The Gene of AI

Episode 5

It's interesting to think about why The Gene of AI Humanoids are so indistinguishable from humans in their behavior (and let's ignore the obvious answer that there'd be no story without it). Why wouldn't we improve them? Make them as perfect as possible. Flick off the switch that gives them anxiety? An earlier episode pointed out that this was done so they'd be able to better fit into human culture. That makes sense, but what if we look at it from another angle? Perhaps, if the original intent was to make androids who could seamlessly integrate into the world as it was, then the reproduction of our limitations, faults, and 'glitches' might have happened as a natural consequence of that desire. Imagine that a very large computer looked at all the data and concluded our society wouldn't be able to function without that friction, even if that same society would paradoxically punish those elements who step out of line. Society is its organism, full of contradictions without a cure. As individual and insignificant pieces of it, perhaps the best panacea we can find is our peace with these omnipresent issues.

These are the questions The Gene of AI raises with its two patients of the week. These are big, meaty questions—that's what I like about the series. These are also questions that can't be answered in 20 minutes of cartoon, and Gene, to its continued credit, does not even attempt to place any definitive punctuation after them. That humility is what allows the writing to get as ambitious as it does without feeling too shallow. It's no substitution for the more substantive investigations and debates on these topics from great thinkers across the centuries, but it holds Gene comfortably above the marshes of baseline sci-fi pulp.

The first subject, Matsumura, presents a complicated ethical quandary about patient consent and the persistence of personality. There are echoes of the serial cheater from last week, although Matsumura seeks out a much more extreme black market solution for his addictions and impulse control. I think most viewers would agree, too, that implanting false memories deserves to be more illegal than installing a button that makes your boner go down. The former has to be much riskier and more rife for abuse from the practitioner. However, I'd also posit that the two situations are more semantically similar than dissimilar.

And Gene still asks us to weigh whether the ends justify the means here. Matsumura has a happy and fulfilling family life now, at the cost of some weird dreams and regular payments to Seto. How much different is that from prescription antidepressants? The deceit is what rankles Sudo the most, and since he's the audience stand-in, I do have to agree with him there. Sure, the “original” Matsumura consented to all of this, and for all, we know the payment plan could be completely fair for these services, but it feels like Seto has far too much power in this arrangement. In the end, though, even Sudo acquiesces that “there are no perfect answers in medicine.” Each treatment has side effects that have to be weighed against its benefits. Humanoids possess a cognitive structure that opens the way for shortcuts that can't be taken by human brains. Are these shortcuts inherently less valid? Less human? I don't have an answer for you, and neither does Gene.

That brings us to our second patient, who throws a bunch of additional wrenches into the already complicated ethical cogworks of Humanoid psychiatry. Instead of an adult, we have a child, and instead of addiction, we have autism. Yuta is about as explicitly on the spectrum as a character can get without the show directly diagnosing him as autistic, and The Gene of AI treads into this territory with a surprising amount of sensitivity. Granted, I'm saying that as someone who is relatively neurotypical and thus outside of my lane here, so please factor that into my perspective. But I think the worst way the story could have handled it would have been pressing an oversized “Cure Autism” button and holding a big jamboree to celebrate. While there indeed is a “Cure Autism” button for Humanoids, and it does indeed get pressed, Gene handles the situation with a lot of nuances.

Foremost, I like that we get Yuta's perspective on things. He's perfectly aware that he can't control his emotions sometimes, and he's frustrated by it. His genuine love for the piano also comes through, and we see firsthand that his conflicts with his classmates are not solely his fault. His issues aren't debilitating, and Sudo recognizes his musical gifts. The show sympathizes with Yuta, but it also recognizes that his inability to function within society is, like it or not, something that needs to be resolved. It's not fair, but so it goes. And I think it's telling that the medical AI is the one to suggest “tuning” Yuta's brain to alleviate his behavioral problems. The black-and-white binary assessment would be the one to seek the simplest and fastest solution that benefits the largest population. Sudo, meanwhile, is far more reserved and concerned about the effects on Yuta as a Humanoid with his personality and free will.

Yuta's mother also questions whether her son's issues are an illness or just part of his personality. When push comes to shove, however, she agrees to the tuning, and Yuta comes out the other side with a regular and happier social life, yet questioning the tone of his keyboard playing. I think the piano stuff ends up being a tad hamfisted, to be honest. We're implicitly asked to consider whether it's worth sacrificing genius for better societal integration, but this isn't an either-or proposition and an individual's worth lies neither in their talent nor in their friendliness. Nevertheless, it works well enough as symbolic shorthand for the open question of this treatment's side effects. And I'm glad Gene leaves that question open. Maybe Yuta's playing hasn't changed at all, but the perception of loss can be as real as an actual loss. We must also consider to what extent this procedure was done for Yuta's benefit versus the benefit of the people around Yuta. Unlike Matsumura, this was ultimately not Yuta's decision to make.

Gene's short-form format means it has to flatten some of the inherent complexity of the arguments it covers. Yuta had other options—behavioral therapy, medication, etc.—besides pressing or not pressing that button, and there's no way to cover all the subtleties of the full autism spectrum in ten minutes. However, I haven't seen much other anime tackle this condition so directly, and I give Gene a lot of credit for staying thoughtful and inquisitive when it could have easily turned didactic. This isn't my favorite anime airing this season, but at this point, it's the one that has surprised me the most.

Rating:

Gene of AI is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Steve is on Twitter until the day it completely succumbs to the t-shirt bots. You can also catch him chatting about trash and treasure alike on This Week in Anime.