Japan
is, arguably, the most advanced in robotics country, so naturally their
manga—Japanese for comic—contain very striking depictions of AI in robotics.
The two manga being analyzed are well-received among manga readers: Chobits and Doraemon. Due to Doraemon
being canceled by Viz Media before any English volume was published, the post
will be utilizing scanlations provided by fans of the series. (For those never read manga before, they are read from right to left, which may take a short while to get used to).
In
the world of Chobits,
persocoms—personal computers—has become replacements for the computers we see
today. The story revolves around the protagonist finding a persocom disposed
near the trash, and the two embarks on an adventure to find out her past.
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| The manga's rendition of persocoms. |
Although
persocoms are very humanlike, they only function as how they were programmed. A
theme that is constantly brought up is human relationship between human and
robots. Below is the scene where one talented programmer lamenting the fact
that he cannot design a persocom to completely mirror his late sister. In
addition, he also warns the protagonist to not become too involved with robots.
It is also repeatedly
brought up by other characters, noticeably the protagonist, how human-robot
relationship can become complicated.
The
protagonist’s persocom, Chi, is however a “chobit”—a type of persocom that has
true AI capability, needing no preloaded programming, but she does need
learning just as a human infant would. The protagonist does eventually
(SPOILER) falls in love with Chi, giving the hope of love to other persocoms.
At this point, application to real life becomes murky. As the manga itself
repeatedly points out, can a relationship between human and robot goes too far?
If the answer is yes, then where do we draw the line of distinction between human and robot? If no, are
we really comfortable with a future where you will have to compete with robots
for love? As true AI-robot are not yet available, here is a clip that most closely resemble human-robot relationship:
The
other manga, Doraemon, is a great
classic. In fact, there is an allusion to Doraemon
in Chobits:
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Doraemon
is a robot cat from the 22nd century who travels back in time to
meet Nobita, his owner’s great-great-great-great-great-grandfather. Nobita is clumsy
and not very bright in school, but he is honest and has a good heart. Doraemon
and Nobita becomes best of friends and go through over 1,000 short stories,
with each one being a life lesson to the reader. The analysis, however, won’t
be on the Doraemon-Nobita relationship—this long story does a better job at
depicting human-robot relationship:
In
the story, Doraemon and gang travels to a different planet in the future in a
different dimension (the usual Doraemon plot
device to introduce a new setting). On this planet, humans and robots
historically live peacefully together, but their queen is planning to modify
all robots and remove their emotions, rendering them just tools.
Being a children’s
manga, the story gives us a light-hearted depiction to the more serious
question: should robots remain tools, even when AI technology is advanced
enough to give them emotions, or should they be our friends?
The
two different types of human-robot relationships Chobits and Doraemon
depict seem to have the similar conclusion that human should indeed treat
intelligent robots as equals, but will we be able to tolerate such relationship
in our future?
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