Part One: The Wild Robot, Pop Culture, and AI
The reprisal of an old classic - and what it means for the future
If you have been watching television the last few months, you have likely seen an advertisement for The Wild Robot, a popular children’s book by Peter Brown that made its way onto the big screen in late September.
If not, here’s a brief synopsis via Brown’s blog:
“The Wild Robot is the story of Rozzum unit 7134, a robot who wakes up for the very first time to find that she’s alone on a remote, wild island. Roz doesn’t know how she got there, or where she came from: she only knows that she wants to stay alive. And by robotically studying her environment she learns everything she needs to know. She learns how to move through the wilderness, how to avoid danger, she even learns how to communicate with the animals. But the most important lesson Roz learns is that kindness can be a survival skill. And she uses kindness to develop friends and a family and a peaceful life for herself. Until her mysterious past catches up with her.”
Does that look or sound familiar to you? It did to me. The parallels to Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book are striking, and so are the implications for our children and how we teach them about AI.
Here are some similarities:
Origin mystery: Mowgli is found by Akeela in the jungle, with no explanation. Much like Roz, Mowgli has no idea where he came from or how he got there.
Survival through adaptation: Mowgli and Roz both learn everything they need to know from the animals of the jungle, including how to live in the wilderness, avoid danger, and rely on strong bonds to navigate dangerous situations.
Communication with nature: Mowgli and Roz both develop the ability to communicate with animals through observation.
Found family: Both stories emphasize the importance of chosen family and forming bonds beyond one's own kind, delivering a key life lesson that “family is more than blood.”
Conflict with their past: Both Mowgli and Roz come into conflict with their mysterious and unknown past towards the end of the story.
Themes of belonging: The narratives explore what it means to belong and find one's place in an unfamiliar world.
Finding of “self”: Where each character struggles to determine their place in the world, they ultimately accept their dual nature by the end of the story.
So, on a certain level, Roz is a Robot Mowgli. And if you remember how effectively the character of Mowgli resonated with countless generations of readers and viewers, you may be able to recognize the relevance of having such a poignant story told through the lens of a robot’s quest for identity.
So what?
To be clear, this article does not claim that Brown “ripped off” The Jungle Book. There are relevant differences, and we stand on the shoulders of giants anyway. The parallels are interesting but not an indictment.
(And even further, Jungle Book author Rudyard Kipling admitted in 1895 letters to his friends that he “cribbed freely” from ancient Indian fables for his version of the story. So, the story frame of ‘The Wild Robot’ is almost literally as old as time. This should help explain the 98% score on Rotten Tomatoes.)
This article instead aims to make three arguments.
Lasting Impact: First, the parallels to Kipling’s classic means this film is likely to have a lasting impact on those who watch it, especially children. The Jungle Book has resonated with countless generations and re-shaped the way young readers view their relationship to nature, questions of familial and personal identity, and deeper truths about what it means to be a friend. The Wild Robot is similarly effective -- according to critical reviews and viewer ratings -- but now the story follows a robot’s journey of self-discovery, instead of a little boy.
If The Jungle Book became a part of the literary canon and had an outsize impact on multiple generation’s perceptions of the world around them, is it not safe to assume that the same story with a robot at its center might shape future perception of A.I. and humanoid robots?
Viewer Awareness: Second, viewing the film through an awareness of its similarities to a story you already know facilitates a more critical consumption of the story. Parents, especially, should be aware of what they are taking their children to see. It may not mean that parents must ‘ban’ The Wild Robot from their home, but an awareness of its similarities to a timeless classic allows for more thoughtful choices about what our children are exposed to and a more metacognitive experience for adult consumers of robot pop culture.
New Normal: Third, this portrayal of a robot with feelings steps beyond the norm of portrayals or robot sentience in a subtle but very important way, one that needs to be spotlighted to increase awareness of shifts in popular portrayals of AI-powered robots.
How is this different?
Wild Robot is not the first movie portrayal of a humanistic robot, but it does represent a departure from the norm.
Take this list for example: Star Wars, CHAPP-E, WALL-E, Robot & Frank, The Iron Giant, and more. In each of these movies, the robot or robots are situated next to or in relation to human characters, whether as assistants, saviors, villains, or characters in need of help (CHAPP-E). Each one, to a certain extent, is represented as having “feelings,” and those feelings are driven or motivated by their connections to other human beings. Even WALL-E, a solitary garbage-picking robot on an uninhabitable Earth, is primarily driven to save humanities’ connection to their planet of origin.
‘Wild Robot’ breaks this mold. Roz exists in a world devoid of human characters. It's not serving any human agenda; instead, Roz is on a journey of self-realization and adaptation. This robot is, both literally and figuratively, free from human constraints.
The impact of this narrative shift on young minds and culture has the potential to be vast. As children connect with Roz's story, aided by marketing efforts like Universal Pictures' Roz stuffed toys, they're being introduced to a new paradigm of AI existence – one where artificial beings have autonomy and intrinsic value beyond their utility to humans.
Picture, for a moment, a fourth-grader falling to sleep this Christmas with a stuffed Roz in their arms. On the surface, it might seem harmless. But underneath, there are very real long-term implications for our relationships to AI and humanoid robots. That is what this series aims to spotlight.
As it pertains to pop culture and social change, the plot of the story and its execution feel like both a continuation of ongoing trends and a harbinger of things to come. Media and pop culture have always been powerful forces in shaping our perception of the world around us. Movies, television, music, and books not only reflect but also mold our realities. Media latches onto emerging trends, amplifies them through entertainment, and in turn shapes public perception. The centripetal force that occurs when pop culture picks up a trend and subsequently adds to it in new ways is worth studying and dissecting, if only to be aware of how the world around us is changing.
Robot Mowgli and the Question of Robot Humanization
In the case of AI and in The Wild Robot, this cycle is accelerating the tendency to anthropomorphize these technologies. As we see more human-like AI characters in our movies, TV shows, and books, we're subtly being conditioned to view real AI systems through a more human lens. In the film, Roz finds she is only able to “complete her task” by finding love inside of herself, a uniquely human characteristic.
This trend is gaining momentum, for better or worse, and it's reshaping our relationship with artificial intelligence in ways we're only beginning to understand.
This subject is expansive and multi-layered. As such, this article will be the first in an ongoing series on the film, the trend of humanizing robots, and what it might mean for our culture. Stay tuned for the next installment, and share this piece with any young parent that you know. At a minimum, it is important that we build an additional layer of cognizance connected to pop culture and its impact on our thinking.
And, this post will also act as the kick-off for a back-and-forth series with
of AI Log. Rob and I have been discussing this concept back and forth for months and have finally decided to formalize it here on Substack.
small anecdotal error: if Mowgli had been found by Sher Kahn (beginning of the article) The Jungle Book would have been very short indeed :)
The diction used to describe AI is part of this blurring of the lines—chatbots, hallucinations, pattern "recognition." The fact that Large Language Models is how we've chosen to best describe the process is indicative of the interplay between people and systems. As schools grapple with how AI integrates into already-existing systems (most of which are outdated), I imagine the anthropomorphizing will help that integration. Getting carried away, though, is the deeper concern, whatever that may look like.