Western Comics

Two Western comics I have picked out for to pitch against are Judge Dredd: Megacity Masters 01 and Hondo City Law. Although they are both in the same fictional universe, each book is different enough to enable a comparison. With both comics being set in two different megacities, they can give us a clear look at possible dangers that AI may pose.

The Judge Dredd universe is unique in that the cops in the cities also make the laws. In both Judge Dredd:  Megacity Masters 01  and Hondo City Law, there are many short chapters telling different stories—often not connected to previous chapters except for recurring of main characters. The two chapters that have depiction of AI to be analyzed are “The Law According to Judge Dredd” from Judge Dredd:  Megacity Masters 01  and “Deus X” from Hondo City Law.

The two stories share a similar depiction of AI:

Judge Dredd: Megacity Masters 01

Judge Dredd: Megacity Masters 01

Hondo City Law

Hondo City Law

In “The Law According to Judge Dredd,” a robot is convinced he is a good judge and looks up to Judge Dredd. He creates many nonsensical laws to his liking and proceeds to execute numerous people. We see the recurring theme in “Deus X,” where a terrorist organization uses destructive intelligent androids to promote human-turn-cyborg as the next mankind advancement. This is surely the darker side of the future of AI, but it reminds us that just as with humans, reasoning skills are not always used for making moral judgments.

For fictions that depict AI as being a violent unstoppable force of the future, Laws of Robotics comes into mind. In a city of millions, like Megacity 1, its denizens will feel more secured if they know AI-robots are walking around with a no-harm-to-human rule programed in (provided they aren’t already dealing with privacy concern posed by the likes of Jane and Pauline). Hopefully, future engineers will take human safety into consideration—but then, with such limitation, will truly-human AI ever be possible?