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AI & Mind

What it Means to be Human: Blade Runner 2049

Kilian Pötter introduces the big ideas and problems around artificial consciousness.

In the 2016 movie Blade Runner 2049, Ryan Gosling plays the replicant K (short for his serial number KD 6-3.7) in a dystopian future in Los Angeles. Replicants are bioengineered humanoids who serve humans, despite having superior strength and intelligence. K is a Blade Runner, whose job is to ‘retire’ (kill) renegade replicants for the Los Angeles Police Department. One day, he finds information that a replicant might have been born from another replicant, which no one thought was possible.

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