{"id":31118,"date":"2015-07-27T06:02:58","date_gmt":"2015-07-27T10:02:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/?p=31118"},"modified":"2015-07-27T06:02:58","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T10:02:58","slug":"chappie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/religionprof\/2015\/07\/chappie.html","title":{"rendered":"Chappie"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a>\"\"I recently watched the movie Chappie<\/a>. It poignantly conveys a point that I also sought to get across in my chapter on \u201cRobots, Rights, and Religion\u201d in Religion and Science Fiction<\/em><\/a>: that what is most scary about artificial intelligences is that they will resemble us in all our shortcomings. But it also makes other crucial points \u2013 that children can receive love even from a family that is involved in crime,\u00a0that children can transform the lives of their parents, and that children can\u00a0achieve great things even in spite of the influences upon them in their formative years (or, in the case of Chappie, days).<\/p>\n

The movie is peppered with religious language, and I will survey some of it here. Hugh Jackman\u2019s character Vincent, the first time he sees Chappie, asks \u201cWhat in the name of the Lord?\u201d He later refers to Chappie as \u201cgodless monster\u201d more than once.<\/p>\n

A conversation about a\u00a0book called The Black Sheep<\/em> leads to discussion of the soul and afterlife \u2013 \u201cthe next place.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is discussion of how Deon, Chappie\u2019s\u00a0maker, made him in a body that will die in a few days. Why would a benevolent creator make a creation that is destined to die?<\/p>\n

The file used to cause the CPUs of the robotic officers to malfunction is called Genesis.dat.<\/p>\n

Before the big heist,\u00a0\u201cNinja\u201d bows before a gun, making the sign of cross.<\/p>\n

Chappie says he hates Vincent, the man who killed his mommy (Yolandi). Teaches him a lesson, beating him up, then says \u201cI forgive you bad man.\u201d<\/p>\n

Deon says at one point, \u201cWe don\u2019t know what consciousness is, so we can\u2019t move it.\u201d But Chappie uses the internet to figure out how to analyze his consciousness. Chappie tries to save his maker by transferring his consciousness to a new body, a police droid test dummy. It works, and Chappie says now he will live forever. Deon then finds a way to save Chappie, transferring his consciousness to the nearest police droid. We also learn that Chappie had made a back-up of his mommy\u2019s consciousness. When she is buried, Chappie promises to make her a new body. Although the robot program is halted at Tetravaal, Chappie hacks in and creates a body for his \u201cmommie,\u201d saying now they are both black sheep.<\/p>\n

Have you seen Chappie<\/a>? What did you make of its treatment of personhood, of crime prevention, and of religious themes<\/a>? And do you think that the film is mainly about artificial intelligence, or is it even more a message about families, love, and upbringing that has a message for how human children need to be cared for, however much it may also apply to AIs in the future?<\/p>\n

\"chappie_2015_movie-wide\"<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently watched the movie Chappie. It poignantly conveys a point that I also sought to get across in my chapter on \u201cRobots, Rights, and Religion\u201d in Religion and Science Fiction: that what is most scary about artificial intelligences is that they will resemble us in all our shortcomings. But it also makes other crucial […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":136,"featured_media":31131,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[86],"tags":[418,810,1723,1790,2870,3348,4287,6741,10169,10494,10500,13394],"class_list":["post-31118","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-science-fiction","tag-afterlife-theology","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-chappie","tag-children","tag-drugs","tag-family","tag-guns","tag-love","tag-religion","tag-robot","tag-robots","tag-violence"],"yoast_head":"\nChappie<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I recently watched the movie Chappie. 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