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Explorations of the ‘Transhuman’ Dimension of Artificial Intelligence 331

that matter, robotic beings (which combine AI and advanced engineering). Just as
Gelernter insists on the difference of human embodiment from AI, conceived as hardware
plus software, so, too, Johnson’s argument presupposes the specificity of embodied
human subjectivity when he points to the uniqueness of every human being, something
further clarified by Lacan (above). Moreover, Johnson’s discussion of the differences
between Kubrick’s HAL and Scott’s Ash is illuminating regarding the conditions for a
humanoid robotic AI to approximate human ‘intelligence’ (which I put in scare quotes
because, as argued earlier, it involves far more than merely abstract, calculative
intelligence). Johnson (2013: location 1992) points out that, strictly speaking, HAL is not
just a computer running the ship, Discovery; it is a robotic being, albeit not a humanoid
one like Scott’s Ash, if we understand a robot as an intelligence integrated with an
articulated ‘body’ of sorts. HAL is co-extensive with the spaceship Discovery; it controls
all its functions, and its own pervasiveness is represented in the multiplicity of red ‘eyes’
positioned throughout the ship. This enables it to ‘spy’ on crew members plotting against
it and systematically eliminate them all, except one (Bowman), who proceeds to
dismantle HAL’s ‘brain’ to survive. As Johnson (2013: location 2029-2039) reminds one,
HAL is the imaginative representation of AI as it was conceived of in mainstream
research during the 1960s (and arguably, he says, still today – in this way confirming
Gelernter’s claims), namely a combination of memory (where data are stored) and logic
(for data-processing). In other words, whatever functions it performs throughout the ship
originate from this centrally located combination of memory and logical processing
power, which is not itself distributed throughout the ship. Put differently, because it is
dependent on linguistic communication issuing from, and registered in “abstract, a priori,
pre-programming of memory” (Johnson 2013: location 2050) HAL is not privy to
‘experience’ of the human kind, which is ineluctably embodied experience. In this sense,
HAL is decidedly transhuman.
On the other hand, Johnson (2013: location 2075-2134) points out, the humanoid
robot Ash, in Alien, represents a different kettle of fish altogether. From the scene where
Ash’s head is severed from ‘his’ body, exposing the tell-tale wiring connecting the two,
as well as the scene where ‘he’ has been ‘plugged in’ to be able to answer certain
questions, and one sees his ‘arms’ moving gesturally in unison with ‘his’ linguistic
utterances, one can infer that, as a robotic being, Ash is much closer to its human model
than HAL. In fact, it would appear that Ash, as imagined transhuman android, is
functionally or performatively ‘the same’ as a human being. In Johnson’s words (2013:
location 2101): “…as a humanoid robot, or android, the artificial [‘neuromorphic’]
intelligence that is Ash is a simulation of the human body as well as its soul”. As in the
case with embodied humans, Ash’s thinking, talking and body-movements (part of
‘body-language’) are all of a piece – its ‘emergent intelligence’ is distributed throughout
its body. This, according to Johnson (2013: location 2029), is conceivably a result of
reverse-engineering, which is based on evolutionary processes of the form, “I act,