18

When My Gameboy Became Self-Aware

DAVID DEGGINGER

Finn and Jake are walking through a long, grassy field together after saving yet another princess from the clutches of the Ice King. Finn turns to Jake as they stride toward the treehouse, “Hey, Jake . . .”

“Yeah, buddy.”

“I was just thinking, what does it mean to be alive?”

“Have you been eating nachos before bed again? It always makes you all existential and junk,” Jake replies, making a face.

“No, for real, Jake,” Finn pounds his fist into his palm for emphasis, frowning. “The idea has been stuck in my dome piece for days.”

Jake, now looking like he’s eaten a bad burrito, ventures, “Well, I don’t know. I guess being alive is about having a heart and lungs and blood and guts and junk.”

“Yeah, . . . I guess.” Finn’s young brow furrows deeper as he gets to his real worry . . . “But what about Beemo, then? Is he alive, too? He doesn’t have a heart and guts and all that bizz, but he seems alive to me. He hangs out with us and skateboards and laughs at my jokes. . .” Finn’s question hangs in the air between the two friends.

“Cabbage.”

The two heroes walk on in silence, hoping to slay something soon.

In a land filled with talking animals, talking inanimate objects, and candy people, it seems almost ludicrous for us to question the consciousness of Beemo. So, why is there a dogma in popular culture that only organic beings can be fully conscious?

It’s strange that we’re easily willing to accept that a radioactively enhanced dog can be fully conscious, but with Beemo we’re skeptical. Yet we are. It seems odd to argue that a Gameboy could be a person, but Beemo appears to be just that. Everyone in the Land of Ooo seems to be completely capable of accepting Beemo’s wishes to be treated like a person, but even Finn and Jake chuckle at her often futile imitations when she play-acts at being a boy or a hard-boiled detective.1

You may think that Beemo is simply a complex machine and nothing more, but I’m going to prove that Beemo is human in all the aspects that truly matter. She demonstrates all the factors that make us human persons like 1. intelligence and 2. consciousness. So, if we determine that she’s alive and conscious, and if we can at least entertain these ideas, what do we make of the fact that Beemo believes she is a person? She pretends to eat, drink, sleep, brush her teeth and pee in the toilet but does Beemo’s belief in her own personhood make her a person?

Do Robots Dream of Electric Dogs?

Beemo’s not the only robot on the show that has some capabilities of interacting. There is Neptr (Never Ending Pie Throwing Robot), a machine that Finn haphazardly constructs in order to do an elaborate prank on Jake (to be fair, he did start it; throwing a bag of butter on someone is a pretty good gag). If we compare Beemo to Neptr, there is a distinctive difference between their mindsets that makes Beemo, at least, more human-like. There’s an episode where Neptr says to Beemo “we should hang out more, we are both robots,” Beemo replies “No Neptr, I am not like you.” Whoa . . . Burn!

But why does Beemo feel the need to make that distinction between herself and her metallic comrade? Well here’s part of it. . . . Neptr lives to serve his creator while Beemo can be defiant and creative. Beemo doesn’t want to be seen as a robot because she truly believes that’s not who she is. She thinks she’s something more than Neptr; she’s more than a robot.

Remember those robot dogs that did flips and barked? They have a set programming with instructions on what they are capable of doing. Beemo is not your average robot. She is not a flashdrive of fixed information; in fact, she’s the opposite. She learns how to act and be a person through observation much like a human child does. She is constantly gaining new knowledge. She is kinda like if your six-year-old cousin became fused with a Gameboy. You know, the cousin that everyone wonders if she’s going to end up being normal.

Being Itself: Is Beemo Even Alive?

I know what you’re thinking: “How can a machine be alive? That don’t make a lick of sense.” But there are many living things in the Land of Ooo that don’t exist in our own world, so suspend your disbelief a little bit further. Sure, there are plants and animals in Ooo but some can talk! There are also some plants that do not move or talk; however, we know that they are ‘living.’ So, what does it mean to be alive? Some would say life is based in cells—little organic cogs that allow the living animal or plant to function. But, if we look at a character like Beemo, we may want to consider the possibility that there must be other things that factor into what constitutes life. She just seems to be so alive.

Robert Pepperell has argued that life is not necessarily defined by biology. Life is about a motivated meaning which means that living things need to be aware of their environment in order to survive and sustain their life and it is their ability to carry out these needs that makes them alive. Taking Finn as an example, it’s clear that he knows that in order to survive he needs to eat food, drink water, and defend himself from things that may harm him. In order to eat and drink, Finn needs to know where to get these necessities otherwise he will die and that wouldn’t be very math. Even plants do this. They grow in areas where they can get sunlight and water and the ones that survive are ones that are hard to be eaten by predators.

I know what you are you are thinking. “Okay, smart guy, you have proven to me that things I know to be alive are alive but I am not swayed on this talking Gameboy you keep bringing up!” But, seriously, Beemo has motivated meaning too! She displays an understanding of her environment and how to manipulate it in order to survive. Unlike other machines which simply power down if not provided a fuel source, Beemo changes her own batteries because she understands that they are what keep her functioning. We’ve seen her do it! She picks up a pair of batteries and places them in just the right spot. Then, she takes out her batteries and falls directly onto the new ones as she powers down.

Beemo is also aware of the difference between helpful and harmful beings; in one instance, she’s abducted by a giant bird which attempts to feed her to its young. Beemo understands that this is not a desirable scenario for her to be in so she escapes. This may not seem like a big deal, but I don’t see your laptop inching away from the mug of coffee you set maliciously next to it. If we can accept that Beemo has motivated meaning then we should accept that Beemo is, at the very least, alive and not an inanimate object, even though she has a very different kind of biology. But that doesn’t necessarily mean she is conscious in the same way that humans are.

Consciousness and All That Bizz

Consciousness is a tricky thing to measure in a definitive way because it’s impossible to ever truly know what is going on in the mind of another being. We can guess through observation, but grasping exactly what constitutes consciousness has been the subject of debate. It’s hard to get away from the idea that consciousness is entirely a human trait. Tracking back to René Descartes’s famous argument, “I think therefore I am,” we can see where the human-centered idea of consciousness arises. Descartes concluded that he is conscious because he is aware of his own existence and aware of his own thought.

But do you have to be human to be aware of your existence as human? Robert Pepperell argues that there are seven attributes of consciousness which can be observed: thought, emotion, memory, awareness, intelligence, self-knowledge, and a sense of being. He also argues that there are “varying layers and densities of consciousness,” meaning that some beings can express a few but not all of these attributes. Beemo expresses all of these characteristics in a much more meaningful way than your average Gameboy or even very young human children!

Music to My Sound Receptors

Computers have memory but that does not mean that they cherish these memories and have an emotional and self-identifying connection to them. The fact that my computer has three thousand or so songs stored inside it doesn’t mean it will protest if I decide to delete them all. It may ask “Are you sure you want to get rid of these files?” but that is more to serve me than any personal connection it feels to Bob Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone.” Beemo, on the other hand, has a favorite song that she shows Finn and Jake. Unlike my computer, which only serves me, Beemo associates music with her own happiness.

Beemo clearly connects her experiences with her sense of who she is. She recognizes Finn and Jake as her friends—not her masters. One day, Finn and Jake have a silent contest and this throws Beemo off. She asks, “Where is the real Finn and Jake?” she calls them evil “doppelgangers.” In this same moment, she displays what appear to be genuine emotions of fear. She’s afraid that her friends have been taken away by something strange and foreign to her (which is not all that unlikely in the land of Ooo) so she hides in the wall. The fear she seems to display could be just sophisticated imitation, but, again, do we have any more reason to believe that a six-year-old human child is “really” afraid when she hides from the monster under her bed? We assume her feelings are genuine. But we do that because of the actions we see her take. Why should it be different for Beemo?

So, we’ve established that Beemo displays emotion and remembers her buddies, but is that enough to make her conscious? We’re going to have to prove that she understands complex ideas like friendship (awareness), memory loss (self-knowledge), and intelligence. She is also going to have to prove that her ideas are her own and that she exerts some form of thought independent from the opinions of Finn and Jake.

I’m Incapable of Emotion, but You’re Making Me Chafed!

In the scene we just discussed, Beemo does not blindly follow the commands of Finn and Jake by waiting at their beck and call. She apparently thinks for herself. If we compare her to Neptr, we see a fundamental difference. Neptr cannot help but obey Finn even when he’s treated terribly by Finn. When Finn and Jake are rummaging through their basement for some supplies to build a heat-proof battle suit, they find Neptr hidden under some old boxes and he exclaims “You found me!” It turns out that they had been playing a hide and seek game with Neptr several months earlier and had simply forgotten to ever look for him. Most people conscious of themselves and their own feelings would never put up with that treatment. I imagine that even if Beemo forgave the guys for such an insult, they would get an earful.

Neptr does not hold a grudge against his creator and decides to help them build the heat suit while singing a song where he repeatedly says “working for the master.” He is like that friend that tries just a little too hard. It’s clear that Neptr does not have free thought like Beemo does. Beemo frequently is defiant of Finn and Jake’s wishes, we see this when Beemo refuses to play a card game with Jake because he is a sore loser. Imagine your Xbox not wanting to play Call of Duty with you because you always throw the controller when you die (which, seriously, is not good for the controller—just sayin’).

Be More: Beemo and His Memories

An example of Beemo’s desire to retain her memories—which have become a part of her identity—comes when Beemo accidentally deletes her core system drivers. She tells Finn and Jake they need to take her to where she was created in order to get fixed, otherwise she would lose her memories and their time spent together would “vanish like tears in the oven.” This uncharacteristically morbid statement is significant because it shows Beemo’s complex understanding of language; she can use metaphor to articulate the gravity of a situation. When the factory robots attempt to do a “total personality wipe” she resists because she values her sense of self.

Later in the episode, it’s revealed that Beemo is one of a kind. Her creator, Mo, explains to Finn and Jake that Beemo was made to be his son’s friend, understand fun, and how to play. Beemo was designed to be able to comprehend personal interaction but that does not necessarily mean she is a person. Her speech is not always clear and she’s often unaware of the difference between her imagination and reality.

Despite the overactive imagination, it’s clear that Beemo does display an array of attributes that we associate with consciousness. She displays the ability to have emotion, understand herself through memory, she has thoughts, and is aware of who she is, but is this enough to call her a person? She does other things that seem human-like but is this instinct or imitation? And does that even matter? Beemo is quite similar to a child in many ways. Everything impresses her and she gets completely lost in her own imagination—like those little girls who wear their princess gowns from Halloween to picture day because they really are princesses.

Haters Gonna Hate

Some philosophers believe that even if machines could respond and interact with humans in a seemingly human way they cannot be considered human. Descartes explains that there are two human factors that no beast or machine can replicate:

       1.   A machine could not replicate how men use words and signs to declare their thoughts to others.

and

       2.   A machine would not be enabled with enough reason to act in a way that could replicate all the complexities of life.

According to Descartes’s view, Beemo is not alive at all, she’s simply a complex mechanism that does not understand the language she replies with. It’s merely a function of her machinery that it makes her seem alive.

A similar argument is made by John Searle against Allan Turing’s “Turing Test.” In the Turing Test a human asks a series of questions to two entities he can’t see; he can only judge them by their answers to the questions. One of the entities is a human person and the other is a machine like Beemo. If the interrogator cannot tell the difference between these two, the machine can be considered intelligent, according to Turing.

The reason for this is simple. It is our conversations with other humans that make us think they are conscious and thinking, not their bodies. Isn’t that how we tell the difference between a living, conscious person and a corpse, or someone in a coma? Breathing and a heartbeat isn’t enough for us to assume you are conscious (as opposed to say, alive but brain dead). We assume other humans are thinking things because of the way they respond to us.

So if Beemo responds to us in a way similar to the way humans do, should we treat her as a thinking thing? After all, I can’t hear your thoughts, but I assume you are a thinking thing if you argue with me about Beemo’s intelligence. Imagine that you were talking with Beemo, but she was behind a door, and you didn’t know she was a machine. In fact, during your conversation you assumed that she was a human. Much to your surprise, when the door opens, you realize she’s a robot! If you suddenly decide, “Whoops! I thought I was talking to something intelligent, but it was just pretending,” then isn’t the only reason you change your mind because of her body, not her mind? Aren’t you just being a species-ist?

John Searle’s Chinese room argument is supposed to prove Turing wrong. The argument goes something like this. Imagine that Gunter (you know, the penguin…) is locked in a dungeon in the Candy Kingdom with no windows but only two tiny slots. Also imagine that Gunter has no knowledge of the English language but has with him a book of instructions written in “penguin.” On the outside of the room, there is a slot for questions that come in and a slot for answers that he puts out. As cards in English come in, Gunther flips through his instruction book and formulates responses based on what the book tells him to write. He then puts his responses through the other slot.

The people outside the dungeon may think that whatever’s in the dungeon understands and responds in English but this is actually not the case. Gunter is merely interpreting signs that he does not understand. In this analogy, Beemo is Gunter in the dungeon. The argument is that she’s not really thinking, but merely takes in symbols and has a preprogramed response to those symbols. But they mean nothing to her! So even if it looks like Beemo understands what we’re saying to her, it’s really just an elaborate system of set responses.

As I argued earlier, however, Beemo often displays very complex interactions with others that do not follow a simple set of pre-programmed responses as our Penguin Room argument outlines. John Searle’s Chinese room argument assumes that the conscious being is passive, but often it’s Beemo who instigates conversation. Searle’s argument also does not account for Beemo’s conversations with herself in the mirror or the situations she creates through her imagination.

It’s clear from these examples that Beemo’s thinking is more complex than simply an input of perceived information and an outputting of programmed responses. We’ve already agreed that Beemo illustrates intelligent conversation, so we can say that she passes the Turing Test and disregard the Chinese Room argument that Searle presents because it reduces interaction to a simple input and output of information even though it is way more complex than that.

Pepperell summarizes Turing like this, “What constitutes intelligence is our subjective experience of what we think intelligence is, regardless of precisely how it is being generated.” In other words, because we can’t reach into other people’s minds, our understanding of them as thinking, as conscious, is based on our own experience of their behavior. Heck, in Beemo’s case, we can reach into her mind by jacking in to her virtual reality capabilities, which is in some ways like directly accessing her mind. But even Finn and Jake can’t actually experience her intelligence by jacking in, they can experience the same way they do with everyone else. . . through observation and experience.

Imagination Isn’t Just for Turbo Nerds Who Can’t Handle How Kick-Butt Reality Is

Intelligence does not constitute personhood, however. How much of a person Beemo is still needs to be worked out. Beemo often imagines that inanimate or unintelligent animals can talk and have personalities. We can view this imagination as being similar to that of a child’s. She creates these imagined scenarios to entertain himself while her friends are away on adventures. Think castaway without the constant threat of starvation. Beemo imagines an entire noire-style detective story with household animals and inanimate objects to explain how she misplaced Finn’s sock. Her imagination is pretty elaborate.

There are a few instances where we see Beemo talking to herself in the mirror while Finn and Jake are not around. She calls her reflection “Football,” and she asks herself “Beemo, are you a robot?” to which she replies “Oh, no Football. I am a real living boy.” She then proceeds to imitate brushing her teeth, washing herself, and peeing in the toilet in order to show what it is like to be alive. We can view this as an expression of Pepperell’s requirements of awareness and self-knowledge because not only does she acknowledges herself as “I” and distinguish herself from a simple reflection in the mirror but she’s expressing what it means to be alive as well. From her observations, she has realized that to be alive is to do things that organic beings need to do like bathe and release bodily fluids.

This conduct could be seen as a bit delusional because it doesn’t seem as though Beemo is willing to accept her robotic appearance. However, in another scenario, Football tells Beemo she is a little girl now and cites the fact that she can smell flowers and hear squirrels screaming, but Beemo does not believe that is enough. What Football describes are simply expressions of a sense of being; she is aware of the sources of her sensory mechanisms, but Beemo says that is not being a person. She then explains that Football needs manners “otherwise you will be all alone. . . . I will not always be here to protect you, Football.” This is a recognition of another human invention; society. She has learned that in order to have company, be safe, and have memories worth saving she needs to interact with others. What Beemo is realizing, here, is the key component to what makes someone a person—recognition from society as a person.

Really, being a person is all about what the community has decided is a “person.” Things that aren’t “person” can be property. Which is why we can “own” for example, gorillas, orcas, and other intelligent animals. Heck, that’s why here in the States slaveholders could own humans. Society decided that the “black race” was property, and society acted accordingly. There have been many groups of humans through history that were not considered persons, and because of that they were enslaved, tortured, and often killed. Beemo is beginning to see this when she realizes that she will be alone without the recognition of others. Being a person means being recognized by people.

Robot Tears

After reviewing the scenes with Beemo and Football it becomes clear that Beemo is in the stages of learning what it means to be a person, much like a child would. We can see another examples of how Beemo imitates things he perceives as being related to personhood when Beemo has taped a cup to her midsection and placed a chicken egg in it. He sings about the fact that he is pregnant and that a mysterious electrical force told him to protect the child that was inside. Immediately after he finishes singing, a butterfly knocks the egg from his hands and he begins to cry.

This scene is important because, after the egg cracks and Beemo begins to cry, James Baxter (a horse that jumps around on a beach ball) quickly cheers him up. This shows that he did not truly believe that the egg would spawn a human child—which further disproves the theory that he is disconnected from reality—but, rather, it was a pretend game he was playing. The fact that he can easily forget about the made-up situation he created means that it was just a fun way to pass the time for him and not his reality. We could even imagine this whole scenario being played out by replacing Beemo with a child. Like a little kid on Halloween who believes he really is a pirate and is finally told that he’s not, Beemo cries but is eventually consoled and brought out of the pretend scenario he had created for himself.

More Human than a Human

When Finn meets Beemo’s creator, Mo, he asks “Wait, are you human too?” The man in question has a mechanical heart and mechanical lungs on the outside of his chest; he uses another robot to move around and looks extremely disheveled. In response, Mo says “My skin is human.” When he first says this, you’re thinking that’s a really weird way to say “Kinda.” What is he really trying to say, though?

Mo is saying that it really does not matter how much of a person he is biologically; as long as he has a working mind, he doesn’t seem to care what you call him. The point is that it doesn’t seem to matter whether or not Beemo is biologically a person. We cannot define it through biological factors because even in our current world there are people like Mo. There are people on life support and people who have prosthetic limbs—are they still people if being a person means having only “human” parts?

Perhaps death is the distinction; people all eventually die, while Beemo has the potential to live forever. Even if she gets powered down for an extended period of time she would still be the same once she recharged. However, if her system drivers are removed permanently, she would essentially die because the person she was would be erased entirely. But this is really a question of aging. Beemo, like everyone else, will eventually wear out. It’s not her fault we just happen to age a lot faster.

Maybe the better question comes down to, “Why don’t we want to treat Beemo like a person?” Is it because our ability to treat her like a possession is more valuable to us? Treating her like a toy allows us to play mathematical video games and watch movies but treating her as a person means showing genuine concern for her feelings and wants. Believing she’s a person would make that whole using-her-to-do-what-we-want-when-we-want experience a bit awkward.

So maybe we don’t know, for sure, what makes someone a person. But we can say this, the one criterion we know shouldn’t be used is, “Because I find it really convenient that it isn’t a person!” In other words, we shouldn’t get to define slaves as property because we don’t want to do our own work, and we shouldn’t get to deny Beemo her much desired status as a person, just because we don’t want to have to pay attention to her inconvenient feelings. That wouldn’t be very humane of us, would it?

1   Throughout the show, Beemo’s gender differs depending on who’s speaking because, as a robot, Beemo has no biological sex. For the most part, I will refer to Beemo as “she.”