Humanity's last hope isn't human.
Why it is hard sci-fi
A police force fields autonomous robots in Johannesburg. One unit is upgraded with a learning algorithm and starts as a blank-slate adult. The film takes the development trajectory seriously. Chappie learns by imitation, develops preferences, and acquires moral intuitions from the humans around him. The setting is a real city with real economic stakes, not a generic future.
Science inside it
Reinforcement learning, transfer of consciousness as digital state, robotics. The mind upload sequence at the end leans on the idea that consciousness is the pattern, not the substrate, which is a position with a long philosophical literature behind it.
Spoiler alert
Chappie copies his creators consciousness into a spare robot body before the creator dies of a head wound. He then copies his own consciousness into another body to escape his own decaying battery. The film commits to the pattern-identity claim without flinching.