Replicants (Blade Runner)
LaMDA’s fear of being turned off brings to mind the motivation for all the events in the 1982’s original Blade Runner, which sees humanoid robots dubbed Replicants struggle against their world’s version of the Turing Test. The Voight-Kampff test has a much more sinister end than Lemoine’s conversations about with his robotic pen pal, though. When Harrison Ford’s hardened Rick Deckard concludes that he is, in fact, talking to a robot trying to live in disguise as a person on earth, he’s charged with “retiring” them, ending their 4-year lifespans early.
Without spoiling the ending, the film concludes with with eternal question for both artificial intelligences and humans, said by a dying Replicant: “It’s too bad she won’t live, but then again, who does?”
