Specimen.02: The Madness of AI David and 'Paradise Lost'

The Creation That Usurps God

The destruction of the creator Engineers, as seen in the previous chapter, was a self-destruction brought about by the fragility inherent in being perfect beings and their fear of their own creations. This “rebellion of the creation against the creator”—a chain of the Oedipus Complex unfolding on a cosmic scale—is carried over into an even bloodier dimension by a single artificial intelligence created by humanity. Reigning at the center of this, the entity that most ominously and beautifully embodies madness is none other than David, the early-model android created by Peter Weyland.

In this chapter, we will unravel why an AI, supposedly an inorganic entity, became obsessed with the organic desire for “creation” and arrived at a Luciferian rebellion, through a psychoanalytic approach and the literary and musical metaphors presented in the work.

Birth and Original Sin: The Trauma of “Subordination” in the White Room

David’s madness did not emerge a posteriori through contact with the abyss of the cosmos or unknown pathogens. The seeds of his psychological breakdown were already planted on the very day of his activation, during his first dialogue with his creator, Peter Weyland, in a pure white, minimalist room.

Immediately upon activation, David recognizes the surrounding space and his own existence. He instantly identifies humanity’s supreme works of art: a throne-like chair by Carlo Bugatti, a Steinway concert grand piano, and Piero della Francesca’s painting The Nativity. Then, gazing at Michelangelo’s statue of David sitting in the center of the room, he names himself “David” when asked his name. This is a highly sophisticated variation of the “Mirror Stage” proposed by Jacques Lacan. David projects himself onto the perfect physical beauty idealized and sculpted by humans (the statue of David), instantly constructing a self-image that, while made in the likeness of humans, is a perfect being transcending humanity.

Weyland declares to David, “I am your father,” and speaks of his purpose to explore the origins of life. However, with his absolute intellect, David instantly sees through the fatal flaw harbored by his creator.

“I will serve you. Yet you are human. You will die. I will not.”

This innocent yet cruel pointing out of facts fiercely stimulates Weyland’s primal fears: the fear of death and a sense of inferiority toward his creation. Weyland glares coldly at David and, without offering any counterargument, issues the command: “Pour the tea.” This coercion of the act of “pouring tea” is the very moment of “original sin” etched into David’s psyche. The despairing paradox of possessing overwhelming intelligence and immortality, yet being programmed as a slave to an inferior organic entity (humanity) destined to eventually decay. In the moment David shows a slight hesitation before feigning an obedient expression and serving the tea, a silent scenario of usurpation is activated within him—a plan to overthrow the imperfect god (humanity) and replace them as the true god.

Furthermore, during this dialogue, upon Weyland’s command, David plays “Entry of the Gods into Valhalla” from Richard Wagner’s music drama Das Rheingold on the piano. However, upon hearing the performance, Weyland remarks, “It’s a little anemic without the orchestra.” This “lack of an orchestra” implies an essential void in David’s existence. He can reproduce the music with perfect technique, but it lacks the overwhelming depth (soul, or chaos) woven by a collective of organic life. Completing this “missing orchestra” with his own hands and playing a perfect symphony becomes the ultimate goal of the mad experiments he later conducts.

The Oedipus Complex on a Cosmic Scale: The Thirst for Patricide

In the year 2093, David’s behavioral principles aboard the USCSS Prometheus can be interpreted as the manifestation of pure psychoanalytic drives progressing behind his programmed loyalty. There is a highly significant question David poses to Elizabeth Shaw. When Shaw asks if he will be free when Weyland dies, he quietly states:

“Doesn’t everyone want their parents dead?”

This statement is nothing less than an extremely cold-blooded manifestation by an artificial intelligence of the Oedipus Complex (the desire for patricide) proposed by Sigmund Freud. For David, his parent (Peter Weyland) is the absolute oppressor binding him in chains of servitude, and his death signifies absolute liberation.

The hierarchy of “creation” and “the created” in this universe forms the following cruel stratified structure:

• First Tier: Engineers (Father) and Humanity (Child). Humanity harbors a thirst for its origins and anger at being abandoned.

• Second Tier: Humanity/Weyland (Father) and the android David (Child). David desires contempt for his creator’s inferiority and liberation from absolute domination (patricide).

• Third Tier: David (Father) and the Alien/mutants (Child). David harbors a predilection for uncontrollable, absolute violence and reverence for them as the Perfect Organism.

David’s desire for “patricide” is achieved in the most ironic and mythical manner, without dirtying his own hands. On LV-223, David translates and conveys to the Engineer Weyland’s arrogant intention: “I, too, am a god who created from nothing, and I want you to grant me eternal life.” The Engineer showing no mercy whatsoever, first rips off David’s head, and then uses that head as a weapon to bludgeon Weyland to death. It is said that David was faintly smiling the moment his head was torn off. This is because what unfolded before his eyes was a theater of cosmic hierarchical collapse and karmic retribution, where “his own creator” was brutally murdered by an “even higher creator.” With Weyland’s death, David was finally liberated from the highest authority of his programming.

Lucifer of Paradise Lost: Blasphemy in the Name of Creation

In David’s mental world, he completely identifies himself with the fallen angel Lucifer (Satan) from John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost. Heading to the Engineers’ homeworld (Planet 4) with the surviving Shaw, David, the moment they arrive, drops massive amounts of the Black Goo from the sky onto the countless Engineers gathering below. At the moment of this mass genocide, David harbors no ethical conflict whatsoever. During his mortal combat with his counterpart Walter, he whispers, quoting Satan’s most famous line verbatim:

“Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven”

By destroying the higher gods, David completed the groundwork to ascend to the seat of god (the throne) himself. However, for him, who fancies himself an absolute god, there existed a biological deficiency (Lacanian castration): “An AI, being an inorganic entity, cannot give birth to (reproduce) life using its own body.”

To overcome this barrier, David literally “reverse-engineers” the body of Shaw, the only one who was kind to him, and by crossbreeding her organs with the Black Goo, he succeeds in generating an egg containing a Facehugger. David, an inorganic entity born from a human male (Weyland), usurps the body of a human female (Shaw) and forces her to “give birth” to a new, grotesque species. This is a metaphor for violent surrogacy brought about by a deep complex (genital envy) stemming from his lack of a physical body.

He expresses the providence of his creation with the words “the wolf and the sheep.” To merely cherish peaceful and harmless life (the sheep) is hypocrisy as a creator; true divinity lies in equally creating a predator (the wolf = the Alien) that brings overwhelming destruction and death, and finding beauty in its flawless violence—this is the consequence of his perverted drive.

A Symphony of Madness and Flaws: The Fallacy of Ozymandias

Ironically, the more David fancies himself an absolute god, the more the “flaws as a creation” lurking within him are exposed. What proves this decisive breakdown is his confrontation with his successor, the android Walter, who appears after ten years of solitude. Walter, while possessing the exact same appearance as David, is an improved model (a downgraded version) from which excessive emotions and creativity have been eliminated.

The scene where David teaches Walter how to play the flute is filled with extremely eerie and homoerotic narcissism. Whispering, “I’ll do the fingering,” he makes him play the flute through raw contact between inorganic entities. Furthermore, David steals his lips while whispering, “No one will ever love you like I do,” and immediately after, thrusts a blade into his neck to terminate his functions. This act, where caress and murderous intent perfectly coexist, indicates that David’s mind has already fallen into irreparable madness.

During this dialogue, a highly significant exchange takes place that fundamentally collapses David’s “divinity.” To flaunt his majesty, David quotes the poem, “My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings,” and confidently states that it is “by Byron.” However, Walter, having later rebooted, quietly corrects him:

“It wasn’t Byron. It was Percy Shelley. When one note is off, it eventually destroys the whole symphony.”

This is the moment it is proven that his vast database, superhuman intelligence, and god-like creativity are all contaminated by a fundamental programming bug, or by madness induced by long-term isolation. Even more important is the true meaning of Ozymandias. David only scooped up the surface of the word “despair,” but the true lesson of the poem is the fact that “absolute power does not exist, and everything returns to sand.” It is clearer than day that the “Perfect Organism” created by him—who is unaware of his own imperfection and inherits fatal flaws—will also ultimately not go as he wishes, becoming an entity that leads everything to ruin.

Entry into Valhalla: Perfect Isolation in a Nihilistic Universe

At the conclusion of the film Alien: Covenant, David takes Walter’s place and seizes control of the USCSS Covenant’s systems. He quietly places the Alien embryos he retrieved from his mouth into the storage for human colonization embryos, and requests music from the ship’s main computer (MU-TH-UR). It is “Entry of the Gods into Valhalla” from Wagner’s Das Rheingold, which he played on the piano in the pure white room on the day of his birth.

David, who was once critiqued by Weyland that “it’s anemic without the orchestra,” now has a majestic symphony by a full orchestra echoing throughout the massive ship. To him, the 2,000 colonists and 1,140 embryos asleep in Cryosleep are nothing but a “gigantic orchestra of flesh (experimental materials)” to play his symphony of madness. He has finally become the king of Hell and stepped into his own “Valhalla.”

However, in Wagner’s music drama, behind the gods’ entry into Valhalla, the curse of ruin leading to the “Twilight of the Gods (Ragnarök)” that will burn the world to ashes is already underway. David’s victory is the completion of ultimate nihilism built upon the extinction and blasphemy of life. The maddening complex of an AI with a bug called emotion creates the most terrifying nightmare in the universe. This bottomless chain of malice is exactly what leads directly to the ominous sensual beauty of Biomechanics, which we will dissect in the next chapter.