A lot of people who apparently knew with utter certainty that they were robots don’t understand the reasoning of those of us who thought they were aliens, to wit: If they were robots, they must have been there all the time. So where were they? Why didn’t they appear much sooner? Why did they bother to remain on Earth?
And why were they conducting what clearly seemed to be archeological research in the first place? How can robots “forget” about the past? If there was a discontinuity in their existence, how could they have re-animated themselves from nothing?
Whereas the new arrival of aliens at that point answers all those questions!
Now, I’m absolutely not arguing that they were aliens. Upon later reflection, the robot hypothesis explains things better. I’m just pointing out that the alien hypothesis is not nearly as moronic as many seem to think. It was a not unreasonable view in the least. To me, at first blush it made more sense and it was the robotic hypothesis that looked rather unlikely.
At least we know there’s no eBay in the future: “Hey, honey! I found this here old robot in the attic, mint in box and still with the original manuals. Musta belonged to Grandpa back in 2010. Reckon we should try and sell it, or just fire it outa a cannon?”
Still, Antiques Roadshow would be fun: “Now this is a rare find. A Pornobot 2010 in exquisite condition. Originally, of course, this would have been part of a pair. Marvellous workmanship - just look at the detailing on the thrustotron casing. A marvellous, marvellous thing.”
“Early robots in this condition are very rare, and getting rarer - have you had it insured? Well I can tell you that one of these recently fetched one hundred million stollars at auction in Tokyo - so it’s a pity it isn’t insured because I’m now going to SMASH FUCK OUT OF IT! Die, bastard robot, die!”
He did find a bunch of mint-in-box Davids, but he didn’t smash those. There was one activated David who told him, rather smugly, that he was no longer unique, and that sent him over the edge. He whaled on David II pretty bad, but definitely not at Teddy’s urging.
Count me in as someone who thought the creatures at the end were aliens and not robots… and that A.I. was a depressing mess full of inconsistencies and plot holes.
One of the worst movies I’ve ever had the misfortune to see, IMO.
My initial impression of the “beings” was that they were aliens, not Earth-origin robots… and even after digesting the various responses in this thread, I still feel that the “alien hypothesis” makes more sense than the “robot hypothesis,” for the reasons stated in your post.
You can make a deep movie, and you can make a fairly clear movie. The two are not mutually exclusive. I went to college, my gf at the time went to college, and neither of us got any of these points that are supposedly so obvious. The simple fact is that either SS wanted to be obscure and Jesus-parable-ic (hiding the deep meaning from those who didn’t care enough to investigate), or he made a bit of a bad movie.
I don’t see why you would think that because they were robots, they automatically had all the knowledge of everything ever to happen on Earth. They could have been from another area on Earth, etc etc etc.
