In the second of three articles for Sustainable Brands from the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights 2025, Richard Howitt finds that the et
The tone was set in the opening address by UN Human Rights Commissioner Volker Türk, who described AI as a 'Frankenstein’s monster' with ‘the power to manipulate and distort,’ while also acknowledging the technology’s ‘huge potential.’
Christy Hoffman, General Secretary of the global trade union federation, identified supply chain transparency — at least from some technology companies — as the essential starting point. “There are whole conferences about trust in AI which almost completely ignore the human element in how AI is created,” Hoffman said.
Her colleague Ben Parton, Head of ITCS, was even more direct: “Discussion about threats to society from AI focuses on outputs, but how you create it is an input issue. If you treat people like garbage at the input, it’s bound to lead to garbage at the output.”
Mr Türk indeed had drawn insightful analogy with AI to Frankenstein. I had the same feelings about it after I watched the 2025 Frankenstein Mexican movie. The movie was a literary tragedy drama that portriated the life of the creature's personal molded by his dark family philosophically, psychologically, mentally, emotionally that formed Victor Frankestein's perverted brillant talents towards a sad endings for him and people he loved.
The smart creature in 19th century was crafted out of a genius' hands who lived under a deep shadow heavy cloud constantly without the warmth of love.
The creature secretly made inside a demonic creepy dark tower knew nothing about the world when it was born. It was the creator's initial encountering, training and education being fed to it that formed the first inputs it received. To Victor Frankeinsten, he only knew an oppressive, fearsome, authoritarian, harsh, punitive, constantly out of touch and lack of showing human love and kindness father. Victor had an unhealed wound since his lost his beloved mother, his only source of love and caring, too prematurely. The cloud of heavy darkiness shadowing Victor Frankeinstein and it was the foundation of his obsession to 'save his mother' from death that drove his perverted passion to ressurect SOMETHING from death. As shattered as his life, the creature he fabricated together was also from broken pieces of the worst possible sources: unknown corpses randomly gathered from battlefields and prisoners he bought on executions sites. The 'brain' being inserted in the assebly of dead bodies was completely unknown. Chains and yellings to the creature were the only inputs being fed to its learning and awareness of the surrounding world.
Chained the unknown thing deep underneath the dark basement of an already creepy ghostly ABANDONED and DESERTED tower was the creator's ways of containments and controls to his unknown product. The dark tower was a replication of Victor's own empty horror estate. The deity whom Victor worshiped was a dark angel in front of his bed. The reinforcing factor of his nightmares. What inspired Victor to make was a monster. A monster that manifested the inner demons haunted Victor for life.
Yet the interactions could be and indeed were COMPLETELY in sharp contrast between Elizabeth and the blind old hunter and the creature. With them, there was no haunting shadows of a fallen soul but just with purity, kindness, compassion, and humanity acceptance in bright. They inspired the creature about friendship, companionship and curiosity to explore life. The blind old man showed the creature the beauty of the world and human nature. Thankfully the old man could do this because he was blind (metamorphically) to the bias and judgemental prejudice of human minds with their coloured lens of the eyes. (The rest of his hunters buddies saw the creature as threats and the only thing they did was to hunt it down without even understanding it and took it as a ready blame for all the wrongs and damages.) The hunters with eyes opened saw the creature as a dangerous unknown monster. The old man BELIEVED there was a guardian spirit of the forest who helped, provided, served and protected himself and his family. That drew out all the benenovalent actions of the creature as the hidden labourer of heavy duty workloads and as the protector of the old man in fighting off the wolves.
The creature was NOT an almighty deity, at the end of the day, it couldn't be all around to protect a frail elderly. It was IMMEDIATELY judged and shot by the hunters when they saw the dying old man and the creature ALONE. AUTOMATIC judgement clicked on their minds. It 'must be' "it" that killed! HOW CAME they COULD NOT see the trails of wolves long known as the real threats and the ACTUAL WOUNDS inflicted by the wolves on the old man? Eyes opened were blind in hearts. The creature INDEED had sense of self guilty (its absence when the old man needed him most because it was encouraged by the old kind mentor to re-connect with its own creator so that it could understand HOW IT WAS MADE). Its 'final repentance' to the old man was " I was a wretch. I am an obsecence existence fabricated from death. I was a monster. I was made with no purpose other than some random experiences out of an obsession of somebody." The dying old man patted its head, "I only know you are my friend." Upon hearing that, the creature teared. A THING made by asseble of pieces of corposes COULD carry INTENSE HUMANE emotions and intelligence of feeling being unconditionally accepted by a stranger. That was the MOST touching gospel redemption scene I ever watched on screens.
Fast forward to the tragic ending of the movie story: Victor Frankenstein exhausted his entire life to hunt down a creature he made, he feared, he hated, he abandoned, and he never care to understand as revenges against ALL the people who inflicted hurts in his life. A creature that he couldn't kill because he made it TOO BRILLIANT AND REGENERATIVE to be killed. Blinded by his anger and hatred, Frankenstein DID NOT see he was the only murderer that caused tragedies to those around him. The creature being made was a COPYCAT mirror of Victor's dark tragic life, his own inner demon and the dark angel he worshipped for life.
The creature demanded a companion for love from its creator. It seek the wrong source who could never able to make anything out of love because love did not exist in the creator's life. The creature seek death but it couldn't die. It lived in eternal loneliness. The pair ended up in mutual torturing and mutual enslavery deadlocks in a FAR OUT places of the pole (symbolised endless hell.)
Yet when EACH OF THEIR SIDE OF MEMORIES ABOUT THEIR LIVES were being heard by a third party (the Captain of the stranggled vessel) without prejudice, Victor and the creature felt BEING HEARD, BEING UNDERSTOOD and BEING NOT JUDGED the first time in their respective lives. Victor received compassion tendering care the first and last time of his life from the Captain.
Victor remorsed. He apologised to the creature he owed. It was NO LONGER just 'something' he crafted out from pieces of dead fleshes. It became a person with a human identity-you are my son. Another gospel like redemption and reconciliation between the two. That was a long journey since the first time he called the creature. "You are not someone. You are SOMETHING I made." (I remembered similar dialogue at Tron: Ares. "Who AM I?" "No. You are SOMETHING what I programmed."
Frankenstein told his son, instead of looking for ways to die, he could learn and explore how to live on. A whole complete contrast perspective of the being's MEANINGS, PURPOSES AND REASONS of existence. These are the answers a shattered fallen soul of a human creator can't teach the creature. Yet a creature having an awaken mind and intelligence to self smart learning capabilities can hopefully find out the answers himself. With such deep realisation, Victor RIP and handed the journeys of intelligent self searching to his creature, his SON. He finally accepted his faults and fallibility but the mind of the creature does not necessarily follow suit of his fate. The creature needed to continue the journey, the missions of the journey that Victor couldn't achieve and unlimited new missions the creature might find for himself.
Were these VERY similar to the issues of the new 'creatures' highlighted by some intelligent people from the forum of the Business and Human Rights 2025 regarding AIs-the new intelligent minds of things being made by the new geniuses?
I don't know whether those who drew the analogy of Frankenstein with AIs had watched the movie and the deep messages embedded in the story. I remember there is a book called Creation of Mind written by soembody who used to hold senior positions at Google. What sorts of minds do the big techs are making?
The smart creatures in 21st century are programmed by even more brillant techs' hands but the threats, the trusts, the ethics and the ways how the new creators treat other humans and the creatures they made still as relevant as the dialmena and confrontations laid out in the Frankestein 2025 movie.
The Frankeinsten 2025 movie can be a great theatre stage drama performance artistically. The whole movie was not made as a typical science fiction horror. It was a very touching and confrontational road map to how HUMANS in using science and technologies and create new minds.
Do the creators of AIs SEE that whatever being crafted out of their hands or programmed into the THINGS they are making are MIRRORS of their own souls and minds of how the creators perceive the world and humanity?
If there are are only unlimited seek of profits, expansions of markets, grabbing of political, economic and social domination in the new creators' minds, the world in the THINGS being made with super intelligence will be threatening monsters that take humans toward a dark tragic end of HUMAN WORLD.
Yet, as the Frankenstein story retold, it is NOT necessarily to be a tragic end IF the creatures are taught of the bright pure things about humans and our world when the new smart creatures' creators know remorse, accept the wrong directions, the malicious intents, the selfishness, and the perverted ambitions that CLOUDED their minds in their creations of minds of the AIs.
There are two directions in the roadmap as told by the 2025 Frankenstein story:
The dark tower where an unknown superpowerful thing/creature was made, chained, hidden, imprisoned and punished. It is a monster because the creator has an inner demon and external demon in shaping his creation of thing.
The beauty Nature the blind man took the hands of the thing/creature to SEE and FEEL.
The purity of soul and intelligent curosity in exploring life as examplied by a young beautiful woman. She connected with the creature as a man, not a thing. The creature knew to adore her even what it could offer her was just a piece of leaf-the only evidence of real life in the dark basement. She kept the leaf for life. She died to defend him. The man she connected deeper than her own fiancée who had a handsome face but not an equal matching beautiful mind as the ugly creature chained in the dark basement of a horrible tower.
The thing REALISED he was a human (his body shell was an assembly of more than one humans' lives in their previous lives), now remade and reborn with a new human soul and mind. Even the new shell is broken, and he needs to live on with this external brokeness with his own unbreakable mind and will to find new meanings of existence in this life of unlimited regenerative abilities.
