The theme of "Detroit: Becoming a Man" is near-future science fiction.

In the real world, the development and changes of technology and social forms complement each other. Just like the GPS positioning technology, it affects all aspects of everyone's lives and profoundly changes people's lifestyles.

If there are black technologies such as neural connections, anti-gravity devices, controlled nuclear fusion, and ultra-long-distance transmission in the future world, then any one of them may cause earth-shaking changes to real life.

Among a lot of black technologies, which one appears first and which one appears later may have a completely different impact on the real world and transform the social structure into a completely different appearance.

This is what the so-called "pointing the technology tree is wrong".

Many movies with science fiction elements, TV series are just new wines in old bottles, and the future created by them is completely unconvincing because the technology tree is too crooked. For example, in a certain movie, Kanda's technology is so developed, but the social system is extremely backward. When facing alien invasion, the leader actually went on a battle with the enemy in person, which inevitably makes people feel very absurd.

For a story, it doesn’t matter if it is not rigorous. The key is to look at what it wants to express and what the audience and players can experience.

From this point of view, the theme of "near-future science fiction" is a more controllable choice.

This kind of "near-future science fiction" means that in the next short period of time, due to the slight progress of a certain technology, it will have an impact on human behavioral habits and social forms. While keeping the overall data unchanged, only a small variable is taken to explore some deep social problems.

This is true of "Detroit: Becoming a Man". Strictly speaking, this is not the future world, it is just a world that just makes the technology tree wrong. Compared with the real world, the only technological leap is bionic technology, and the rest have not changed much from the present. Transportation, residences, guns... are not much different from modern society.

This is exactly what this game wants to explore: what impact will artificial intelligence and bionic human technology once appear, it will have on our society.

Most people's doubts about this game are mainly focused on two points.

First, this is obviously a huge leap in productivity, but why has it actually aggravated social injustice?

Second, why must artificial intelligence be like humans?

In fact, these two points can be explained. This is a matter of opinion, but it cannot be said that it is a flaw in this story.

First of all, the huge leap in productivity does not mean that communism is coming early. During the Industrial Revolution, many workers smashed machines because they believed that machines snatched their jobs, which is a real event in history. The leap in productivity and the liberation of labor do not mean that everyone can enjoy its results. Just like multinational corporations have seized a lot of profits, the top-level capitalists are benefiting, while workers in developed countries are facing the dilemma of unemployment.

The reason why workers in Lighthouse Country called for jobs to return is because their lives are actually not as good as those in the 1960s and 1970s. At that time, they only needed to go to work alone to maintain houses and cars, but now they cannot do so because multinational companies have opened factories to places where labor is cheaper, and these workers are facing unemployment and their lives are getting worse and worse.

Indeed, productivity has increased, but the direct beneficiaries are senior executives, capitalists and politicians of large companies. For middle-class people, it is indeed a good thing to spend a small amount of money to buy bionic people, but for the bottom of society, bionic people will cause them to be unemployed, which is also a very normal phenomenon.

For manual laborers, such as delivery guys, courier guys, workers, salesmen, etc., if such cheap bionic people appear, they will inevitably be unemployed. What can they do after they are unemployed?

As for the social security system, it is a relatively wishful thinking. Capitalists make a lot of money. Will they be happy if you want to steal money from them to support the poor? Lighthouse Country is originally a "corrupt" capitalist country, with large consortiums controlling politics. If you want to take money from capitalists to establish communism, you can't help but think a little too much.

For these large consortiums, whether the poor die or live does not matter to their business. As long as the poor do not rebel or revolution, they will not be willing to pay so much money to maintain social stability when social contradictions have not intensified to the extreme.

The time point chosen by "Detroit: Become a Man" is the time point when bionic technology suddenly appears and rapidly changes society. It can be said that the entire Detroit is not fully prepared for this transformation, and the various chaos reflected in the game are actually the pain caused by transformation.

Secondly, why must artificial intelligence be like humans? Because the fantasy that humans can understand most about artificial intelligence at this stage is humans themselves.

Because humans are the most advanced intelligent life we ​​know at present, if there is some intelligent life that is more advanced than humans, such as the three-body human, then artificial intelligence may be like a three-body human.

If there are two housekeeping robots for you to choose, one is the type of robotic Wall, with tracks and robotic arms; the other is Miss Kara, which one do you choose?

Obviously, the latter represents a more advanced form of artificial intelligence, which is... exactly the same as humans and is difficult to distinguish.

Strictly speaking, "fully controlled artificial intelligence" is lower than "artificial intelligence that is as uncontrollable as humans". If humans want to develop the most advanced artificial intelligence, then it is almost certainly uncontrollable, otherwise it will not deserve to be called "the most advanced artificial intelligence".

Of course, one problem with "Detroit: Becoming a Man" is that the world does not seem to have any pre-tech points for bionic people.

For example, Luther was developed to transport heavy objects, while Kara was used for housekeeping services, and some female bionics were used to meet special needs... These bionics should have been made a long time ago because they don’t need such a high level of artificial intelligence, and they don’t need to make their thinking the same as humans. Isn’t it better to be a professional robot like moving heavy objects? Why be a big tall man with a black face?

You can say that it is a bit far-fetched, but the same thing is true. Near-future science fiction shows the future world of "pointing the technology tree in a wrong way". You can fully understand that people in this world just skipped the pre-tech and directly filled the technology points of bionic people.

The loopholes in the setting are decisions that have to be made in order to tell a good story. What is important is not these details, but what the story wants to tell us and what we can learn from it.
Chapter completed!