I agree. A.I. is very delicate in dealing with the issue of cruelty to children when one compares the story with what actually has gone on and continues to go on with real children. The mother after all believed that her true birth child was in danger from the mecha boy David. But then the issue arises that David, having been made capable of love, is also therefore capable of suffering if his love is not returned; and if there can be cruelty to animals, why can't there be cruelty to robots, particularly when the robots resemble humans in so many respects as David does? The problem does not end there, however, since there is also the question of how a human can come to love a robotic creation that is not organic, no matter how complex, and how doing so can be regarded as healthy or normal? These are issues that are really coming upon us more rapidly than we realize, and A.I. is the ultimate test of the morality of human technology -- of issues that were crudely but powerfully laid out in the Frankenstein story. I was relieved to hear in a discussion on the radio today with an expert on A.I conducted by Dr. Michiyo Kaku, that it may be likely that humans will neither dominate nor be dominated by but simply merge with their A.I. creations. Because if they do not, there is this danger, that we will either create or become slaves, and that our worst impulses will be encouraged to come out with the excuse that "it's only a robot, not a human," or "it's not organic," or some other such justificaiton for inhuman behavior toward our own creations, themselves the fruits of our own hubris.

As I have said here before, A.I. is a thought provoking film, and the story has endless ramifications. To reject the story out of hand as incoherent or ugly is to miss its delicacy and complexity and the richness of its implications.