So I’ve been following this AI-Movie-related web game/experience/marketing ploy for the last month or two, and it’s really quite interesting at times. One of the recent updates has basically been something like 100 snippets of emotional things in the lives of 20 of the main characters… Some of it is sounds, some images, but mostly text… brief excerpts from conversations or a few paragraphs describing a particular thing they remember… It is put together in a compelling and interesting and complex way that could not have been discovered without many people working at once (there are over 3000 people in the collective that i am a part of, deciphering the puzzles)…
As I read through these snapshots of emotion, some for characters I am very familiar with that just help fill in the details, some for characters that are new to me or that were just mentioned briefly before that reveal a great depth that has been put into developing the world in which this story takes place through its characters. I noticed a moment ago as I read about something that caused sadness in a woman who was very much involved in the abolition of AI “slavery” in the future, that I was having a strong emotional response. That I felt like I wasn’t doing enough to allow Artificial life the freedom to choose. It was almost enough to get me to stand up, walk out, and go do something about it.
Then, as these feeling swelled up in me, I realized what was going on as I stared at a work of fiction relayed to me by a stranger, and in an incredulous tone I said aloud “I am having an emotional response.”
