Mortality and Reasoning in Plato's Theories as Well as The Movie Artificial Intelligence

When examining the movie A.I. or “Artificial Intelligence”, the audience is subjected to the questions “What is considered life?” or “Do we know what life is?”. Although this movie is considered science fiction, A.I. is an actual concept and practice that is being implemented on computers and robots. A.I. brings some important issues to the table concerning morality and ethics. In fact, A.I. is a cinematic representation of philosophies greatest theories. However, one major fact about this movie is irrefutable and self-evident. This fact is that logic and emotion can never be overshadowed or replaced by artificial intelligence or A.I. and that “David” the main character in this movie is not a human being. This fact can be proven by several of “Plato’s” theories about mortality and reasoning as well as several of the scenes in the movie A.I.

Plato discusses what “love” really is in his book “The Symposium”, in an attempt to explain the phenomenon. According to the “Book of Life”, Plato saw that “the underlying fantasy of love is that by getting close to this person, you can become a little like they are. They can help you to grow to your full potential” (Book of Life). In the movie A.I., “David” desperately wanted to experience the sensation of love from his non-robot parents. Unfortunately, this “love” would go unrequited and David could not understand this occurrence. The scene in which David’s adoptive mother “Monica” abandoned him in the forest was a perfect example of his emotional neglect. According to Plato, “you couldn’t really love someone if you didn’t want to be improved by them” (Book of Life). This appears to be the case for the Swinton family, because David heavily affected their quality of life by being a social anomaly. His “family” saw him as nothing more than a robot or an appliance.

Upon close observation, the audience can see that every robot in the movie “A.I.” served a specific purpose. This purpose could range anywhere from childcare to sexual gratification. However, love was not a task that these robots could truly perform. According to Plato, true love does not go unrequited and it enhances a person’s quality of life. Love is a purely human emotion and although David had much affection for his “mother”, he did not technically love her because he had no true emotional intelligence. David Swinton from “A.I.” was not a human being because he could not love.