Epicac

The theme of humanity’s relationship to machines as it is presented in “EPICAC” explores the contradiction inherent in the idea that, as the narrator says, “Machines are built to serve men” (Paragraph 36). Throughout the story, the narrator and EPICAC demonstrate the possibility that machines do not only serve humans, but that humans also have a responsibility in the ethical nature of creating the machines that will serve them. This is a classic trope in the science fiction genre. It might be easy to pass “EPICAC” off as another fictional work asking the same age-old question of who the monster is actually—the monster, itself, or the person who made it. Such a question is at the core of the theme of humanity’s relationship to machines. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein posed the question before artificially intelligent machines were born out of the Industrial Revolution, and Vonnegut’s “EPICAC” poses several possible answers to the question.

In the story’s original context, AI was new, and new inventions often breed fear and skepticism. However, Vonnegut’s exploration of a new electromechanical breed indicate less of a fear of the machine and more of a fear of the men behind the machine The story’s narrator refers to the machine as in “it,” but also a “who,” suggesting that EPICAC’s intended role was beneath his humanity.