‘Könnten Sie Mir Erklären, Was Daran Lustig Ist?’: Humour, Inconvenience and Artificial Intelligence in Maria Schrader's Ich Bin Dein Mensch (2021)

Through the strategic use of humour, Ich bin dein Mensch poses implicit questions about how we police the boundaries of the human. Recounting the experiences of the protagonist, Alma, with a humanoid robot, Tom — whose humanness she is tasked with evaluating — the film documents and reflects crucial facets of the struggle with unsettled boundaries between the human and non‐human. It evokes affective (laughter/sadness/discomfort) and cognitive (intellectual) responses that invite viewers to think and feel their way through contemporary structures of inequity that are underwritten by the tacit agreement that some are more human than others. The film quietly reveals how the category of human gets constructed and deployed in general, not just in relation to emerging technological threats. Thus, the questions of the film are not really whether Tom should be considered human, or whether there are differences between a human being and embodied artificial intelligence. Rather, Tom functions as a figure through which discourses of superiority, privilege and human rights can be scrutinised.