D.A.R.Y.L. (Data-Analyzing Robot Life Form) is by all accounts a young boy--an extremely gifted and odd young boy, but still a young boy. The military has developed him as a weapon but the scientists working on him see him as more than that. Unlike most A.I. movies or movies about machine consciousness, Daryl (Barret Oliver) is made of organic tissue. Even a doctor cannot tell he's a lab creation without a brain scan.
The movie never goes into how he was created. Was he a test tube baby infused with a computer chip? In other words, was he 100% human with the benefit of some technological advancements? Or was he 100% artificial but of such a quality so as to develop just like a normal little boy and fool even doctors? I'm not sure but I tend to believe the former.
I think the answer to what kind of creation he was helps to answer the main question of the movie: was Daryl human?
D.A.R.Y.L. was really about the computer-age old question of what is human? I think D.A.R.Y.L. challenged that question even more than other movies about conscious machines because he was an organic carbon-based life form. To dispose of him wasn't like disposing of a David (A.I.), or a Vicky (Small Wonder), or a T-800 (Terminator 2) who were all human looking but pure machine underneath the human exterior. Even destroying one of them would be difficult for the human psyche just because of their appearance, so what about a boy who has a beating heart and bleeds like we bleed?
In general, we have a problem destroying/killing anything that has life. It gets harder if that thing has intelligence. It gets exponentially harder if it has consciousness (meaning it knows it's alive and experiences human emotions). And it becomes virtually impossible when a thing has all of the aforementioned and looks human. Daryl had life, intelligence, consciousness, and the anatomy and biology of a human. So, did that one microprocessor in his brain prevent him from being considered human? That was an issue wrestled with between scientists in the movie, but I'm willing to bet that every viewer was saying: "He's a little boy! You can't kill him!"
Did we have the same sentiment for David (Haley Joel Osment) in A.I.? I know I did. Going even further away from humanness, did we have the same sentiment for Chappie (Chappie) or Johnny 5 (Short Circuit)? I know I did. It's something about a thing that experiences love, hate, fear, and other emotions--as well as being innocent--that draws us to preserving it. I mean shoot, how many of us feared the toys would die near the end of Toy Story 3? Anything given human emotions we have a soft spot for. Unless they're trying to kill us.
I love the robot consciousness movies even if I don't consider D.A.R.Y.L. amongst them. Daryl was special and I would simply consider him upgraded but no doubt human.
The movie never goes into how he was created. Was he a test tube baby infused with a computer chip? In other words, was he 100% human with the benefit of some technological advancements? Or was he 100% artificial but of such a quality so as to develop just like a normal little boy and fool even doctors? I'm not sure but I tend to believe the former.
I think the answer to what kind of creation he was helps to answer the main question of the movie: was Daryl human?
D.A.R.Y.L. was really about the computer-age old question of what is human? I think D.A.R.Y.L. challenged that question even more than other movies about conscious machines because he was an organic carbon-based life form. To dispose of him wasn't like disposing of a David (A.I.), or a Vicky (Small Wonder), or a T-800 (Terminator 2) who were all human looking but pure machine underneath the human exterior. Even destroying one of them would be difficult for the human psyche just because of their appearance, so what about a boy who has a beating heart and bleeds like we bleed?
In general, we have a problem destroying/killing anything that has life. It gets harder if that thing has intelligence. It gets exponentially harder if it has consciousness (meaning it knows it's alive and experiences human emotions). And it becomes virtually impossible when a thing has all of the aforementioned and looks human. Daryl had life, intelligence, consciousness, and the anatomy and biology of a human. So, did that one microprocessor in his brain prevent him from being considered human? That was an issue wrestled with between scientists in the movie, but I'm willing to bet that every viewer was saying: "He's a little boy! You can't kill him!"
Did we have the same sentiment for David (Haley Joel Osment) in A.I.? I know I did. Going even further away from humanness, did we have the same sentiment for Chappie (Chappie) or Johnny 5 (Short Circuit)? I know I did. It's something about a thing that experiences love, hate, fear, and other emotions--as well as being innocent--that draws us to preserving it. I mean shoot, how many of us feared the toys would die near the end of Toy Story 3? Anything given human emotions we have a soft spot for. Unless they're trying to kill us.
I love the robot consciousness movies even if I don't consider D.A.R.Y.L. amongst them. Daryl was special and I would simply consider him upgraded but no doubt human.