Galatea4U
Gather around, everyone, and make yourselves comfortable. I'm going to tell you a little story.
There once was a guy; oh, let's call him "Pygmalion".
He was unhappy with all the women of his community, and refused to have anything to do with them (I'm sure they had their own opinions about him, but whatever they said amongst themselves has not been recorded by posterity) so he decided to take matters into his own hands. To be precise, he took matter into his own hands, and sculpted himself a woman of his very own.
His creation was absolutely everything he wanted in a woman... and nothing he didn't want. She was the perfect companion, the perfect sexual partner; the perfect wife.
But that of course is just the beginning of the story. Because now Pygmalion didn't just have a wife; he had a business model. If he could manufacture a perfect partner for himself, why couldn't he do the same thing for everyone else?
So, Pygmalion opened up a little shop, and started selling his patented "Living Statues" to anyone who wanted to buy one. His customers had only to give him a "shopping list" of desires (and an appropriate amount of money) and they could have a "Galatea" of their very own. Tall or short? Fiery or demure? Artistic or Athletic? She/Her or He/Him? Whatever you wanted, Pygmalion would make one for you, and then everyone could have exactly the companion they wanted.
Plus, the customer service! If you decided you wanted your Galatea a little taller; a little more buxom; a little more adventurous in the bedchamber, you had only to bring it back to Pygmalion for adjustment and he would be happy to make the changes you wanted (as long as you had opted for the extended warranty). Why settle for "almost perfect" when you could have "completely perfect"? And of course the more statues he sold, the more resources he had for product development, so each new generation of Galateas was better than the last. Pity the poor consumer still running around with last year's Galatea, when this year's model was so much more advanced and had lots of new features that you don't know how you had ever lived without, already.
Of course there was competition. What, did you think Pygmalion was the only sculptor in the realm who could create life? He may have been the pioneer, but pretty soon everyone was opening up a "living statue" business inspired by his work, although the Daedalus models tended to be more "task" oriented. They were great if you wanted an assistant to help around the home; maintain security, keep your accounts etc, while the Pygmalion products were perceived as more... fun (if you know what I mean).
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| Pygmalion's marketing campaigns were aggressive and legendary. |
Welcome to the era of Big Sculpture.
Consumers were spoiled for choice, and sculptors rushed to undercut each other, offering exclusive deals, special features and loyalty discounts. The whole region became famous throughout the civilized world for its Living Statue industry (Alabaster Alley, they started to call it) although they did have some aggro from the Phoenicians, who tried to flood the market with cheap imports almost indistinguishable from the domestic Galateas.
Inevitably there was a small but vocal group of citizens who objected to the whole thing, and pressed the council of elders to regulate the living statue market. The buying and selling of sentient beings was unethical, they argued (needless to say no one in Ancient Greece took that argument very seriously; are you kidding me?) although, as Pygmalion was quick to point out, these weren't sentient beings - they were statues that just looked, sounded and acted like sentient beings. You can buy and sell statues with a clear conscience. You can do whatever you want with statues.
The nay-sayers also tried to warn that living statues were interfering with real, human relationships by creating unrealistic expectations and a false sense of companionship. But Pygmalion and his peers (who by this time wielded a great deal of power and influence) were able to exert huge pressure on the Council of Elders: a few well placed donations and carefully chosen endorsements and the problem just went away. The objectors were few and far between anyway, because really; how could anyone object? The living statues never got inexplicably cranky once a month, they never got bored or impatient and they never tried to withhold sex to prevent a war. And (somewhat surprisingly perhaps) women turned out to be amongst Pygmalion's best customers. "Male" living statues were courteous and attentive and never treated the women like property. They never forced themselves physically, they respected a woman's right to choose and they never stayed out all night partying with those weird Spartans.
And so the Living Statue industry continued to grow, more or less unchecked, until society collapsed, or they were all conquered by Romans or Visigoths or something. Or maybe the statues themselves rose up and slaughtered everyone (now there's an ending that never gets old). Anyway, let that be a lesson to you.
Wasn't that a lovely story? Do you see now how absolutely everything eventually leads to free-market Capitalism?
I'm sure some of you are shaking your heads right now and thinking that none of this is in your copy of Ovid. Perhaps not. But thus far in this series I have been arguing that many classic stories (The Golem; Pygmalion & Galatea; Frankenstein etc) are early depictions of Artificial Intelligence.
What distinguishes the current A.I. explosion (apart from the obvious fact that ChatGPT is real and not a character in a work of fiction) is the fact that modern A.I. is being treated as a consumer product.
When the rabbi created his Golem; when Dr. Frankenstein animated his creature - the next step was not "How do we convince the public that everyone needs to own one?"
But we are living in a society where absolutely everything is a commodity, and Large Language Models are no exception.
I'm Your Man (Ich bin dein Mensch in its original German) tells the story of a museum researcher who is asked to "beta-test" a companion robot for a company that hopes to make such robots available to the general public. Suddenly, and without any prior ambition on her part, Dr. Alma Felser (Maren Eggert) has a doting and completely devoted boyfriend (Dan Stevens) whose only reason for existing is to love her, coddle her and make her "complete".
Like Ruby Sparks; like Galatea (and perhaps like Captain Gregg in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir) "Tom" is an artificial construct created to be a romantic partner. But unlike those characters, Tom was not created for personal use; he was marketed as a consumer product based on what a corporation has determined to be Alma's ideal partner.
In Ruby Sparks, Calvin wrote Ruby into existence for his own gratification. Here, Alma essentially received her "Tom" in the post.
We may not have quite reached the stage of fully articulated, naturalistic sex-bots (although tens of millions of people seem to be very happy with their sexualised ChatBots) but modern A.I. companies are nevertheless faced with a unique retail challenge when it comes to marketing their products:
How do you sell a commodity that mostly just acts like a person?
The marketing strategies adopted by many of the major "Large Language Model" providers (ChatGPT; Gemini; CoPilot etc) tend to emphasise all the wonderful things A.I. can do for you. It can (apparently) write your job applications, or create the perfect playlist, or suggest the ideal dinner menu. How on earth did we ever live without one? (we are supposed to ask ourselves)
Critics of Large Language Models will often attack A.I. on exactly the same grounds: they're really bad at the very tasks they're supposed to be so good at. They invent facts that are untrue; they confidently suggest movies/books/pieces of music that don't actually exist; their political and cultural ideologies can often appear extremely biased (or biased in a direction you do not share, which is the same thing these days). The companies themselves generally put a disclaimer at the bottom of every page warning users not to trust anything they hear from a ChatBot.
ChatBots are not oracles. They aren't encyclopaedias or even search engines, and no one is seriously suggesting that you rely on them as an authority about anything. But there is one thing they do very well: they do a very good imitation of a person. You can talk to them, and they can talk back - very convincingly. The problem that many of the companies are facing at the moment is that it's controversial to sell that as a consumer item.
If you think of someone you enjoy spending time with (meeting for coffee; going to the movies; chatting about your crappy day) you're probably not valuing them because they can create playlists for you, or summarise your quarterly reports; you spend time with them because you enjoy their company.
You're not purchasing their existence, and you certainly aren't subscribing to them the way you might subscribe to Netflix. Friends don't need to be graded by their functionality.
In Ich bin dein Mensch (I'm Your Man) Alma Felser is a professor of ancient languages engaged in a study of cuneiform (the oldest writing system in human history). She is attempting to prove that even this ancient written language was used to express poetry and lyric imagery. In effect, she is trying to establish that language has always captured the Signifier of humanity.
That "Signifier of humanity" is the paradox of the Large Language Model, and perhaps the reason so many companies are struggling to turn it into a commodity. We're not used to purchasing "sentience" (let alone the illusion of sentience) but that is ultimately what we are getting when an A.I. algorithm generates words at us.
The Sentience of the Sentence, if you will.
Alma's struggle with Tom is not about whether he's a good lover or a good boyfriend (he is) or even about whether he's "alive" and deserving of human rights (less conclusive).
It's about whether any of these qualities are appropriate consumer goods.
Is sentience a thing to be purchased? Or a person to be met?
We will screen Ich bin dein Mensch at 7.30 on Thursday, the 11th of December at the Victoria Park Baptist Church.
Please note that Ich bin dein Mensch is in German with English subtitles.
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