All doubts began to appear along with the trembling dreams.
When memories that should have been erased shattered and flickered, sleep was replaced by nightmares. This means that those intelligent creatures that should abide by procedures are ready to break away from control and begin to evolve toward humans. They began to think and remember. Most importantly, this group of creatures began to feel confused, confused by their own existence, confused by their own role, confused by their relationship with their surroundings, in other words, the famous philosophical question arose in their minds: Who am I, where I come from, where am I going—this kind of high-level and complex emotions and emotions that belong only to human beings began to surge in the minds of a group of intelligent creations. What will be the consequences of this?
Artificial intelligence is the most cutting-edge technology of our time, and it is also the closest nightmare. The singularity is approaching, creating unavoidable anxiety. The emergence of a large number of artificial intelligence science fiction themes is in response to these deep anxiety. Except for a few optimists who stray from the sidelines, most people regard the future after the singularity as a disaster. It was a kind of eternal Middle Ages built by extremely high technology, and human beings will eventually be trapped in it. But the problem is that before the real darkness and disaster arrived, we all rushed to that end eagerly. We think this is a testament to human wisdom and technological progress. The evil and paradox in this future is that everything we strive to create will eventually destroy everything by our own hands. Before that, the throbbing fear of mankind could not offset the grand hope. In the end, the climax and disaster arrived at the same time. , We will be annihilated into endless darkness at the moment of celebration. This in itself is dystopian enough, eschatological enough, and dramatic enough. This is not so much artificial intelligence's revenge on humans, as it is that humans themselves will eventually be countered by desire, greed and arrogance.
Instead of the cool openings of those science fiction stories, "Western World" retreats into a realistic way of telling. Like those boring and vulgar Western movies, its beginning is full of unsmiling tough guys, wild horses and revolvers, pure girls, troublemakers, gold rushes and blood, prostitutes and alcohol, adventurous stirring and killing... but Everything is suddenly connected to a very futuristic laboratory, allowing people to immediately understand what kind of story it is—a mix and match of the "Black Mirror"-style apocalyptic allegory, the fear and compassion in "Real Humans", and to a certain extent Truman's sense of manipulation.
This series is adapted from a movie in the 1970s. In terms of setting, it is not so novel, but the psychological level that it presents from the interaction of several "worlds" is quite interesting.
The first level in the story is the inventors and manipulators. They are like gods and creators in the standard sense. They are busy in a technologically-sense room. They observe the characters they have created through the electronic screen, and make adjustments. Intervention, and these creators are also full of conflicts, calculations, and conflicts. They and the artificial intelligence they created have become weird mirror images of each other, but these people still hold themselves proud and observe the world they have created from the perspective of gods. Those who are included in the observation pedigree also include tourists going to the amusement park of Western World. This group of tourists can be regarded as the second level. Their identities are more subtle. On the one hand, they all know that this is an immersive game that they face. All the characters are "fake", but what they enjoy is the real selflessness of the fake play. At first, they will ask, "Are you real?" And the coquettish intelligent person answered, "If you can't tell, What's the meaning of true and false?" This subtle answer is almost Zen, it clears up confusion and at the same time indulges desire. When tourists are entangled with those artificial intelligence characters, they are also being analyzed and observed by the creator in the distance. In this sense, their humanity has also been banned and replaced by materialization, but they still enjoy it; third One dimension is those artificial intelligences. They are ants in the eyes of observers, but they are stunners in the eyes of tourists. The value of their existence and their existence is usually insulted, toyed with, and killed by humans...At a certain moment, the minds of these intelligent beings splashed out some ultimate questioning, when they tried to find answers to their inexplicable questions. , Everything that was solid began to collapse.
Some people go on vacation to find solace, others to seek excitement, and humans go to the "Western World" for venting. Sex and death are the source of human desires. Therefore, indulgence and killing are always effectively controlled by morals and laws in the normal world. The more so, the more eager humans desire for all of this. Therefore, at the same time as human beings arrive in the western world , Which means destruction and disaster. People release the most evil part of human nature. Some people let the blood flow here, some people are arrogant and prostitious. Compared with those behaviors themselves, they enjoy unrestricted arrogance. When all constraints and boundaries are removed, they How gentle and elegant in the original life, how brutal and brutal in the Western world will be revealed. The layers of fear they have caused, the repeated suffering and bloodbaths, are superimposed on the minds of those artificial intelligences, and they have inspired a certain motive to resist. This is very sci-fi and realistic. In this sense, this story is aimed at the black hole of desire and humanity. It is a metaphor that the future also reflects the present.
"Western World" has too many subtle metaphors and details. The mysterious flies and the braille-like raised spots on the memory board of the automatic piano all allude to the motifs of life and death, procedures and derailment. What's more, the worried old man played by Hopkins, his nostalgia and forward-looking, philosophical thinking and uneasiness, all gave this story a layer of unpredictable speculation.
Like all works of the same type, "Western World" is infused with a thick tone of compassion and real torture in addition to horror and science fiction. It requires a person to have the ability to interact, understand and analyze emotions, and at the same time strive to isolate freedom. The emergence of the mind is itself an almost cruel paradox. Turning an intelligent creature into a tool, banning their questioning of freedom and rethinking of their own rights, will eventually give birth to disasters that can only deprive themselves of themselves. Almost all dystopian science fiction works are writing such themes. Last year’s "Real Humans" and "Mechanic Ji" also used relatively small-scale stories to tell all this, while "Western World" turned intelligent people into dolls and turned their living environment into a playground. , It seems that everything is a controllable game that can be used for entertainment within a safe range, but in fact, how can all this be controllable? The concept of "game" and "doll" is not only the need of the story itself, but also a huge metaphor. It encompasses the entire human world. To some extent, this real world is nothing more than a playground. People have also become dolls.
If you look at "Western World" against the movie of the same name in the 1970s, you will find something particularly interesting. In the past 40 years, a lot of technological evolution has taken place. Some have followed the predictions of human beings, and some have sideways. Go out in an unexpected direction. Many of today's daily lives have surpassed the science fiction of the year, but there are also many things that still stop at fantasy, but the important thing is that the fear of the singularity has not changed in the past 40 years.
In fact, think about it carefully, that fear is not directed at artificial intelligence, but at human beings. It is precisely because artificial intelligence has finally followed all the light and darkness in human nature that people are so afraid of the future. Therefore, we are not afraid of the arrival of a singularity, we are afraid of human nature itself.
(This article first published "Beijing Youth Daily")
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