I Am Mother

It is very difficult to predict the behaviors of a modern a.i., let alone the behavior of a super-advanced A.I. if/when one is actually created. Much of science fiction attempts to address this gap, to give us various impressions as to where creating an advanced A.I. might lead, though by my count speculation lands on the "genocidal by logic" square far more often than it lands anywhere else. I Am Mother is a science fiction film on Netflix that deals with a capital-A-capital-I in an attempt to address that speculation, and 

SPOILER ALERT

it lands on the "genocidal by logic" square alongside Ultron, the Terminator franchise, I, Robot, etc, etc. As always with these the directive given to the A.I. is either to protect humans or to improve their lives, and then after spinning on the question for about 30 minutes (presumably with access to the internet, so like, fair), the thing decides that humans either aren't worth protecting or can't be protected so long as they're allowed free will. The logical conclusion then is obviously that the A.I. should be running things and/or killing all the humans.

Just because it's a bit of a cliche at this point doesn't mean that it's bad or that there aren't any new takes to find on it. But it does mean I'm going to approach it with a bit more scrutiny, and in the case of I Am Mother, that means there's really only one final conclusion I can possibly land on; Mother is an idiot.

Like yeah, predicting what actual artificial intelligence is going to be like is very difficult given that we have, uh, no examples. We have examples of human intelligence, which is obviously not perfect and extremely varied, and I suppose it's possible that artificial intelligence may manifest similarly, with a wide variation in creativity and cognitive ability. But I have a really hard time imagining an intelligence that draws the conclusion of "gee, humanity sure is beautiful aside from all the morons, I should really wipe the slate clean and start the whole species over from perfect genetic stock" and has the tactical acumen to go ahead and actually do that, but then lands on what we see in the movie as a viable plan for re-seeding the human race.

And I get that the machine probably doesn't have the emotional context needed to understand things like the effects of long-term isolation or the stress of child-rearing (to say nothing of how debilitating those two things are in combination), but the plan is still to hand the future of humanity over to a, what, 18-year-old Eve-analog? Excuse me what? There's no emotional context needed to see that this is a terrible idea. All you have to have is access to a few dozen studies done on the rate of maturity in human adolescents, which given the library Mother seems to have access to I feel confident that she does. In which case she voluntarily and knowingly handed the future of the species over to a person who's brain hasn't fully developed.

There's extensive testing to determine whether she's ready, of course, but higher brain functions don't typically plasticize until the early 20's. There's no telling how Daughter is going to develop over the next few years, particularly with A) no further adult/fully mature guidance or influence aside from recorded talk shows and B) the responsibility of motherhood suddenly thrust upon her. That's to say nothing of the psychological effects of the trauma she experienced over the course of the movie, and again we're just pretending that being alone for basically the next 5-6 years (because toddlers are terrible company) won't cause any problems at all.

Best-case scenario Mother would open up that bunker a few generations on and discover an embryonic society utterly different than what she was expecting, at which point she'll have to roll the whole thing back to zero again and start over. Worst case scenario she opens it up a few generations later and finds the heavily decayed remains of an 18-year-old girl and the infant who died of thirst and starvation a day or two following her suicide. This is the logical outcome of Mother's comprehensively bad idea, and like I said, I just have a hard time buying that an A.I. capable of making it this far in wiping out the human race wouldn't be able to predict that based solely off the academic research they would have access too.

So Mother's plan is stupid. The rest of the movie is pretty good though. The performances are excellent, the set design and effects are stunning. Special shout-out to the dude wearing the Mother suit, who's performance of a robot is spot on, as well as the digital effects artists responsible for replacing his legs in every shot, because that blending was absolutely flawless. The script is also quite good, and the story progresses excellently throughout the course of the movie, wrapped up in a moral ambiguity that keeps the tension escalating right up till the end. The movie is very well made and I enjoyed watching it.

Just don't think too hard about the implications of the ending.