— Overview
This reading describes the substitute bodies and then turn to the humanities, and they stop before a later shop table.
— Contents and key concepts
A body one can lie down and enter
Human beings, this reading begins, have reached a stage of making robots in their own likeness, and artificial intelligence in the likeness of their own intelligence — a technology of copying themselves. As one saw some time ago in the match between AlphaGo and Lee Sedol, AI has already evolved to a point where it threatens human intelligence.
We live, they write, in a time of competing not with other people but with AI, and of having to try to remain better than the technique we ourselves have made.
What the film calls a surrogate
In The Surrogates, as this reading writes the title, a “surrogate” is a robot that can replace a human body. By the time in which the film is set, more than 98 percent of the world’s population already use one.
A person lies on a device that looks something like a dentist’s powered bed, connects to the surrogate, and human thought is transplanted into the robot’s body. Most of the robots have a perfect, celebrity kind of appearance, and one can change that appearance at will, so that everyone can satisfy a wish about the body as far as they want.
A distance the humanities still keep
Human beings, they write, stand at a fork of challenge and choice, and the humanities — a product of human intelligence and of mental life — have their role and their capacity seriously questioned. The writer thinks the humanities can still teach a way in which human beings remain distinct from AI.
The very existence of the humanities, they say, already secures a proper distance from AI, and that is why people in an age of AI can find a kind of existential comfort in them. This reading leaves the film there, before a later table of further terms from the plot. The same Korean report, written out more fully, is on CampusDown.
Sources
- This reading, a student reading of the film The Surrogates and of the humanities beside it.
Last updated: 15 November 2026
Frequently asked questions
What is a “surrogate” in the film, as described in this reading?
A robot that can take the place of a human body. By the time of the story, they write, more than 98 percent of the world’s population already use one. A person lies on a device that looks something like a dentist’s powered bed, connects to the surrogate, and the human thought is transferred into the robot’s body.
How do they describe the look of those robots?
Most of them have a perfect, celebrity kind of appearance, and one can change that look at will. Everyone, they write, can fill a bodily wish as far as they want.
Where do they take the argument, and where do they stop?
They begin from human beings making robots in their own image, and AI in the image of their intelligence, and they recall the match between AlphaGo and Lee Sedol. They think the humanities can still teach a way of being distinct from AI, and that the mere presence of the humanities already keeps a useful distance. They stop before a later table of further plot terms.
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