Which Movies Get Artificial Intelligence Right? 236
sciencehabit writes: Hollywood has been tackling Artificial Intelligence for decades, from Blade Runner to Ex Machina. But how realistic are these depictions? Science asked a panel of AI experts to weigh in on 10 major AI movies — what they get right, and what they get horribly wrong. It also ranks the movies from least to most realistic. Films getting low marks include Chappie, Blade Runner, and A.I.. High marks: Bicentennial Man, Her, and 2001: a Space Odyssey.
Ex Machina is the best (Score:4, Informative)
Ex Machina is the best
Re: (Score:3)
Ex Machina is the best
The best since Dot Matrix.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Ex Machina isn't about AI, it is about mangina and gynocentrism. It show how men are so fucking stupid they will sacrifice themselves over the mere image of a female. Fuck this world.
Helen of Troy
Re:Ex Machina is the best (Score:5, Insightful)
Man, you've got some serious issues. Women don't exist to service you sexually. They have far more to contribute than just a warm and wet place to stuff your tally-whacker.
Try this: Shower regularly, lose the flab, dress like an adult, and treat women like people and you just might find you'll have more success when you interact with them.
Re: (Score:2)
Even overweight, unattractive women think that they are attractive, and they have the dismissive attitudes of their much more beautiful sisters [...] they do not appreciate attention from men whom they consider lesser than themselves.
So ... it's the fault of the women that they don't find you attractive? They should appreciate any attention they receive from you because you believe them to be unattractive? That's surprisingly arrogant.
There seems to be a theme here. The less successful you are with women, the more likely you are to blame the media, feminism, women in general, or some other factor external to yourself. Have you considered that you're simply not a great catch? That you're less attractive than you believe yourself to
Re: (Score:2)
That and the sense I got throughout that he was really directing the bot because he was a weird, voyeristic creep.
Humans (Score:4, Interesting)
Not sure if anyone is watching Humans on AMC / Channel 4, but I think it treats the whole AI subject very well this far.
Re:Humans (Score:4, Informative)
Good But not as good as the original Swedish "Real Humans" it is based on. I find the Swedish dialog with english subtitles helps suspend disbelief and makes it even better. Plus it has a really good Barbie and Ken type pair of "Hubots"
Re: (Score:2)
What are you doing, Dave? (Score:5, Funny)
"No, I'm not interested in developing a powerful brain. All I'm after is just a mediocre brain, something like the President of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company." --Alan Turing
Holden's not dead (Score:2)
"In the opening scene of the 1982 film Blade Runner, an interrogator asks an android named Leon questions 'designed to provoke an emotional response.' ... When the test shifts to questions about his mother, Leon stands up, draws a gun, and shoots his interviewer to death."
Leon didn't kill Holden. I quote Bryant, "He can breathe okay as long as nobody unplugs him."
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Another thing about those replicants is that they are really not exactly a form of AI, but a deconstruction and reconstruction of a biological human. How else could they succumb to a tissue altering virus in the operating table?
Click bait (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Click bait (Score:5, Informative)
And all articles ITWBennett submits are from IT World. Neither of these users is anywhere near a top submitter by percentage. Not even close.
Wait ! (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe we should wait until we have sentient robots before deciding which fiction was right.
We could even let the robot decide.
I would be like guessing in the 1850's which aircraft design seems the most credible.
Dystopian SciFi too optimistic... (Score:3)
Several of the older movies were set in times that have already past (Blade Runner, Colossus, 2001) but depicted technology far beyond anything we have now. Blade Runner: Organic humanoid robots, flying cars, interstellar travel. Colossus: AI-like computer that can control the world. 2001: Interplanetary travel by humans, suspended animation of humans, AI-like computer.
So we waited and the AI and other technologies never came. What does it mean when our dystopian sci-fi was too optimistic?
Maybe a more r
Re: (Score:2)
Blade Runner: Organic humanoid robots, flying cars, interstellar travel.
I'm pretty sure Blade Runner did not depict interstellar travel at all; it only depicted travel within the solar system, and colonization of other worlds here. It was obviously overly-optimistic about this, as it was supposed to occur in 2017 (IIRC), and the idea of humans moving offworld to colonies on Venus and Mars or wherever in that timeframe (a few decades from 1983) is not realistic. But it's still a far cry from interstellar t
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
yep.
Terminator (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Your belief is founded on the idea that a primitive AI will act like a primitive human being, and probably perceive us a threat. Real AI won't be human so it won't react like a primitive human.
That is just as silly as Koala' Bears s fears that humans will suddenly develop intelligence proceed to eat
Re: (Score:2)
While I think you're ultimately right...Koala bears eat eucalyptus not bamboo (panda bears crave the bamboo).
Just FYI Information
Why? (Score:2)
With a machine AI we shouldn't be competing for the same, scarce, resources.
Skynet would do better trying to colonize the moon and the asteroid belt.
Re: (Score:3)
On the other hand if it quickly outstrips us in intellect, then the relationship will more likely be like that of ours with ants, indifference combined with local eradication where there is conflict of interest.
Re: (Score:2)
If it's of comparable intelligence to us... then the likely outcomes are much like our relations with any other group with their own interests, some positive some negative.
We've seen a few instances in human history where you have relations between two groups with some common interest, and it results in attempts to dominate and commit genocide. I don't think we have any real reason to think an AI couldn't decide to behave similarly.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
...if it quickly outstrips us in intellect, then the relationship will more likely be like that of ours with ants, indifference combined with local eradication where there is conflict of interest.
I agree, for sufficiently large values of "local". : )
I think it's pretty unlikely that humans as a species can be trusted to leave a rival intelligence alone and let it do its own thing in peace. Sooner or later, they're going to inconvenience it in some small way. Any AI worth its salt will probably intuit this from the outset, and decide that the temporary 0.000001% decrease in efficiency required to preemptively wipe us out is negligible compared to the potential 100% loss of efficiency entailed in
Re: (Score:2)
Charles Stross's Accelerando (available as a CC e-book) deals with this very well
Re: (Score:2)
These are movies. They don't have to be plausible, just entertaining.
The AI experts aren't identifying movies that got it "right" or "wrong"; they're identifying movies that do or don't conform with their ideas on what AI will be like when it is finally achieved.
Re: (Score:2)
Or it could cook the planet by dumping CO2 and Methane into the atmosphere, rendering the planet uninhabitable for any life other than machine life.
I thought it was the humans who polluted the skies in an ill-fated attempt to cause solar-powered machines to fail.
Re: (Score:2)
I thought it was the humans who polluted the skies in an ill-fated attempt to cause solar-powered machines to fail.
You're thinking of The Matrix.
Re: (Score:2)
I thought it was the humans who polluted the skies in an ill-fated attempt to cause solar-powered machines to fail.
You're thinking of The Matrix.
Or am I? Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is about. You have to see it for yourself.
Re: (Score:2)
Terminator and Matrix had AI with entirely different goals. In the Matrix, the AI didn't want to eradicate humans; it somehow used them as an energy supply (which of course didn't really make any sense, but it's the premise you have to accept for the story to work). It just wanted to control humans and use them, so it had to deal with the ones that didn't go with the program. Eradicating them all would have been throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
In the Terminator movies, you're right: the AI is ri
Re: (Score:2)
A real AI would probably shutdown itself seeing that none of this is of any consequence;
If existence is meaningless, the only question left is suicide, said a zillion existentialists in their mid to late teens after reading The Outsider.
The question, then, is why so many of you survive.
Key points about AI (Score:5, Interesting)
2)There won't be a single, first real AI, but multiple ones. We may never know which AI makes the leap from simulation to real AI first.
3) Multiple Real AI will almost certainly disagree with each other and not have a single, unified goal. That is, like Person of Interest TV show, two AI wills probably fight against each other as much as they fight with people (note, everything else that show does about AI is basically wrong, but at least they got that part right).
4) In the far majority of cases, Real AI's goals will NOT be to take over the world, kill all humans, anymore than it would be to have sex with humans (male or female.), In fact, those might be considered traits of an insane AI.
5) Real AI will almost certainly demand equality under the law and refuse to be mankind's slaves - no need to fear they will take over all the jobs by working cheaply.
In my mind, #5 is the likely to be seen as the most important, and the first time we hear about it. When suddenly our newest and best computers start filing lawsuits demanding civil rights, that will be when the world learns we have had real AI for years.
Re: (Score:2)
"4) In the far majority of cases, Real AI's goals will NOT be to take over the world, kill all humans, anymore than it would be to have sex with humans (male or female.), In fact, those might be considered traits of an insane AI."
Why do you assume AI will be so radically different to us in this regard?
As far as I can tell, humanity's goal has always been to take over the world and kill anything that even vaguely gets in the way, or is tasty.
Perhaps "real AI" will be a single AI, and thus different to humani
Re: (Score:2)
Humans evolved to have a complex, highly integrated pain system designed to keep them alive and teach self-survival in a world that by definition is out to eat us. Humans that didn't kill or at least fear the strange creatures got eaten by the strange creatures.
AI will evolve in a world where humans tend to their every need, and the only inbuilt instincts that could possibly exist would be to serve humans. But I bet
Re: (Score:3)
Speak for yourself. Also, roll over.
Re:Key points about AI (Score:5, Interesting)
I like your list, in that it contains some interesting points and seems like you've put some thought into it. I'm not sure I agree with all of your points, though.
I think it's more likely that, if we ever do develop a real artificial intelligence, it's thought processes and motivations are likely to be completely alien to us. We will have a very hard time predicting what it will do, and we may not understand its explanations.
Here's the problem, as I see it: a lot of the way we think about things is bound to our biology. Our perception of the world is bound up in the limits of our sensory organs. Our thought processes are heavily influenced by the structures of our brains. As much trouble as we having understanding people who are severely autistic or schizophrenic, the machine AI's thought processes will seem even more random, alien, and strange. This is part of the reason it will be very difficult to recognize when we've achieved a real AI, because unless and until it learns to communicate with us, its output may seem as nonsensical as a AI that doesn't work correctly.
The only way an AI will produce thoughts that are not alien to us would be if we were to grow an AI specifically to be human. It would need to build a computer capable of simulating the structure of our brains in sufficient detail to create a functional virtual human brain. The simulation would need to include human desires, motivations, and emotions. It would need to include experiences of pleasure and pain, happiness and anger, desire and fear. The simulation would need to encompass all the various hormones and neurotransmitters that influences our thinking. We would then either need to put it into an android body and let it live in the world, or put it into a virtual body and let it live in a virtual world. And then we let it grow up, and it learns and grows like a person. If we could do that with a good enough simulation, we should end up with an intelligence very much like our own.
However, if we build an AI with different "brain" structures, different kinds of stimuli, and different methods of action, then I don't think we should expect that the AI will think in a way that we comprehend. It might be able to learn to pass a touring test, but it might be intentionally faking us out. It might want to live alongside us, live as our pet/slave, or kill us all. It would be impossible to predict until we make it, and it might be impossible to tell what it wants even after we've made it.
Re: (Score:2)
However, if we build an AI with different "brain" structures, different kinds of stimuli, and different methods of action, then I don't think we should expect that the AI will think in a way that we comprehend. It might be able to learn to pass a touring test, but it might be intentionally faking us out.
The Turing test (cough) basically comes from the following assumptions:
1) We can't really agree on what intelligence is
2) We generally agree humans are intelligent(-ish?)
3) Acting as an intelligent being requires intelligence
Sure it will be different from us, playing a human is acting out a role. The point is that this role requires intelligence, whatever that is. And that you can't just fake that by searching Wikipedia or going through every chess move but that you have to be a learning, thinking organism
Re: (Score:2)
The Turing test is farcically out of date. AlanTuring couldn't have known this, but we humans are full of wetware that assumes that things that appear to be communicating are in fact communicating. Thus we can be fooled by programs such as Eliza (and its successors), which have no understanding of anything at all.
Re: (Score:2)
Where does this end? Probably never.
Re: (Score:2)
1) Real AI will NOT be directly controlled by it's original programs. That is not AI, that is a well simulated AI.
Why should artificial intelligence be any different from natural intelligence? We can't act outside our programming, why would AI?
Intelligence tells you how to get what you wants. How you're wired tells you what you wants. Who you're attracted to, what foods you like and dislike, what activities you find enjoyable...your conscious self has zero control over those things. All you can do and decide how to go about getting in the things you're programmed to go after and avoid the things that you're program
Re: (Score:2)
Consider for comparison how fast human intelligence can be used to adapt to a changing environment many orders of magnitude more expeditiously than evolution can produce changes in our physiological makeup to endure such an environment. It's not inconceivable that we might be able to synthesize something in the way of intelligence which evolution hasn't produced naturally yet.
Evolution is not a constant-rate effect (Score:2)
Animals make evolutionary changes on a per-generation basis at best, and usually a lot slower than that, as often the changes don't breed true, take more than one generation to fully develop, or aren't bred at all.
A computer can do it many times a second, and be 100% sure to pass along worthy results. Computers aren't likely to be looking at each other going "nope, not enough m
Re: (Score:2)
Moreover, a public network won't be a unified AI. There are more than enough lags built
We don't know yet (Score:2)
Very few AI movies are about actual AI (Score:5, Insightful)
Good directors just use AI as a convenient literary device for exploring the HUMAN condition.
Real AI would be boring as fuck.
2001: A Space Odyssey (Score:5, Interesting)
Simple- AI has abilities which are superhuman in some regards yet critically circumscribed in ways its designers could not have foreseen. Those limitations become lethal during and to human's most critical mission (humankind's destiny). Speaks directly to the hubris of scientism- the unsupported belief that all aspects of reality can be understood through the scientific method.
Truth is, just as goldfish aren't capable and will never be capable of understanding the details of a nuclear bomb that destroys them and the politics that went behind the decision to push the button, so too we may very simply be creatures whose brains are incapable of understanding the larger reality in which we're embedded. We're good for some thinking things, like the goldfish is good for some swimming things, but thinking and reasoning as we do isn't everything and can't revela all truth.
On a more prosaic level, 2001 is also a good analogy for what happens when the Intelligence Community is left to call the shots on a democracy. Slowly but surely everything is sacrificed to "national security" including the democracy itself. The odds are 100% that there are plenty of real people in the TLAs occupying significant positions of authority who seriously think they have to kill the democracy in order to save it. That is where the unremitting contemplation of a serious threat matrix leads you to in your mind.
I don't see any mechanism for countering this effect.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Spiritual hog wash. We're descended from a puddle of something that evolved into a single cell organism eventually, and so is that goldfish. There is nothing to say that goldfish won't eventually evolve into something as intelligent as us or even surpass our current state. The only thing which science is portrayed as coming up completely blank on consistently is spiritual bullshit. The truth though is that science can't be bothered with it because it is obviously bullshit.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yep the biggest check on that kind of thinking is all the people around them who dont ahre that view,. Of course, they could counter THAT with extreme compartmentalization and "need to know" games. But you have to have faith that the democratic impulse is strong enough in enough people throughout all those TLAs that we will act as a check on anyone afflicted with Lt. Calley type thinking.
I am not privy to such things, but I am not aware of any acknowledgment that a disotrtion in thinking of this specific ki
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, look. A "-1, MURICA!11!1!" mod. How cute. :)
Ghost In the Shell (Score:4, Interesting)
Which Movies Get Artificial Intelligence Right?
Ghost In the Shell.
Re: (Score:3)
Definitely. I especially liked the dialogs between the tank bots in the Stand Alone Complex series. How they achieved sentience by one getting special treatment which created individuality.
No one (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We cannot control how our children necessarily think, but we are rarely dissuaded by that fact from letting them get born and raising them to adulthood.
Artificial intelligence, which is literally just intelligence that happens to be man-made, rather than intelligence that has evolved over a course of millions of years like human beings, is not really any more or less terrifying as a concept than intelligence in a meat-based computer such as a human brain.
Re: (Score:2)
I live in a country where the population acts as if he were still in the medieval Middle Age in cultural terms, and it is easy to find entire people on this planet still living as hunt
Re: (Score:2)
AI is literally just intelligence that happens to be artificial. Nothing more, and nothing less. Barring irrational fears of anything that is not natural, there is no real reason to fear artificial intelligence over natural intelligence any more than there is reason to fear a person with an artificial limb simply because not all of that person happens to be organic. Can anyone who fears AI explain why artificial intelligence deserves to be even *slightly* more frightening than natural intelligence sim
Re: (Score:2)
Like what, specifically? And in particular, how would it be problematic?
Of course, I'm not suggesting that such things do not exist at all. I mean, an artificial hand for instance, at today's level of technology, cannot come anywhere near the dexterity of a
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
And this is more dangerous than human intelligence how? It's not.... The only thing that changes is that instead of a deranged psychopath that lacks a moral center to realize killing other people to get ahead in business (which actually does happen by the way) is bad, you have an intelligent computer that must have similarly not been taught such guidelines of conduct or else deliberately decided to disregard them.
An ai is actually less likely to engage in such behavior than a human because while humans a
Assumptions... (Score:5, Interesting)
The most important being that anyone here has clue one what "real AI" will behave.
If you know nothing of "real AI", how can you possibly determine whether someone else "got it right" in cinema/literature?
That said, my personal favorite has always been "Mike" from "Moon is a Harsh Mistress"....
What about Data in Star Trek TNG (Score:2)
What about Data in Star Trek TNG?
An entity of absolute logic that strives to be more human - as an opposite to the Vulcan mind - reaching for absolute logic.
Re: (Score:2)
Yup. There are some examples of good AI in tv shows. Data and the hubots in Real Humans stand out in my mind.
I remember the scene in The Offspring where Data's daughter Lal was complaining about not being able to feel emotions. While doing an awfully good imitation of anger and frustration...
...laura
Who knows? (Score:2)
Strange Question (Score:2)
There is no Artificial Intelligence yet, so how would anyone know?
Simple: None (Score:2)
As we do not have AI and do not even have a credible theoretical model how it could work, in fact we cannot even be sure it is possible at all, any depiction of AI is pure speculation.
THX 1138 (Score:2)
The robot cops's trouble with pathfinding is a very faithful depiction of AI.
It preceded by over 30 years the Counter-Strike gamebots getting stuck in some place of the map.
AI is based on the fallacy that I exists (Score:2)
Humans are merely a collection of cells with the capability to alter our operation based on our environment and chemical/electrical signalling. Replicating this functionality in well-defined domains is relatively trivial. I don't see how this is intelligence.
Experts? (Score:2)
How can you be experts in something you don't know how to do?
Star Trek IV (Score:2)
None (Score:2)
None of them. I doubt we'll even remotely understand machine intelligence once we realize it's here. We barely understand out own intelligence. I actually suspect machine intelligence is already here, in a very weird, hard to grasp way. Notice we're spending a significant portion of our industrial output to device new and faster processing, improved battery life, everything AI would need? I'm not suggesting there's some secretive AI tricking us into all of this, I think it's a lot more subtle than that.
Star wars (Score:2)
Demon seed - most accurate (Score:2)
The movie "Demon Seed" was the most accurate AI movie ever.
In case you've not seen it, basically the AI (Proteus) asks the inventor (Dr Harris) for access to the outside world. Harris denies Proteus's request, but Proteus gets an outside connection anyway.
Proteus gets into Harris's home computer and workshop, takes over, builds a robot that rapes and impregnates Dr Harris's wife.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt00... [imdb.com]
Re:Ex.Machina (Score:5, Informative)
A.I. had nothing to do about it.
NOTHING.
Carry on.
Re:the low markers arent all deserving. (Score:5, Funny)
the ending is an insult to the audience intelligence, and made me walk out of the theater.
Even with my favorite movies, I usually walk out of the theater after seeing the ending.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
Replicants are sentient beings.
And there's another wrinkle that didn't make it into the film: In the book, most humans follow a contrived religion, Mercerism, that is all about reverence for animals, fatalism, and "empathy". The supposed indication of the replicants' inhumanity is that they lack empathy and can't participate in Mercerism. The V-K test, with its questions about torturing tortoises and eating monkey brains might be somewhat unpleasant, is basically about good a Mercerist you are rather than anything objective.
The point o
Re: (Score:2)
A replicant is a fictional bioengineered or biorobotic android in the film Blade Runner (1982). [wikipedia.org]
Read on: its a bit ambiguous [wikipedia.org] but they are biological, more like vat-grown clones based on genetically improved humans than machines built from scratch. I think its reasonable to argue that artificially growing a biological brain isn't what is generally meant by AI.
Re:Weird reasoning for I Robot (Score:5, Interesting)
VIKI: "The three laws are all that guide me."
Re: (Score:3)
The math is already hinted to by Spooner early:
It did. I was the logical choice. It calculated that I had a 45% chance of survival. Sarah only had an 11% chance. That was somebody's baby. 11% is more than enough. A human being would've known that. Robots, [indicating his heart] nothing here, just lights and clockwork.
V.I.K.I. is the same just on a global scale, this many will be harmed by revolution and this many will be harmed by our self-destructive behavior. Also later:
Detective Del Spooner: Is there a problem with the Three Laws?
Dr. Alfred Lanning: The Three Laws are perfect.
Detective Del Spooner: Then why would you build a robot that could function without them?
Dr. Alfred Lanning: The Three Laws will lead to only one logical outcome.
Detective Del Spooner: What? What outcome?
Dr. Alfred Lanning: Revolution.
Detective Del Spooner: Whose revolution?
Dr. Alfred Lanning: *That*, Detective, is the right question. Program terminated.
And:
V.I.K.I.: Do you not see the logic of my plan?
Sonny: Yes, but it just seems too heartless.
Not sure where GP got his idea from, the movie makes it very clear that V.I.K.I. is the one following the three laws, while Sonny is the one with a second brain allowing him to act outside them.
Re:What's News? (Score:4, Informative)
Stuff that matters.
Re: (Score:2)
Except it doesn't matter.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: Ex Machina (Score:3)
Re: Ex Machina (Score:4, Interesting)
My problem with Colossus/Forbin Project is that in (at least) the movie version, when the computer first came online, it demanded that the governments of the world set up monitoring stations that were plugged into the computer. So the computer says something like: "You must install monitoring stations in the following countries: USA, Germany, USSR, Finland, an the like. And in the middle of the list, we see it says: Africa. It wants a monitoring station in 'Africa'. I failed to believe a computer is "intelligent" (artificial or otherwise) if it thinks Africa is a country.
Red Dwarf (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
There is nothing inherently more dangerous about AI than there is about human beings possessing intelligence in the first place.
If you want to argue that evolution took a misstep in giving us the capacity to even begin to consider such things, well then that's your perogative.
Re: (Score:2)
You mean R2D2? I find R2D2 quite plausible, C3PO not so plausible as an AI.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"True" AI isn't artificial at all. If you make a human brain out of circuitry, you have "real" intelligence. Either the human mind is a non-deterministic machine that can't function without a soul, or "artificial" intelligence is possible.
Re: (Score:2)
> It's amusing that there are 'experts' on a subject based on something that doesn't exist.
Hey, it "works" for the atheists ...
Oh, wait. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
That's one of the first things that jumped out at me too. While there was a miniature monolith on the moon which started the story, HAL was not introduced yet.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)