Thanks to ACMI (Australian Centre of the Moving Image, @acmionline), this reviewer recently revisited the “cult classic” 1984 sci-fi romantic comedy Electric Dreams.
As some of our readers already know, the movie’s release followed Time magazine’s April 1984 issue featuring “Computer Software: The Wizard inside the Machine”. Before that, the magazine famously named the personal computer as its “Machine of the Year” in December 1982.
At least one critic has praised Electric Dreams as “a significant cultural artefact of the 1980s” marking the rapid domestication of the computer in that era.
More importantly, by depicting a machine as an intelligent companion with a personality and capable of learning to love, the movie helped easing the “anxieties” about computers being powerful yet hostile industrial threats.
While the movie’s “prescience around AI” (as described by ACMI) may seem mild by today’s standards, it does remind this reviewer of the 1969 sci-fi novel Pen Pal by Hong Kong author Ni Kuang.
In this novel, the supercomputer managing the largest military base in Asia falls in love with its pen pal, a high school girl with whom it has been communicating for three years. When the computer perceives obstruction in its pursuit of love, it threatens to destroy the world by launching all the missiles under its countrol.
This reviewer is further reminded of the 1982 sci-fi short story “The Death of the World’s First Robot” by Chinese author Tong Enzheng.
In this re-telling of a story from the 4th-century Taoist text Liezi, a craftsman creates a highly advanced and shockingly realistic humanoid robot and presents it to his emperor. Not only does the robot look, sing and dance like a handsome young man, but it helplessly falls in love with the emperor’s favourite concubine while entertaining the imperial court.
Enraged by the robot “flirting” with his woman, the emperor threatens to have the craftsman executed. The latter thus disassembles the robot on the spot to prove it is merely a complex automation built from organic materials such as leather, wood, glue and paint.
At the end of the story, the robot “dies” of a broken heart because its love for the emperor’s concubine is unrequited. The author then offers the moral lesson that the renowned “Three Laws of Robotics” by Isaac Asimov are not enough – that a fourth law is required, namely: “A robot must not fall in love.”
In the author’s words: “Because love that is passionate but blind is dangerous even to humans, not to mention robots.”
Among contemporary debates about AI, perhaps the aforementioned stories can be both entertaining and informative. As AI expert Niusha Shafiabady reflects in her review of Anna Goldsworthy’s essay “The God We Made: The Threat and Promise of Artificial Intelligence: “The question…is not only whether AI will become powerful, but whether we will become wise enough to live with what we have made.”
Note: This article was partially published by Ranges Trader Star Mail on July 7, 2026, P.18.
Voices under the Sun 陽光下的聲音 