E X T E N S I O N FRANKENSTEIN, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT One of the themes we find in Mary Shelley s Frankenstein is the duality of science, which involves1 dangers if uncontrolled. Victor creates the monster by using a combination of electricity, biology and chemistry but his desire to create life turns into2 a disaster. He plays God and goes beyond the The Matrix. limits of nature and, eventually3, is punished. Isn t Victor s desire4 a metaphor for today s desire to generate machines which can imitate the human mind? The creation of Artificial Intelligence can produce monsters similar to Victor s. The idea of Artificial Intelligence began as a simple philosophical idea. The first computers were invented in the 1940 s. Today scientists are creating systems which can imitate human thought5, understand speech and even learn. Nowadays we would not be able to live without intelligent machines such as P.C.s or mobile phones. They make our lives easier but are we sure we will always be able to control them? In 1968 Stanley Kubrick s film 2001: A Space Odyssey was about a space trip completely controlled by Hal 9000, a computer endowed with6 superior intelligence, which in the end rebelled and killed the astronauts. The trilogy saga7 Matrix centres on this potential horror. In the film, Artificial Intelligence has acquired8 such an unlimited power that it takes over9 the humans and turns them into batteries to fuel10 its existence. If A.I. machines can learn like children, then we have the responsibility to teach them to be kind. This is what Victor Frankenstein did not do with his creature. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. involves: includes. turns into: becomes. eventually: in the end. desire: wish. thought: act of thinking. endowed with: which has. 7. trilogy saga: series in three episodes. 8. acquired: gained, obtained. 9. takes over: controls. 10. fuel: feed. 24