Writing Robots Part 2: The Organic Perspective

An organic body is all you’ve ever known.

So if and when you’re met with a completely robotic, mechanical reflection of yourself, one capable of independent thought, it’s completely justified to feel a little off-put.

What if you played an active role in building this reflection? That is, in constructing the robot? Feelings towards robotic beings as a collective will vary from person to person—but those feelings, whatever yours may be, would now need to be put aside.

There are a lot of ways that you, as a writer, can construct a dynamic between robots and humans—whether it’s hostile, friendly, or densely packed with nuance—it’s crucial to understand why we (that is, organic beings) feel the way we do about robots.

Often, it’s not about writing the robots themselves: how do you write humans in a robot story?

A Responsibility, or Parenting

A robot moves in autonomous ways—being capable of complete independent thought means that how it ultimately chooses to behave is out of your control.

Therefore, creating intelligent robots, ones that can truly think for themselves, is creating life: this means, whether humanity likes it or not, it must take on the role of a parent. Like a child, a robot starts on a path to grow and change, learning from both its programming and its experiences. Children and robots are quite alike—how your human characters feel about kids, then, may parallel how they feel about robots.

Being a robot in a world centered around humans will bring about some difficulties. Was it unfair of humanity to bring a robot online, knowing that it had no say in the matter? If this robot does something wrong, is the blame passed to humanity? 

And then there’s the biblical aspect, on top of it all. To create a synthetic imitation of the self…that’s something many people would describe as unnatural. An attempt to play god, even. Again, humanity is faced with a predicament: did they (did we) make a mistake?

Understanding how much stress would come with building a robot—much less a whole race of them—is the first step to understanding the reasoning behind your human characters’ treatment of robots as a collective.

A Mirror, or a Challenge

A human can perfectly envision life without robots, whereas a robot can only speculate existence without humans. That’s the unique perspective that humanity has, as the creator—remembering what life was like before.

Robots aren’t just different, therefore; they’re novel. Disrupting the life humans have always known was the very first crime that robots committed, and for some stubborn people, that may be enough to justify hate.

Robots imitate humanity, in cognition, behavior, and sometimes appearance. But what happens when a robot outdoes a human? When the creation surpasses the creator? That a robot might displace you, for many, is enough to justify lashing out.

What is it that makes us human in the first place? And whatever that is, would it be possible for a robot to do it better, quicker, more efficiently?

Regardless of whether one played an active role in creating robots, there’s a common fear among humans: not wanting to be shoved aside, in favor of a shiny, new, metal replacement. How your character handles this fear—whether they bury and ignore it, make peace with it, or let it consume them—is important to understanding who they are.

To Write; To Build

There’s a reason I asked you to think of yourself as the builder of a robot at first—because as a writer, creating fiction, you’re also reflecting reality.

Whether your work is closer to realism, or completely abstract and buried under layers of allegory, you’re building an echo of what’s real. You’re asking your readers to look inward, and to see themselves in your work. You’re building a reflection.

You’re building a robot.

A mirror serves to contextualize the self, and that contextualization often feels threatening. Therefore, seeing oneself in a robot, or seeing oneself in fiction, can result in a feeling of uneasiness.

So, before you worry about whether your human characters feel like they plausibly and realistically fit into your story featuring robots—remember that you already know what the responsibility of creating a robot feels like. To understand humanity’s perspective in a robot story, however nuanced it may be, is simply about understanding yourself.

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About the author: Jules Pelayo has just finished up their first year at UC Santa Barbara as an undergrad, double-majoring in English and History of Art & Architecture. Jules has always loved storytelling—both science fiction and fantasy have called to them in particular. Jules really admires fiction’s ability to act as a mirror for reality, calling for a personal reflection upon society, culture, and the self. Other than literature, Jules also loves film, art, anything Transformers-related, and iced coffee.