Abstract
Artificial intelligence (AI) is man-made with the purpose of serving humans. An emotional machine is designed to meet the demands of human emotion. Science fiction and films provide many stories about the emotional development of AI/robots/androids/clones. This paper argues that there is an evolutionary emotional process for AI and that humans should finally accept the coexistence of humans and AI. Paolo Bacigalupi, in his novel The Windup Girl, provides clues regarding AI’s evolutionary emotions and subjectivity construction. The novel describes how one AI breaks away from rules designed to elicit obedience to develop herself as someone who knows the world in her own right. This paper explains the concepts of AI and its embodiment, concurs with emotional theorists in stressing the relationship between embodiment and emotion, and argues that there is an evolutionary emotional process in the character Emiko—the main character in The Windup Girl—in that it is bodily pain and a sense of humiliation that prompts her to fight back. She wrestles with the expectation of mere obedience rule and with her own hatred. Biopolitics, including patriarchy and anthropocentrism, eventually urges Emiko to become an independent entity. Finding and creating people like her enables Emiko to be a completely new and independent being. Inherited genes and an unjust social environment provide the impetus for Emiko to be the opposite of a human. My paper concludes with the view that accepting otherness is the key step for determining the relationship between humans and AI. To be just and caring toward others is the ultimate solution.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
See the journal Neohelicon, which published a special issue (2022) on “AI emotion in science fiction.”
References
Ana, J. S. (2015). Racial feelings: Asian America in a capitalist culture of emotion. Temple University Press.
Asimov, I. (2004). I, Robot. Bantam Books.
Asma, S., & Gabriel, R. (2019). Evolutional mind: The affective roots of culture and cognition. Harvard University Press.
Bacigalupi, P. (2009). The windup girl. Night Shade Books.
Badmington, N. (2004). Alien chic: Why have we fallen in love with aliens? Routledge.
Braidotti, R. (2009). Animals, anomalies, and inorganic others. PMLA, 124(2), 526–532.
Braidotti, R. (2013). The posthuman. Polity Press.
Braidotti, R. (2019). A theoretical framework for the critical posthumanities. Theory, Culture & Society, 36(6), 31–61. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276418771486
Cave, S., Dihal, K., & Dillon, S. (2020). AI narratives: A history of imaginative thinking about intelligent machines. Oxford University Press.
Columbus, C. (1999). Bicentennial man. [Film]. Buena Vista Pictures.
Damasio, A. (1994). Descartes’ error: Emotion, reason, and the human brain. Putnam Books.
Darwin, C. (2009). The expression of the emotion in man and animals. Penguin Classics.
Demos, E. V. (1995). Exploring affect: The selected writings of Silvan S. Cambridge University Press.
Dijkhuizen, J. F., & Enenkel, K. (2009). Construction of physical pain in early modern culture. Brill.
Ferguson, A. (2010). The sex doll: A history. McFarland & Company.
Hageman, A. (2012). The challenge of imagining ecological futures: Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl. Science Fiction Studies, 39(2), 283–303. https://doi.org/10.5621/sciefictstud.39.2.0283
Hayles, N. K. (1999). How we became posthuman. The University of Chicago Press.
Hermann, I. (2023). Artificial intelligence in fiction: between narratives and metaphors. AI & Society, 38, 319–329. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-021-01299-6
Hpuuertz, B. (2019). Approaches to psychic trauma: Theory and practice. Rowman & Littlefield.
Ishiguro, K. (2022). Klara and the sun. Vintage.
Jonze, S. (2013). Her. [Film]. Annapurna Pictures.
Kövecses, Z. (2000). Metaphor and emotion: Language, culture, and body in human feeling. Cambridge University Press.
Lemke, T. (2011). Biopolitics: An advanced introduction. New York University Press.
McEwan, Ian. (2019). Machines like me. Deckle Edge.
Miccoli, A. (2010). Posthuman suffering and the technological embrace. Lexington Books.
Nielsen, W. C. (2022). Motherless creations: Fictions of artificial life, 1650–1890. Routledge.
Plutchik, R. (2000). Emotions in the practice of psychotherapy. American Psychological Association.
Plutchik, R., & Kellerman, H. (1980). Theories of emotion. New: Academic Press.
Roden, D. (2015). Posthuman life: Philosophy at the edge of the human. Routledge.
Rutsky, R. L. (1999). High techne: Art and technology form the machine aesthetic to the posthuman. University of Minnesota Press.
Spielberg, S. (2001). A.I. Artificial intelligence. [Film]. Warner Bros. Picture & Dreamworks Pictures.
Straetz, J. (2017). The struggle of being alive: Laboring bodies in Paolo Bacigalupi’s The Windup Girl. Current Objectives of Postgraduate American Studies, 18(1), 1–21.
Tegmark, Max. (2017). Life 3.0: Being human in the age of artificial intelligence. Alfred A. Knopl.
Vint, S. (2021). Biopolitical futures in twenty-first-century speculative fiction. Cambridge University Press.
Wall, P. (2000). Pain: The science of suffering. Columbia University Press.
Wosk, J. (2015). My fair ladies: Female robots, androids and other artificial Eves. Rutgers University Press.
Yanay, N. (2013). The ideology of hatred: The psychic power of discourse. Fordham University Press.
Zukauskaite, A., & Wilmer, S. E. (Eds.). (2015). Resisting biopolitics: Philosophical, political, and performative strategies. Routledge.
Funding
This paper is sponsored by 2022 China National Project of Humanities and Social Science (22BZW175).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
About this article
Cite this article
Jiang, Y. Evolutionary emotion of AI and subjectivity construction in The Windup Girl. Neohelicon (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-023-00723-8
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11059-023-00723-8