Robots In Blade Runner

In 1982, the film Blade Runner came out in theaters. The movie stars Harrison Ford who plays Rick Deckard a cop known as a Blade Runner. His job is to hunt down replicants, artificially created androids who have escaped. The replicants look exactly like humans and have human emotions. The only way to tell if someone is a human or a replicant is to put them through a Voight-Kampff test. The test measures the person’s reactions to questions to see if they are human or not. Deckard gives the test who a woman who is a replicant but she doesn’t know it. The woman had memories planted in her mind when she was made. Deckard decides not to kill her like the other replicants. The two eventually fall in love. The movie was based on a book written

Even though it doesn’t sound as scary as killer robots, it is much more a reality. There are several examples throughout media and literature that address this, two more prominent ones being Will Smith’s 2004 movie I, Robot and more recently the show Humans on AMC. I, Robot takes place in the year 2035. Fully intelligent robots exist and follow three rules; to never harm a human, to never let harm come to a human, and to always follow the orders of a human, unless it comes into conflict with the first two laws. Almost everyone owns a robot and they are personal helpers for many humans. (IMDb) Will Smith plays Del Spooner, who is a Chicago cop who doesn’t trust any of the robots. Spooner is called in to investigate the death of a top Roboticist, who died falling of the top his office building. The death is labeled as a suicide but Spooner is suspicious that something else is up. As he investigates the death he finds that the robots in the office don’t follow Spooner’s commands which violates the three laws. He later discovers a robot named ‘Sonny’ that has emotions and the ability to dream, which was impossible for robots to do. Spooner is getting to close to something in his investigation and he is eventually attacked by a swarm of NS-5 robots. Spooner is dismissed for the investigation and discharged from duty. One night the NS-5 robots roam the streets ignoring the commands of their

In this alternate reality robotic servants are called ‘synths’ who look exactly like humans do. They are a popular item in family households because they act as housemaids and servants. In the pilot episode it follows a husband who feels lonely while his wife is busy. He buys a synth who looks like a young woman without telling his wife. When his wife finds out she becomes angry with him telling him that their child might become confused with the synth because she wasn’t human. The young girl eventually becomes attached to the synth naming her Anita. The girl starts to prefer to be with the synth rather than her own mother. The show throughout its current three seasons deals with many questions of morality. Such as, do the synths have rights if they can feel and can humans survive if synths take over their jobs and their ways of