BLISS RATING: ★★
“A long time does not equal eternity.” – Zhu Yuqing
There is something distastefully creepy and cringy about this series and I frankly did not find it even a bit romantic in any way. In fact, I found it rather sad and pathetic. This series says more about a disconnect from reality than about the advancement of AI.
Chu Yiping (Wu Ping Chen) is an astonishingly handsome but very aloof isolated history professor who dislocates his shoulder. Being privileged, his uncle Wei Heng (Wasir Chou), who is head of an AI company, apparently thinks he is too handicapped to do tasks for himself. So, he sends over a prototype AI robot to provide Chu Yiping the physical assistance he needs around the house as well as the ‘emotional support’ which is a new key component built into this upgraded model called Ever 9 (Huang Li Feng).
Admittedly, Ever 9 is very human-like, handsome, and has qualities that are charming and relatable. Chu Yiping himself seems to lack the ability to relate to people in an evocative and substantial fashion. In a rather short period of time (as in days), Chu Yiping develops strong feelings and deep attachments for Ever 9. Because of the intense connection between the two, it overloads Ever 9’s emotional circuits as he is not programmed to handle such strong emotional attachments and supports.
Apparently, it takes an additional seven years for them to reprogram Ever 9 to be able to reset his emotional circuits and to construct in him the ability to ‘age’ every five years so he will have the appearance of growing older with Chu Yiping as he grows older.
Who really S.T.O.L.E. this series? Honestly, no one did. The acting in this series is flat and stilted and monotone, not just by the robot but by the human. At times, it was hard to tell who really was the robot. I honestly thought that Chu Yiping was a robot himself and all of this was an elaborate set-up to test different AI robots. The only individual who made sense was Wasir Chou as Wei Heng. He tried but failed to get Chu Yiping to put into perspective the irrationality of falling in love with an AI robot. However, he gives in and reprograms it to go along with this charade. We at least know he is a human because he fails miserably and succumbs to his nephew’s whims about wanting to ‘love’ a machine, even though he knows it is illogical.
While this series does present several moral and ethical quandaries about AI, I do not think that was its main purpose, obviously. I think its main purpose was to show romance for which it utterly failed. I simply could not get it out of my head that you are making love to a machine and nothing more. I am sorry but for me, that whole scenario was somewhat problematical and forgive my crudeness, icky. You cannot and should not fall in love with a machine. Certainly, in such a short period of time. It merely shows the shallowness of your own life, the unwillingness to seek human interactions, and the extent depression has enveloped you. While I am not a clinician, I know mental illness when I see it and Chu Yiping is not well. Ever 9 is not real. He is a machine. How can you fall in ‘love’ with a machine?
It even goes deeper than that. Ever 9 kept calling him ‘Master’. I was flabbergasted at this subservient and rather slavish use of that word. It harkened back to when people were owned. In this case, an AI robot is owned so the term, I guess, is befitting. Logically, you cannot be equals – ever. You purchase and own an AI robot and program it to do whatever you want at your command. It becomes nothing more than a useful tool or machine, albeit a sophisticated and intricate one. Hence, it is your servant. And you ‘Lord’ over it. If that is not the classic definition of sovereignty and superiority, then I do not know what is.
One must also ask a basic and obvious question: Why would you wait around for seven years for an improvement in an AI robot and deprive yourself of the pleasures and joy of human companionship? So, who is the real robot? That thinking transformed into behavior is not healthy or normal. His uncle had a moral and ethical responsibility to tell him that waiting around for seven years is irrational and isolation from humanity is unhealthy and no doubt represents a serious case of depression.
An individual, at least in this stage of early development of AI, that cannot separate or see the distinction between human and machine, has lost significant contact with reality. Rather than fixing Ever 9, he should have spent the money on therapy or counseling for his nephew.
I never grasped the connection between Ever 9 and Chi Yiping as even remotely close to being affectionate or romantic. To be sure, they provided each other companionship and a sense of mechanized intimacy. However, in a sense they are both robots. One in thinking like one and one in being one. Perhaps they are a good match for each other after all.
In a real sense, I wish I had not watched this series. It made me feel uncomfortable and apprehensive about the future.
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