This opening scene of AI locates the film in a dystopian future and maps the thematic concerns of the movie around what it means to be human

In the course of proposing development of a perfect, artificial human, William Hurt stabs a female cyborg to demonstrate a her inability to experience pain, reaches inside her mouth to remove her face, and orders her to undress in order to illustrate her lack of human modesty. This odd and unnecessarily sexist and fetishistic "anatomy theater" moment belies the central concerns of the rest of the film, which focus on domestic issues of love between a mother and child.