Pop Culture
Free Guy: An Optimistic Take on the AI Revolution
“My name is Guy, and I live in paradise”
“My name is Guy, and I live in paradise.” narrates Guy as he guides introduces us to Free City, a place that is inhabited by two types of people: first we have the people with sunglasses, these are the group of people who go on various missions. Sunglasses people get to do anything they want: rob banks, punch pedestrians in the face, anything! To them, laws are like “mild suggestions”; then we have people who wake up in the morning, start their days with medium coffee, cream, two sugars. These are people who are comfortable with what they have got and stick to their lanes.
Guy belongs to the latter of the groups. He’s been living in Free City his entire life. He’s got a goldfish, a best friend named Buddy and he works at the bank with him.
What more could a guy want?
It may look as though Guy is living a perfect life, in a perfect paradise, such is not the case. Guy longs for this woman of his dreams, one with an off-beat sense of humor and an obsession with feel-good diva pop.
Lucky for him, he finally finds her in this sunglasses girl going by the name of Molotov Girl. But there’s a tiny problem: people with sunglasses don’t talk to people like Guy.
So, it is up to Guy, to go talk to her and when he finally does, he is met with revelation. Turns out, Free City is like this video game where people do stuff to gain experience and level up. And Guy gets out onto the streets, to increase his own level, but Guy being the good guy, he can’t do bad stuff to people. Instead, he decides to help around; save innocents from trouble; beat the bad guys.
Guy becomes a hero in this mayhem of a city. While most (super) heroes only preach that the average person can be a hero too, Guy embodies it. He could be anyone, heck even his name is “Guy.” Who could tell a random person who drinks medium coffee with cream and sugar; and works at some bank will soon be put on the mission of saving his entire world!
Guy enjoys his time going around Free City helping people, aiding Molotov Girl on her mission, he even goes out on a date with her. But when things get hard for Millie, she is forced to reveal the truth about Free City and what it means to be an NPC: a Non-Playable Character. And in that, Guy finds his purpose, to save his city and friends before Antwan, the villain of this story, foils their attempts.
I may not be real but for a second there, I felt pretty alive
Time and time again, authors have questioned the society as to what they believe to be a “real” person. Be it, through a robot cat from the 22nd century; a teddy bear from Boston; or a background character of a video game.
Is it the fact that someone must be born biologically that determines whether they are to be considered “alive” or not? Do their emotions amount to nothing? Are we to simply ignore their capacity to love another; to suffer heartbreak, anxiety or maybe the simple pleasure of having a sip of coffee?
One may be tempted to argue that they do not possess any soul to call them alive beings. However, there are several schools of thought that do not believe in the existence of a soul. For instance, the Buddhists will counter that there is no soul within any of us, only a stream of consciousness, which when ceases to flow through us, we die.
Free Guy talks about it from two perspectives, first there is the perspective of the sunglasses people, who can come and go at their whim, to them the city, its people are not real. They know that all of Free City is nothing but code. Even though, the NPCs are able to break out of their programmed loop, make their own choices, they are still doing so, because they have been coded accordingly. On the other hand, we have the perspective of Guy, an NPC. For a major chunk of the film, we had been watching Guy live his life, through his perspective. We could feel his love for coffee, when he says, “It’s like losing my virginity, but in my mouth.” We even chuckle a bit. We relate, when he is bedazzled at the sight of Molotov Girl.
A drawing on a sheet of paper may not feel real to us, but to those within the drawing it is their entire world. For the goldfish, the bowl is its ocean. From the perspective of Guy, and his friends, all of Free City is real. They work there, they go hang out on the beach there, they live there.
“Even if I’m not real, this moment is. Right here, right now, this moment is real. I mean, what’s more real than a person tryin’ to help someone they love? And if that’s not real, I don’t know what is.” — Buddy
Fin
While this movie came out around three years ago, giving it a re-watch amidst this ongoing AI buzz, made me wonder, why do we always have to imagine AI as a potential end for humanity. Why do we imagine artificially intelligent beings as would be enslavers of humanity, a dystopia of our own making?
Is it just our evolutionary instinct of fearing the unknown, or is it the idea of being dwarfed by a more intelligent kind that simply threatens our dominance over the planet? Free Guy for one, brings to us a rather refreshing take, artificial life that isn’t very keen on the idea of conquering the world. They seem pretty happy on their small digital island of Free City. By the end of the film, people outside of their world, even come and visit, to simply observe them live. Maybe we do not need to look at AI in our own image. Who knows, while we are just hoping for a good guy, we might just get a great Guy.
