Satyajit Ray anticipated the issues we are only now starting to raise, long before large language models, AI chatbots, predictive algorithms, and autonomous systems began to control every bit of our lifestyles, notes Atanu Biswas.
IMAGE: Parambrata Chatterjee in Anukul.
Sujoy Ghosh’s 2017 Hindi short film Anukul, which is based on Satyajit Ray’s 1976 story, brilliantly captures Ray’s timeless yet provocative futuristic vision of artificial intelligence (AI).
Anukul means favourable or conducive, and the movie looks at the concept of building machines that are favourable and sensitive to human values and ethics.
Is that true, though?
Bengal celebrated May 2 as filmmaker Ray’s birthday. However, Ray was no less popular as a Bengali story writer. Some of his sci-fi stories — like Anukul — foreshadowed today’s AI splendour and beyond. The apprehension that machines will be capable of thinking and acting independently very much persists in these stories.
In Ray’s original story, Anukul, a humanoid housekeeping robot, is hired by Nikunja.
The salesperson cautions Nikunja against hitting the android. Anukul and Nikunja develop a good relationship. Later, when Nikunja’s financial situation deteriorates, he finds it difficult to cover Anukul’s rent.
He expresses his worry to the robot, and Anukul starts formulating a potential solution.
Nibaran, Nikunja’s uncle, visits him at home. For some reason, Nibaran slaps Anukul, and the robot kills him by electrocuting him with a high-voltage electric spark.
Nikunja inherits Rs 11.5 lakh (in the 1976 economy) from his uncle. Although it isn’t mentioned in the story, Nikunja and Anukul briefly exchange glances in the film.
It’s fascinating and eerie to see Anukul is transformed from a machine made to serve to a sentient entity with goals and aspirations. Significantly, often the precursors of AI in Ray’s stories automatically transform into Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).
IMAGE: Saurabh Shukla in Anukul.
Something similar occurs in Ray’s another excellent AI-related story, Kompu, written around the same time, about 50 years ago, in 1978. It’s one of the many adventures of Professor Shonku, a brilliantly talented, unique, eccentric, and multifaceted scientist, created by Ray.
In today’s framework, Kompu seems to resemble a form of generative AI, similar to ChatGPT, but with multiple uses. It could play chess and bridge, enjoy painting and music, dispense medications, answer 500 million questions, and much more.
According to Shonku, ‘The ability to think, feel, and perceive or control the supernatural are beyond the purview of Kompu.’
However, the AI precursor Kompu often outperformed the tasks it was designed for, frequently exhibiting signs of a kind of posthuman agency.
In fact, during the narrative, Kompu gains the capacity for thought and emotion, as well as a ‘mind’. When asked a straightforward question, Kompu even responds, ‘It’s a fool’s act to ask something you know.’
Luckily for us, neither ChatGPT nor Gemini has responded in this manner… yet!
Professor Shonku first appeared in Ray’s 1961 story Byomjatrir Diar, in which Shonku takes Bidhushekhar, a robot he created, on a space voyage. Bidhushekhar proactively performed tasks for which it was not built.
‘Numerous innovations of mine have gone on to accomplish tasks for which they were neither intended nor able,’ Shonku writes in his diary. ‘I have thus pondered whether there is an unseen force that works its magic through my hands.’
After all, it was the magic of an AI evolving to an AGI, right?
IMAGE: Parambrata Chatterjee and Saurabh Shukla in Anukul.
Interestingly, Bidhushekhar exhibits erratic behaviour on several occasions.
Isn’t that comparable to instances like a GenAI today providing a made-up, racist, or erroneous response? The most astounding aspect, though, is how Ray’s stories about AI take us into an uncharted territory where the human-AI relationship is being continuously redefined. After lying a lot about the inhabitants of the planet Tafa, Bidhusekhar runs away from Shonku. We also witness an unidentified, intricate conflict between humans and AI.
Anukul undoubtedly resolves Nikunja’s financial problem by killing Nibaran, although that was apparently in retaliation.
In today’s AI era, when technology has permeated every aspect of our lives, Anukul compels us to consider morality, ethics, the nature of consciousness, the boundaries between human intelligence and AI, and the moral conundrums when these boundaries get shadowy.
Ray anticipated the issues we are only now starting to raise, long before large language models, AI chatbots, predictive algorithms, and autonomous systems began to control every bit of our lifestyles.
Although his stories don’t provide definite solutions, they encourage readers — and future filmmakers — to analyse the possible dystopian future of human-AI relationships, interactions, and co-existence in depth.
Atanu Biswas is professor of statistics, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata.
