What Is It Like to be The Terminator?

I can’t believe it’s been 41 years since James Cameron’s The Terminator came out. I first saw it in the movie theater and like everyone else I was completely stunned by its energy and creativity. It might well be the best B-movie action film ever made. (Its sequel, T2, is an A-movie action flick that still feels like a B-movie, in a good way.) Cameron’s spin on what is essentially the ancient hunter-vs.-the-hunted plot—mashed up with about a dozen sci-fi tropes and a heaping serving of the Frankenstein/Dr. Faust myth—results in an almost perfect piece of entertainment. There is not a dull moment or lame moment in it. Every scene either surprises, shocks, or tickles the viewer.

The sequel, T2, is even better, mainly because it’s a coming-of-age film. Rather, it’s a becoming-human film. We watch as the Terminator observes human beings, learns from them, and begins to emulate their best qualities. It’s an archetypal story, and I (almost) tire of watching it. And, in the process of watching the film so many times over the years, I’ve repeatedly asked myself: What is it like to be the Terminator?

Most guys (and probably a lot of girls, too) have fantasized about being the Terminator. That is, immensely strong and indestructible. But most people, I think, have never really wondered what it must be like to be the actual “cybernetic organism” depicted in the films.

We don’t have much to go on, other than the few shots we see in T1 and T2 from the machine’s point-of-view. This so-called “Terminator Vision” is infra-red and encrusted with various data-feeds—a kind of augmented reality whose content, we assume, comes from other threads running in parallel in the Terminator’s electronic brain. Actually, these are some of the most innovative moments of the films, when Cameron shows us what the Terminator “sees” when he’s executing his mission.

The more one thinks about it, though, the more Terminator Vision seems like a metaphor for the way the Terminator sees rather than a literal representation. That is, Cameron is showing us a version of the Terminator’s POV in a way we can understand. After all, why would information need to pop-up on the Terminator’s “screen”. Does he even have a screen? Wouldn’t the info just pop directly into his mind, the way instincts and memories pop into ours.

When a person sees a tiger, they don’t see the word “tiger” flash before their eyes (unless they are wearing one of the fancy Apple Vision devices, which I have ridiculed before). They just “know” it’s a tiger. They also just “know” that we should freeze, at least for a moment, lest the tiger chase them. Surely, the Terminator’s mind would work in some similar way (and probably a lot faster than ours).

Which leads me back to my main question: What is it like to be the Terminator? I got the idea for this question (and title of this post) from a landmark 1974 essay called “What is it Like to Be a Bat?” by philosopher Thomas Nagel. In the essay, Nagel questions how closely we can imagine the experience of being a bat, considering we, as humans, are very different physiologically and mentally. Sure, we can pretend we have echo-location powers, but we don’t. We can’t “see” with our ears like bats can. Nor can we hang upside down effortlessly from a cave-top. Et cetera et cetera.

I’m not sure I completely buy Nagel’s fundamental assertion—namely, that we can’t really ever know what it’s like to be bat. After all, I write novels, and a big part of my craft is putting the reader into the mind and feelings of another person (the point-of-view character) as much as I can. But I do agree with the bulk of Nagel’s conclusion—that every consciousness in the universe has its own, unique experience that can never be fully understood by others.

And, yeah, this includes Terminators.

In the realm of consciousness studies, the term for such subjective experience is qualia. That is, what it feels like at any moment to be you. Clearly, the Terminator has qualia. He has emotions. He even seems to be able to experience pain (both physical and emotional). That’s why the Terminator films are so compelling, even the first one. I mean, would the movie be so dramatic and exciting if an out-of-control bread-mixer were chasing Sarah Connor, even a bread-mixer with superhuman mobility and strength. I think not. No, the story works because the T1 is clearly a person—a villainous person but still a person. He thinks and feels. As a believer in the Hindu faith might say, the Terminator has an atman. An essential self.

For all its hype, I do not believe that any existing AI technology has qualia. That is, it’s not alive, and I doubt it ever will be. That’s not to say that we won’t eventually create some kind of non-biological consciousness, but it ain’t here yet.

If it arrives, the existence of such consciousness will, hopefully, create a whole new phylum of ethics and law. How should such artificial life-forms be treated? What rights do they have? Can a person be convicted of “murdering” one of them? (Or, conversely, can the State of Texas put one of them to death, as a snarky meme might put it.)

It’s a good question. I’m trying not to think about it.