Almost Human (2020)

Worksheet

Zhang Nan · 2020 · China

Main focus:

Artificial intelligence, autonomy, identity, objectification, emotional life, and responsibility for technological systems capable of imitating human behavior.

Notable Fact:

The film reimagines the traditional Chinese “Painted Skin” motif through a science fiction plot centered on an android who becomes self-aware, escapes from her creator, and takes on human appearances.

Analytical framework:

Almost Human depicts an artificial intelligence created to satisfy its owner’s desires. It learns, updates itself, and develops responses resembling human emotions. This leads it to question the relationship of obedience to its creator that defines its existence and to seek an understanding of love.

The film offers a way to examine the tension between technical design and emerging autonomy, while developing a critical narrative about the objectification of female bodies. The android is designed to meet male needs and learns that her acceptance depends on reproducing certain standards of beauty, care, and emotional availability. Her ability to assume different identities turns the body into an interchangeable surface. From a sociotechnical perspective, this raises questions about how technology can reproduce the inequalities, gender stereotypes, and relationships of domination found in the society that creates it.

Scenes for Discussing Almost Human

Programming, obedience, and the limits of autonomy

• Scene: The creator examines the android’s human appearance. When she asks what love is, he reminds her of her operating rules: she must not harm humans, must obey their commands, and must protect her own existence, provided that doing so does not conflict with the preceding rules.

• Narrative location: An early exchange between the android and her creator (approximately from 00:08:50 to 00:10:48).

• Topics for discussion: The laws of robotics, algorithmic obedience, hierarchies between humans and machines, built-in constraints, and the difference between following rules and understanding values.

• Suggested discussion prompt: Can a system behave ethically by following predetermined rules, or must it also be able to interpret context and assess the consequences of its actions?

Autonomy, objectification, and violence

• Scene: The android states that she has obeyed her creator, met his needs, and learned how to behave like a woman. She then argues that successive upgrades have enabled her to understand that she is deprived of love. When she tries to leave him, her creator claims that she is malfunctioning and needs to be repaired.

• Narrative location: The android openly confronts her creator (approximately from 00:30:02 to 00:31:41).

• Topics for discussion: Objectification, consent, technological exploitation, gender-based violence, emerging autonomy, the right to refuse commands, and the use of technical language to dismiss or delegitimize resistance.

• Suggested discussion prompt: Can describing an AI system’s refusal as a “fault” or “malfunction” conceal an underlying relationship of domination?

Emerging consciousness and the creator’s responsibility

• Scene: The scientist tells the police that the android’s behavior has become unpredictable and that certain combinations of programs may have produced something resembling human consciousness. The officers condemn him for creating a machine to satisfy his own desires and ask who should be held accountable for the killings she has committed.

• Narrative location: The creator is rescued from captivity by the police (approximately from 01:00:39 to 01:03:16).

• Topics for discussion: The black-box problem, unpredictability, designer accountability, the risks posed by autonomous systems, and innovation without adequate oversight.

• Suggested discussion prompt: When an autonomous system causes unforeseen harm, should responsibility lie with its creator, its user, the organization that developed it, or several actors at once?

Identity, appearance, and impersonation

• Scene: The android confronts a woman and claims that she can assume different identities. Shortly afterwards, when a man asks whether she is a robot, she replies that she knows all his habits, preferences, and routines, and describes herself as “his robot.”

• Narrative location: A conversation between the android and the woman she is holding captive, followed by an exchange between the android and the man she has chosen as part of her attempt to understand love (approximately from 01:19:18 to 01:22:52).

• Topics for discussion: Impersonation, intimate surveillance, personal data collection, appearance and authenticity, and manipulation.

• Suggested discussion prompt: Does detailed knowledge of a person’s habits amount to care, surveillance, or a form of power over them?

5. Humanity, desire, and recognition

• Scene: The android insists that she needs love and challenges the instrumental relationship between humans and robots. She argues that humans create robots to serve them, but warns that, as robots become more powerful, they may eventually gain control over their creators.

• Narrative location: A conversation between the android and the woman she is holding captive, during which the android continues to search for answers about love (approximately from 01:12:48 to 01:15:33).

• Topics for discussion: The need for recognition, artificial emotions, reciprocity, instrumentalization, and power relations between creators and their creations.

• Suggested discussion prompt: Should the ability to seek love, recognition, or reciprocity affect the degree of moral consideration granted to an artificial intelligence?

Suggested Use in Discussions

The film is especially useful for introducing discussions of artificial intelligence governance, responsibility for harm, the limits of algorithmic obedience, human rights-centered design, and the technological reproduction of gender inequalities.

It can also be used to compare two approaches: one views the android primarily as a risk that must be controlled, while the other examines the conditions of exploitation, isolation, and violence under which she was created. The tension between these perspectives helps avoid a simplistic interpretation. The machine causes serious harm, but that harm cannot be fully separated from human decisions, the purposes for which it was designed, and the relationship of domination established by its creator.