The Real Empathy Test: The Moral Limits of Blade Runner’s Vision

Author: Andrew Johnson

Field of Study: Accounting

Program Affiliation: Source Project Research Program

Faculty Mentors: Will Glovinsky

Easel: 10

Timeslot: Afternoon

Abstract: Cultural depictions of artificial intelligence have been overwhelmingly gloomy, with films and novels regularly predicting that AI models will start wars, undermine humanity, and cause economic havoc. Key films from the 1980s such as Tron (1982) and The Terminator (1984) present versions of this black-and-white narrative of humans versus artificial intelligence. Scholars such as David Desser have suggested that Blade Runner, released in 1982, offered a different, more sympathetic perspective of AI with its sensitive, fugitive, and curiously mortal android “replicants.” But does Blade Runner truly present a new perspective, or does it simply reconstruct the same narrative of humanity’s inability to coexist with AI in a more cerebral and empathic way? While Blade Runner at the surface appears to sympathize with artificial intelligence, the film still ultimately comes to the conclusion that humans and AI cannot coexist as long as human beings believe themselves to be superior.