Signing you in

“An intense feeling of deep affection or fondness for a person or thing.” That is the definition of love in the gigantic eighth edition of the Oxford dictionary lying at my house. Its online counterpart has expanded the meaning with multiple additions, one of them being “arising from a recognition of attractive qualities, from natural affinity, or from sympathy and manifesting itself in concern for the other’s welfare and pleasure in his or her presence”. While these definitions are made with humans in mind, it makes one wonder whether the affection, sympathy, and concern born out of love are accessible only to us simply by virtue of being human or have we just assumed it to be so?

“The human heart. Do you think there is such a thing? Something that makes each of us special and individual?” When I read this question put up to Klara, an Artificial Friend (AF) in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (2021), it prompted me to think about what is it that ‘makes us human’. Our ability to feel different emotions, but more importantly, our capacity to introspect and form cultures which pass down such complex knowledge is what sets us apart. But constant evolution has left the biological body far behind, and as technology enhances our everyday lives, we cannot claim anything as inherently human. Kazuo Ishiguro, the British author, explores this idea in the majority of his works, bringing in technology in a way that throws light onto our loss of humanity in the quest to become better, superior beings.

Klara and the Sun is a story about Klara, an Artificial Friend (AF), a cyborg designed to be a companion for young teenagers. It’s eerily reminiscent of how people have started using AI chatbots as a substitute for relationships in the real world. In Ishiguro’s world, genetic improvements for children are the norm and AFs like Klara are manufactured to provide primarily for children – to be a plaything, a servant, or just a symbol of having acquired the latest technology. Josie chooses Klara out of all the machines present because she feels a certain affinity with her. But her mother, Chrissie, buys Klara as much for herself as for her daughter.

Having lost a daughter earlier to the process of gene-editing, Chrissie is trying to find an exact replacement for Josie. Klara realises the complexity involved, and goes beyond the behaviour she was programmed to perform by risking her own functioning to save Josie’s life. She displays genuine emotions, that do not arise from a beating heart, but through the constant acts of care and compassion that Klara observes and performs till the very end.

While AI continues to reduce critical thinking in the public sphere, the firms themselves have started hiring philosophers. Their job is to improve overall reasoning in the model by integrating human values, which will help in solving ethical and moral dilemmas. Although this has suddenly opened up a new job role for philosophers, it raises concerns regarding our increasing reliance on AI to make moral judgements.

Do we really need a model that is training itself on centuries of human behaviour, or do we just need to return to the values of compassion, care, and loyalty that are becoming increasingly rare in today’s times? It will take a long time for us to develop cyborgs that are as advanced as Ishiguro’s, but his depiction of robotic beings displaying more empathy and concern for their loved ones than their human counterparts should make us reflect on our own relationship with technology.