Robots and doppelgangers that mimic the neural networks of nematodes are perceived as a threat to human self-identity, evoking physiological and emotional fears. This antipathy stems from the potential for AI-like beings to violate human identity.
Did you know about the pretty little nematode (scientific name Caenorhabditis)? It’s a worm-like creature about 1 millimeter long, and despite its name, it’s hardly “pretty”. But it’s “pretty” enough for many biologists because it has 959 cells, making it both complex and simple enough to study. This makes it the first multicellular organism for which all the structures of its neurons are known, and it is often used as a model for biological experiments. The nematode is an important model organism in life science research, especially in the fields of embryology, neuroscience, and cell biology. They also play an important role in aging research and help us understand human disease through genetic studies.
However, this seemingly biologist-only creature made headlines in 2014. A robot created by mimicking the nematode’s neural network, rather than an algorithm, showed a kind of “living” behavior that responded to the stimuli around it, such as avoiding obstacles and moving around. It’s interesting to see how people react to other robots modeled after the nematode. People reacted to the robot with words like “scary” and “frightening”. This phenomenon was also seen in the recent high-profile Go match between the AI program AlphaGo and the human player Lee Sedol. When Lee Sedol, a 9th-ranked Go player, lost a series of games to AlphaGo, many people said, “AlphaGo will eventually become ‘Skynet'” and “It’s scary.”
This kind of reaction is not only related to AlphaGo and the cute little nematode robot. There are many examples in movies and books, such as ‘The Terminator’, in which the supercomputer ‘Skynet’ rebels against humanity and wages war against humans, and ‘The Matrix’, in which AI dominates humans and humans rebel against it. Even in Karel Čapeko’s ‘ Rossum’s Universal Robot’, where the word ‘robot’ first appeared, robots are depicted as rebelling against humans. As such, it can be said that the antipathy toward artificial intelligence, or machines that act like humans, has been around for a long time.
This fear is similarly expressed when it comes to doppelgangers. Many sightings and horror stories about doppelgangers have been the subject of TV mysteries, and people perceive them as both intriguing and frightening, with people saying that doppelgangers will kill each other and that they will die if they meet. Some people have even committed suicide because they couldn’t bear the thought of their doppelganger destroying their psyche.
There are some similarities between the fear of doppelgangers and the fear of cute little nematode robots. First of all, they are both vaguely familiar to us. It’s unclear whether doppelgangers actually exist or are a figment of our imagination. Even when we see examples of doppelgangers on TV shows, there’s circumstantial evidence, but no scientific proof that they exist. This is the case with the little nematode robot. We know how they respond to stimuli and what they look like, but we don’t know how they’re actually programmed or how they work. All we can see is whether the “neurons” in each robot are firing.
Second, our fear of them is physiological and emotional rather than rational. Not many people give rational reasons for why they hate doppelgangers, or why they hate AI that thinks for itself. They’re just scared and dislike them. If I’m scared of my doppelganger, I should be scared of my twin, who has the same genes as me, but I’m not. There’s no clear rational reason for this antipathy. It’s the same with AI. Even if there is an A.I. that thinks like a human, there’s not much logical reason to hate it. The idea of an A.I. rebellion is just an idea for writers to make a good story, and there’s no rational reason to believe that an A.I. will rebel or is likely to rebel. On the contrary, the development of artificial intelligence should be welcomed as it will be able to effectively handle many tasks that humans find difficult to perform. For example, the development of AI could lead to self-driving cars and make life easier for people by reducing driving fatigue.
Finally, for both doppelgangers and AI, the more perfect they are, the more repulsive they are. In the case of doppelgangers, the “lookalikes”, which can be seen as a weaker version of doppelgangers, are actually a source of amusement. In many cases, the resemblance between celebrities or the appearance of a character that resembles a celebrity brings people pleasure. Similarly, the further away an AI is from humans, the less we like it. This is illustrated by the uncanny valley theory, which states that the more human-like a robot becomes, the more favorable it becomes, until a certain point is reached where it suddenly turns into a strong dislike. In reality, we are more interested in robots that walk like humans, such as HUBO, than automated robots used in factories.
In this sense, there are many parallels between our dislike and fear of doppelgangers and our dislike and fear of “perfect” artificial intelligence, as represented by the pretty little nematode robot and AlphaGo. From these similarities, we can infer that they have the same underlying causes. The physiological fear of doppelgangers is due to the fact that doppelgangers violate people’s identity. Self-identity is essential for people to live normally, and when it is compromised, people have trouble living “normally”. This self-identity is defined as “the important characteristics that distinguish me from other people” and includes my relationships, my appearance, my personality, etc. However, because the doppelganger is ‘exactly’ the same person as you, they will have the same important characteristics that define you: your appearance and personality. This makes it easy to be replaced by your doppelganger, which undermines the value of your existence.
Similarly, highly advanced artificial intelligence has the potential to disrupt human identity. If a nematode robot can be treated as one of the nematodes because it has exactly the same neural information as a nematode, shouldn’t the ‘human robot’ that will be created in the future after all the human neural information is interpreted be recognized as a person? Therefore, people will instinctively be opposed to AI as a defense mechanism to protect their identity.
