Ghost in the Shell // Ghost is the Shell

While it is not rare for A.I. to cause existential anxiety amongst the wanderers, would human characteristics cause similar anxiety in A.I.?

In one of the episodes of Ghost in the Shell, the Tachikoma (autonomous AI mini-tanks) do not want their memories erased because it would mean they would ‘forget’ Batou – the human (cyborg) who cares for them as if they were more than machines. These are the same tanks that are technically incapable of experiencing ‘death’ or being ‘dead’ as a state. The robots experience existential uncertainty for what seems to be the first time. This is what is most admirable about anime, anything can happen. The background of Ghost in the Shell is essentially this - in 2029, almost everyone in Japan is connected to the cloud via cybernetic android bodies, including detective Major Kusanagi. In the 1995 film, she is tasked with finding a hacker named the Puppet Master, she learns that the hacker was originally a computer program that gained sentience. Over time, the Puppet Master learned about the nature of his existence, and his inability to reproduce or have a normal life. Technology has advanced to the point that false memories can be hacked and robots can build other robots. Major Kusanagi is a "ghost"— a human mind uploaded to and accessible through the cloud using her artificial body. She has superhuman strength and invisibility. She can also speak telepathically, access information, and even drive cars using her mind's access to the cloud.

Futurist and Google researcher Ray Kurzweil predicted that we'll be able to communicate telepathically using the cloud by 2030, just a year after the events of "Ghost in the Shell" take place. DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals brought out the reality of the moment that robots today still can't walk on two legs without collapsing midstep. The exponential increase in the dexterous nature of robots to be backflipping off high-rise buildings in just 15 years is still debatable the. On the other hand, MIT is currently building superstrong robots that can punch through walls but these robots aren't autonomous — they're controlled by a human wearing an exoskeleton. In the movie, a garbageman is convinced he’s helping a criminal in exchange for regaining custody of his daughter. But he later learns that his memories have been faked — he never had a wife or a daughter. Could hackers implant false memories? “Imagine when the internet is in your brain, if the NSA can see into your brain, if hackers can hack into your brain,” Shimon Whiteson, an A.I. researcher at the University of Amsterdam, said.

In the GitS episode, ‘The Laughing Man’, the namesake is an expert hacker who publicly assaulted head of Serano Genomics (a micro-machine company) for withholding a cyberbrain illness cure. He hacked the eye implants of all the spectators, replacing his face with a stylised logo, and this led to a series of copycat crimes all under the name of ‘The Laughing Man’ using this logo. The problem is addressed by references to J.D. Salinger’s ‘Catcher in the Rye’, especially Holden Caulfield’s constant criticism of phonies. The people constantly connected to the net are subject to total media saturation, and in a cybernetic context where the net may be accessed anywhere from within one’s own mind, this could result in a fusing of the real and digital worlds. Heim (1995) argues that through the development of ‘virtual reality’ “Life’s body is becoming indistinguishable from its computer prosthesis.” The difficulty of escaping this media saturation is shown during the last episode of series one (‘Stand Alone Complex’, 2006), as the Major runs her hand over the words “Fuck You” on the wall of the library where she meets the ‘original Laughing Man’ who stays there to be away from the world. This is a reference again to ‘Catcher in the Rye’, where Holden states:

“You can’t ever find a place that’s nice and peaceful, because there isn’t any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you’re not looking, somebody’ll sneak up and write ‘Fuck you’ right under your nose.” (Salinger, 1951)

Human displacement in future society blurs the boundary between the physical identity and virtual representation. When human minds are uploaded to artificial bodies, hyperreality gains massive importance. Hyperreality is an inability of consciousness to distinguish reality from a simulation of reality, especially in technologically advanced postmodern societies. Thus in the future, the primary source of pessimism and anxiety in A.I. could be rooted in our current human brains.

A live action film of Ghost in the Shell comes out next year - see the preview on Youtube