Technological Bodies: Artificial Intelligence as Friday in Portal and Halo Infinite

Abstract

Artificial intelligence characters provide a unique perspective on the discussion of Friday figures and issues of Otherness and Othering as they relate to the body. With their technological, inherently inhuman physicality, AI Fridays shed light on the differentiation between ‘being human’ as an inner state of being, on the one hand, and as having a biologically human body, on the other. These characters thus shift some of the central questions about culture in many Robinsonades towards questions of humanity and physical identity, especially when reading the AI body as a metaphorical stand-in for the colonised body. They reflect on the question of how far our bodies determine who we are, how they relate to and are shaped by the groups we belong to, and what it means to be human.