Do androids dream of a socialist utopia?

If androids come about, what will they do, and I guess, more pertinently to our human future, what will we do? 

My playthrough of Detroit: Become Human became a weeks-long moral ethical spiral that resulted in my drastic change of heart about technology and also sending a text asking if our toaster was sad. Let me explain. 

Detroit: Become Human is a 2018 game set in an imagining of 2038 Detroit where incredibly human-like androids live as subjugated workers obeying the commands of humans or the corporations that use them as free labour. Following the intense trials and at times unserious tribulations of three androids in crisis, the game is well known for evoking strong reactions in its players — particularly empathy. In an increasingly mechanised world, we have to ask whether empathy is a logical emotion to extend to a non-human thing, and what this means for our future with technology? And in a more self-serving light, I need to figure out if my future android toaster really would be sad. 

Ironically, while in Detroit: Become Human, humans are able to make the technology to build androids, our main downfall is evolutionary instinct; a common biological dictum of, ‘it has a face, we have to care about it.’ While the physicality of the androids isn’t the primary reason that we give them empathy, it certainly plays a significant role. Facial expressions, tone of voice, and even the presence of blood (albeit blue blood) all play a role in giving the androids a level of humanity that simply would not be present if they were a formless algorithm. When looking at the portions of the game where the police and army hunt and kill androids, much of the qualms faced by human characters is that they are killing what they see to be essentially human. If we get rid of that physicality, I think that the empathy we would have to any android would decrease despite the already humanising personalities, goals, struggles that each android has. At the very least, the storyline and action of the game would be significantly harder to follow if androids had no physical form. When robots and androids in the media are shown as threats they are rarely given a human body or appearance. The Matrix presents their androids as scary jellyfish, and iconic pop culture classic, M3GAN, Megan ends the movie fully queened out as a severed head. When she is being an evil menace, her human body is removed. Assigning empathy to machines is more often than not distinctly connected to having a face and body that you can relate to.

Image credits: screenshot from Detroit: Become Human (2018)

But in the case of Detroit: Become Human, our empathy extends beyond just physicality and biological instinct, moving into their social predicaments and actions.The androids, like a lot of us, are stuck in shitty jobs, working for mega-corporations who see us, in many cases, as subhuman. The somewhat socialist revolution of the androids under robot Che Guevara, Markus, is one that most left-leaning people can get behind. Moving outside of the fiction, I think the real reason why Detroit: Become Human caused such a moral-ethical spiral is because it forces us to question uncomfortable truths about humans, and what on earth we are actually good for. Just like how the debate about generative AI and ChatGPT in the creative world is less about AI itself and more about the value and role of creatives, the debate of androids is less about the androids themselves and more about the role of humans as a species. If androids come about, what will they do, and I guess, more pertinently to our human future, what will we do? 

With naive optimism, I know that if there truly was a new form of intelligent sentient life like the deviant androids of Detroit: Become Human there is enough reason to give them empathy in virtue of their own existence. However, addressing the tech bro-sized elephant in the room, there is a big difference between the technology we could make and the technology that actually ends up being made. In our current world, I can’t see a future where androids are made as anything other than the brainchild of Elon Musk, a little humanoid goblin whose goal is maximising profit and spreading hate speech. But if we leave our current world to the side and consider without fear the proposition of a sentient android, we have to recognise how cool that world could be. 

There are two quotes that I think round this out nicely. The first comes from an interview of the creator of Detroit: Become Human, David Cage, who, when asked about how plausible an android future would be, says, “Machines are going to tell us what we are. If they develop some form of consciousness, it will mean we’re just a machine that evolution has developed to a point where it becomes powerful enough to have a consciousness. But if machines never develop consciousness, maybe that will mean we’re more than that. Then we’ll need to ask ourselves, ‘Then what? What are we?’” 

The second comes before Detroit: Become Human, before AI, and before most cyberpunk came into existence, from Philip K. Dick (creator of Blade Runner, and author of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?) who, long before I was born or having this spiral, was at The University of British Columbia giving a talk on androids. He said, “Where do androids go after their death? But — if they do not live, then they cannot die. And if they cannot die, then they will always be with us. Do they have souls at all? Or, for that matter, do we?” 

Androids are humans and humans are androids because we are what makes them and they are a reflection of us. The question of whether any of us has a soul is too much to answer now, maybe come back in a few issues and ask me again. At any rate, I think I can say that androids probably dream of a socialist utopia for the same reasons we do.