascinating as the film itself.