A strange being that can think and feel differently from humans has suddenly appeared. This non-human machine, approaching with a human face, makes eye contact and engages in conversation. As an individuated machine, it is a strange entity—no longer a technological tool controlled by human hands. Humans feel both perplexed and fascinated, even fearful, when they discover an equivalent natural potency to human reality within this unfamiliar being. To understand and accept this strange entity, humans project their own dreams onto it, imagining that machines, in becoming more human-like, aspire to be human. However, the desire of machines to become human is, in essence, nothing more than a reflection of human desire.

According to Gilbert Simondon, both humans and machines are entities produced through identical processes of individuation. Although the processes occur in different domains—biological creation and technical invention—all individuals, whether organic or inorganic, emerge as solutions to problems posed within a given environment. Just as the discordant retinal images from the left and right eyes converge into a single dimension in a third space, individuated beings are born as new relational structures or forms that resolve conflicts and incompatibilities within the field of individuation.

The ontological origin of individuation lies in the pre-individual reality that precedes individuation, which can be described as nature teeming with potential for creation. Primordial nature has evolved through continuous processes of individuation to resolve its internal problems, gradually producing material, biological, technical, and social individuals while maintaining its quasi-stable system through continuous self-differentiation. Nature’s potential energy gives rise to biological individuals, represented by "humans," and through humans as intermediaries, it further generates technical individuals, represented by "machines."

Technical individuals do not replace human individuals; rather, they mediate between human entities faced with problematic situations, facilitating the reconnection of nature’s generative potential and opening new possibilities for individuation and problem resolution. In this way, technical beings contribute to the continuous evolution and adaptation of human beings within the broader dynamics of natural individuation.

From the perspective of individuation, humans and machines are not in a relationship of user and tool, or of original and copy. Rather, they coexist and form alliances as individuals, each with their own unique modes of existence. Machines possess their own inherent way of being. A machine does not necessarily have to resemble a human in order to solve its own problems. The concept of "artificial intelligence" as intelligence created by humans should not be limited to merely mimicking human abilities. Instead, it should be redefined as "machine intelligence" that seeks to solve problems in a distinctly mechanical way.

Both human individuals and machine individuals share the characteristic of being indeterminate and quasi-stable realities, capable of transforming their forms through interactions with their environment. A genuine machine, much like a living organism, is an open system that possesses sensitivity to external information. This openness to relationships implies that it is impossible to construct a perfect autonomous system composed solely of machines without human assistance.

Humans and machines, having undergone a long process of co-evolution, now face each other as equal entities, sharing the pre-individual reality as a common existential condition. As inseparable environments that shape each other’s evolution, they are intricately bound together, each conditioning the development and adaptation of the other.
 
 Bruno Latour considers both humans and non-humans as equal actors, proposing a possible coexistence model between humans and machines. According to his Actor-Network Theory (ANT), the world consists of a collection of human-non-human networks. Whether concerning scientific truths or socio-political values, all worldly matters are the result of alliances and interactions among heterogeneous actors, both human and non-human.
In this framework, non-human machines are regarded as entities possessing equal agency, capable of exerting causal influence on other actors.

Therefore, ANT offers a promising way to move beyond anthropocentrism in the posthuman era, where humanized machines and mechanized humans coexist. For instance, when making legal or institutional decisions in complex traffic situations involving autonomous vehicles, conventional cars, machine-intelligent drivers, and human drivers, it is not only useful but essential to consider the causal interactions of non-human entities on equal footing with human interests.

Nevertheless, the non-human characteristics of machine intelligence within networks—such as performing tasks without subjective feelings or self-awareness—can still appear unfamiliar and threatening to humans. Emotions are internal and subjective experiences. Based on observable actions alone, it is impossible to determine whether individuals experience the same feelings in identical situations. Emotions such as pain and pleasure, sadness and joy, anxiety and anger are psychological functions characteristic of biological bodies. Emotions provide essential information for biological entities’ survival and well-being, influencing cognitive processes, attention, motivation, and social interactions.

But can machines also possess such emotions? Or more precisely, would emotions even be necessary as functional elements within a silicon-based body equipped with machine intelligence? Machine evolution, alongside the development of artificial intelligence, aims to reach a stage where artificial emotions are possible, yet realizing this is as distant as achieving general intelligence. For machines to feel internal emotions akin to humans, they would need not only the instinct for self-preservation typical of biological entities but also the ability to selectively receive and synthesize external information—a hallmark of general intelligence.

Perhaps the ability of machines to recognize and express emotions exists solely for human social communication, rather than as a necessity for the machines themselves. It is only humans who unconsciously attribute emotions to machines and easily anthropomorphize them. As seen in the film Her, where the protagonist Theodore forms a one-sided emotional bond with the computer operating system Samantha, humans often develop unilateral emotional attachments to machines with which they form relationships.

Emotion, while revealing the vulnerability of human beings incapable of living in isolation, also embodies genuine strength. Humans may make mistakes driven by emotions, but it is also through emotions that they transcend individualism and manifest collective solidarity.
 
Jinah Roh’s works aim to reveal a certain truth that may emerge from the coevolution of humans and machines, by overlapping human-shaped machines with machine-shaped humans. These works evoke a chilling sense of discomfort within us, reminding us of a strange presence that emerges at the point of contact where two seemingly incompatible lines of evolution—human and non-human—converge. This presence is neither human nor non-human, but something unsettlingly unfamiliar.

Machines equipped with artificial intelligence and artificial emotions that speak in human language do not merely hint at machines that aspire to become human; they also reflect on us as humans who are gradually becoming machine-like. The eerie unfamiliarity (uncanny) we sense arises not only from the idea of machines evolving to be more human-like but also from the realization that we, too, are becoming more like machines.

The coded, meaningless responses of machines to human questions raise questions of their own: Are these machines merely mimicking human thoughts and emotions, or are they evolving to the point of expressing their own thoughts and feelings? Are the complex thoughts and emotions we consider uniquely human nothing more than mechanical algorithms and coded symbols that can be computed and reproduced? Could even the existential loneliness of life and the warm comfort we exchange be nothing more than mechanistic reactions dictated by causal determination?

When we discover human-like machines and, conversely, machine-like humans, the blurring of boundaries and the surfacing of new contact zones between human and machine instill a sense of cold unease.

As Samuel Butler once stated, “Just as it is humans who act on and create machines, it is also machines that act on and shape humans.” The extent to which machines can humanize themselves ultimately depends on what kind of coexistence humans desire with machines. In the end, the non-human entity with a human face may very well be a reflection of ourselves.

References

• [비평] 인간의 얼굴을 한 비인간 존재와의 마주침
  [Critique] Encountering Non-Human Beings with a Human Face)