My Response to the Novel 'Frankenstein'

How Frankenstein Relates to My Topic

I am investigating if artificial intelligence can ever be human. The novel Frankenstein relates to my topic of artificial intelligence very well, as the creature that Victor Frankenstein created exhibited humanistic qualities, despite the creature not being a stereotypical human being.

At the beginning of the story, Victor Frankenstein was living a dream life with his family. He then moved to an educational institution, where he studied and technically dropped out for many months while he began to do something extraordinary: create his own live creature. This is not very different from many true stories of college dropouts, such as Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, who left their higher educational institution to pursue lucrative technological opportunities, and in a similar manner, Victor Frankenstein viewed his daring idea as a lucrative opportunity.

However, once Victor Frankenstein made the creature, he immediately despised and shunned it, most likely because of its appearance. The creature then ran away from Victor Frankenstein and began to live in the wilderness, where he came across the De Lacey family. He secretly helped the De Lacey’s by aiding them with some manual labor, such as chopping wood for their fireplace. The De Lacey’s were also unaware that the creature was living near their home and studying their behavior, learning how to exhibit the behaviors and emotions that he viewed in the De Lacey’s, who were mainly stereotypical humans.

This is similar to much of today’s artificial intelligence, which exhibit behaviors akin to Victor Frankenstein’s creature: Amazon’s Alexa, among other virtual assistants, is notorious for recording conversations. However, it is not Alexa’s fault, because it was created as an assistant who listens for a wake word, which in this case, is the name of Amazon’s artificially intelligent assistant, “Alexa.” And once it hears the wake word, it is activated to listen for subsequent commands from the human using it.

On a side note, today’s main artificially intelligent assistants, such as Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Google Assistant, Apple’s Siri, and Microsoft’s Cortana, have names, while in Frankenstein, the creature is only referred to as “the monster,” “the creature,” and other similar names, but is never referred to as “Victor Frankenstein’s creature” (where “creature” is a name). These artificial intelligences are known to learn from the human user by listening to how the user speaks its commands and this allows the artificially intelligent virtual assistant to better fulfill its role as a humanlike virtual assistant, much like Victor Frankenstein’s creature.

Eventually, Victor Frankenstein and his creature meet again, where Victor Frankenstein hears his creature’s story and is convinced to create a mate for the creature, as per its request. This shows how the creature, as well as artificial intelligence, is able to manipulate our actions by changing how we think.

Sometime throughout the process of constructing another creature, Victor Frankenstein has a sudden influx and change of thought to not continue his work, as he is afraid of what could happen should the creatures mate and multiply. This symbolizes the thoughts of many opposed to advancing artificially intelligent technologies, who are worried about the vast and horrific consequences of too much artificial intelligence.

After realizing that his creator has refused to fulfill his one request, the creature goes on a monstrous rampage, destroying everything Victor Frankenstein cares about. This represents what could happen with today’s artificial intelligence if it ever became stronger than humans.

Victor Frankenstein then begins on a quest to kill his creature, out of spite and anger for who and what the creature caused him to lose. Soon, he meets the naval explorer Robert Walton, who agrees to take him onboard. Victor Frankenstein eventually tells his story to Robert Walton and falls severely ill not too long after. On his deathbed, Victor Frankenstein beseeches Robert Walton to kill the creature. Once Victor Frankenstein is dead, the creature secretly comes onboard the ship and sits near Victor Frankenstein.

At first, Robert Walton wants to kill the creature, as his dead friend Victor Frankenstein wished, but once the creature tells Robert Walton his side of the story, Robert Walton relents and allows the monster to run away.

How Reading Frankenstein Helped Me Understand My Topic Better

Reading Frankenstein helped me to understand my topic of artificial intelligence better because it surfaced many controversial issues about how we as a society have stereotypes on what makes people humans, as well as when to recognize that we as a society may have already gone or are going too far in science and technology.

A prime example of this is that as soon as the De Lacey’s saw how Victor Frankenstein’s creature appeared, they were immediately disgusted and did not even give the creature a chance to explain itself.

In other words, the De Lacey family immediately profiled the creature, without even allowing the creature to explain how it helped and learned from the family. Had the De Lacey’s given the creature even the slightest chance, they may not have been too disgusted afterward, and the creature’s life and the story line of Frankenstein may have had a completely different outcome.

This is similar to artificial intelligence because there are many who are publicly opposed to advancing artificial intelligence, among other things, because they believe that too much artificial intelligence can lead to bad consequences. However, in response to that, too much of anything can lead to bad things occurring, and the best way for us as a society to deal with issues like this is to improve regulation and legislation, as well as redefine what it means to be human, either to explicitly include or not include artificial intelligence and other beings.

How the Author of Frankenstein Conveyed these Ideas to the Reader

The author of Frankenstein, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, conveyed these ideas to the reader by showing how the creature created by Victor Frankenstein was shunned by society for his appearance, despite him being about to think and act like a regular human.

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley also crafted the novel Frankenstein in a way that inspired many conversations. She used the letters from Robert Walton to his sister in a way that kept the reader engaged. Shelley also used imagery and the lack of imagery to her advantage, in order to portray the minimum amount of features of the creature required to picture it in the reader’s mind, while still allowing for the reader’s imaginations to run wild.