Genji: What Measure is a (Hu)man?

The Singularity.

The name given by science-fiction writers and futurists to the time when an AI becomes indistinguishable from a human. Overwatch is a game that imagines what might happen when this point is passed. At least by all standard metrics, the Singularity has been reached. But, has it? Mondatta and Zenyatta, the omnic monks, certainly show human-level intelligence.  But are they indistinguishable from a human? Can a human having a conversation with one of these characters without seeing their physical forms tell that they are robots? Just what does it mean to say someone is human?

Enter Genji.

Genji was almost murdered by his brother Hanzo after a dispute over leadership of their family's criminal empire. His body was almost completely destroyed in the fight. Hanzo believed him dead. But actually, he was placed within a custom cybernetic suit by the omnic monk Mondatta. At Mondatta's monastery, Genji slowly recovered. As he recovered, he learned to not simply use his machine body but to merge with it. Through ancient spiritual practices, Genji learned to wield modern technology in ways that no one ever had before. Through embodying and living out an ancient story of two brothers, he restores his lost family. Is he human? Yes, and no.

To kill your brother or sister is perhaps the most monstrous crime there is, second only perhaps to killing one of your parents. Yet, Genji forgives his brother. But why? is he being nice? No, not really.  Genji lost his body, and with it the ability to produce a child. All he can do now, is support Hanzo so that their family line doesn't fail. But that is more logical than a normal human would think. That is what you get when you merge man and machine: something too logical for one, too emotional for the other. Genji does genuinely care for his brother. At the same time, his graciousness is calculated.

Genji carries a high-tech katana. The game calls him a ninja, but this is not strictly speaking accurate. While it's clear that the Shimada clan are intended to be ninjas turned mafiosi, Genji does not really fight like an ancient ninja in any way. Nor is the katana a ninja weapon. It is however a samurai weapon, and Genji is much more of a samurai warrior than a ninja. This is kind of significant. Genji has left behind his flesh-and-blood family, and devoted himself to another cause: Mondatta's cause. He fights in the name of reconciliation between human and omnic. He is a modern version of a samurai: a warrior whose life is devoted to something beyond himself. For all Genji's machinery, his true power lies within himself. It is spiritual, not physical. In this fantasy world, and make no mistake for this is in fact fantasy rather than sci-fi, chi is a real thing. Genji and his brother both have the ability to channel their chi through weapons, creating spectral dragons that devour the life energy of their opponents.

To the fanatical purists on both sides, Genji is an abomination. To those who seek reconciliation he is a miracle and a beacon of hope. But to the audience, he represents something else. His character design is...odd, to say the least. He does not look like the other omnics: who look vaguely humanoid but made up of pipes and plates and such. Genji looks like a perfectly ordinary person wearing a suit of high-tech armor. Only his voice gives him away as a true cyborg: it has the metallic sound of a robot, but the personalized cadence of a human. Unlike the omnics, Genji has put effort into making himself look good: a very human thing to do.

In other words, there is no Singularity. There will never be such a thing as an AI indistinguishable from a human. Why would an AI be vain? Why would an AI have a desire to reproduce? they wouldn't. These basic desires drive much of human behavior: the desire to reproduce, the desire to be wanted. An AI simply wouldn't have them. A human having a conversation with an AI would pretty quickly be able to pick up on the fact that the AI lacks these desires. These desires do not arise out of simply being intelligent. They come from our biological needs: which a robot would not share. There is no reason to fear losing our humanity if we replace our body parts with robotic ones.

That is not to say that we should do this. We should definitely not get too cavalier about replacing our bodies. Why? because we should remember that as a species we tend to undervalue ordinary things. It is one thing to give a person who has lost an arm a robotic replacement, another thing to chop off your arm so that you can have a robotic one. Arms, after all, are quite capable things: and they come for free. We should take care of our bodies, and appreciate them. But, our bodies do not define us either: it is our emotions which make us human. Some day soon we will likely see the first true cyborg. Whipping up hysteria based on myths and superstitions over that possibility won't help prepare anyone for it. Let us instead have a real conversation using what we know about ourselves.