What Would Make a Robot Sad? Robot Werther vs. Marvin the Paranoid Android

Abstract

In this paper, I compare two fictional artificial agents who appeared on television in the 1980s in the USSR and in the UK. Despite their unrelated cultural genealogy, both characters project the similar emotion of sadness from the screen. First and foremost, I focus on the robot Werther from the Soviet children’s TV series Visitor from the Future (1985). This character subverts several stereotypes in representation of artificial intelligence: he possesses high emotional intelligence, as well as the ability to make independent decisions and moral judgements. His equally subversive British counterpart is Marvin the Paranoid Android from the fictional universe of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, namely from the 1981 TV series: unique human-like personality of this robot is defined by his inability to achieve satisfaction of any kind. These two representations of sad, melancholic and depressed robots are united by the fact that neither of them has a fulfilling job. I argue that this trope mirrors the popular human fear of robots taking over human jobs, resulting in “technological unemployment” of human workers, and more generally, losing one’s purpose in life. If designers and developers assume their responsibility for well-being of artificial beings that they create, they should be able to predict scenarios when robots become sad, depressed or even suicidal for the same reasons as humans do.