FAILED PROMISE OF HUMANISM VS. POSTHUMAN HUMANIST ARTIFICIAL CONSCIOUSNESS: IDENTITY TRANSFORMATION IN KLARA AND THE SUN BY KAZUO ISHIGURO

Abstract

The interaction between humans and robots has generated a query about the emerging identities of both the entities. The robots are apparently designed to meet human needs but their inclusion in the lives of humans has opened a new debate on the existential boundaries between humans and nonhumans. The present research is a comparative cognitive study of humans and robots in Klara and the Sun (2021) by Kazuo Ishiguro. The purpose of the research is to explore the reversal of behaviors of an artificial intelligence (AI) based robot and humans which manifests their cognitive consciousness and identity transformation. For this purpose, Rosi Braidotti’s theory of Critical Posthumanism (2019) is employed as a theoretical framework to analyze the transformed consciousness of humans and robots in the age of Artificial Intelligence which challenges their labelled identities of being humans and machines. The autonomous consciousness of the robot Klara depicts the human qualities i.e., faith, gregariousness, love for nature etc. which humans fail to nurture in a posthuman society. The robot presents the lost human interaction, empathy, and affection for Sun, nature, and people which though expected of man, paradoxically, the artificially transformed upgraded men fail to value as existential needs. The study concludes that robots’ conscious autonomy reflects the archetypal humanistic values in the technologically advanced yet morally collapsing environment and society.