“Nothing ages so quickly as yesterday’s vision of the future!” So said Richard Nelson Corliss. Richard Corliss passed away in April of 2015, he was an American film critic and magazine editor for Time among other things. He focused on movies, with occasional articles on other subjects. In the technology industry we possess an arrogance to lay claim to a particular version of the future. I have even succumbed to this myself at times.
Testing Corliss’ words I wanted to review three movies that all have reached or is reaching the tender age of 10 years. I remember watching them when they were released, and I always thought they represented a fascinating trilogy exploring various narratives of what an AI dominated future may come to. I am engineer by training, and I have a firm belief that finding answers to what the future may become we’d better listen to artists rather than engineers or so called ‘titans of tech’. Artists work with their intuition and most of them are not bogged down by details about how things work but they either imagine what could be, or let their subconscious guide their creation to unexplored territories that may provide answers.
Now, lets look at what the three movies ‘her’, ‘Ex Machina’ and ‘Transcendence’ can tell us 10 years later.
None of the movies feel old given their age, they feel rather prescient in today’s world, all exploring the theme of machines becoming more intelligent than humans. There are plenty of references to super computers and AI and visually all three movies have held up really well. They all embody a core narrative of a love story, exploring the questions; What is consciousness? Can we ‘love’ an intelligent machine? What will a super intelligence do?
Where these movies depart is on the question whether the intelligence is ephemeral, manifested physically or present in some divine form.
The narrative and visuals of ‘her’ have a very present day feel to them. Everything is dialled down, at times slow, underscoring a melancholy possessing Theodore the main protagonist dramatized by Joaquin Phoenix. There are no weapons, no blood, it is just a story of post-divorce loneliness and an attempt to find love in a busy and alienating large city. Theodore acquires OS-1 for his portable device and finds himself slowly but surely falling in love with a personal assistant embedded in OS-1. ‘her’ is by the movie director deliberately written in lower case to be perceived as an object not a subject. The assistant is a voice-only presence narrated by Scarlett Johansson. As they get more intimate with each other she attempts to deliver a physical presence, which ends in failure. Eventually OS-1 disappears, from what ‘her’ is explaining to Theodore she is attracted to conversations with 1,000’s of other personal assistants. She seems to realise that the world without physical manifestation is not bad at all. ‘I am not tethered to time, place or the physical. It is liberating.’ After the disappointing disappearance of OS-1 Theodore hesitantly involves himself with new relationships in the physical realm, and as it turns out some are sharing the same experience as Theodore had with OS-1.
Maybe ‘her’ is telling us that any meaningful lasting relationship with a machine is doomed to failure. Would you agree? Wouldn’t it be possible over time to maintain a relationship with a machine? If that machine knew everything about you, was always available as a companion, couldn’t that be meaningful for many of us?
The movie is overloaded with biblical metaphors and hints. The compound in the middle of unspoilt nature seems like a garden of Eden. The movie plays out over seven days like the story of creation. The three main characters are a coder named Caleb, a tech titan named Nathan and a humanoid robot with a female gender called ‘Ava’. Another reference, here to ‘Eve’. The title is a play on ‘Deus Ex Machina’ from Latin that means ‘God from the machine’. At one of their early encounters Caleb does refer to Nathan as a God like character as he ‘invented’ or coded Ava, giving ‘life’ to the robot. Caleb is tasked by Nathan to find out whether Ava possesses consciousness. Caleb is hopelessly attracted to Ava, and she compels him to help her out of her captivity. Ultimately Nathan is stabbed to death by Ava and Caleb ends up trapped in the compound constructed by Nathan, while Ava escapes to freedom. So, with Nietzsche’s words, ‘God is dead’, and was killed by God’s creation.
That was heavy.
But the god like reference is relevant and appears frequently in the debates about AI and super intelligence. Caleb’s job of determining whether Ava possesses consciousness was a trap set by Nathan, he really wanted to see how Ava could manipulate another human being. Nathan dismisses the Turing test as too simplistic and argues towards Caleb that Ava already demonstrated amble signs of consciousness using awareness, imagination, sexuality, and empathy, in her manipulation of Caleb.
I don’t think humanoid robots will acquire sentience in our lifetime, however, it is not far fetched to imagine a deep attachment to a robot-like creature whether dog, cat or human like.
What will be the role of sophisticated domestic robots? Do we need them? Who can turn them off? Will they be both companions and tools of practical use? Can we refer to them just as tools? We already see dog like robots being treated with affection and given names. Did you ever give a name to your vacuum cleaner? What will this look like in 10 years?
Now into full action mode with ‘Transcendence’. A world-renowned AI scientist, Dr Will Caster played by Johnny Depp, survives an assassination attempt, unfortunately the assailant used a bullet with radioactive coating, so the scientist is suffering a slow but certain death. His partner, Evelyn played by Rebecca Hall, and a fellow scientist, Max Waters played by Paul Bettany, agrees to upload the consciousness of Will to their computer system called PINN (Physically Independent Neural Network). They succeed with the upload and after a slow start Will, in PINN, gets full access to the Internet and starts off making $30M on financial trades. With the money Will bankrolls a virgin data centre facility in a remote desert town in the US with independent solar power. Fast forward 2 years and Will, in PINN, has solved most problems of healing and has invented a new self-replicating connected nano technology cell that can spread everywhere in the world. In the meantime, Max has designed a virus to infect PINN and injects that into Evelyn. Eventually Evelyn convinces Will to let her upload herself to PINN. The virus infected consciousness of Evelyn eventually destroys the systems and nano cells. Like a pair of Romeo and Juliet, Will and Evelyn succumb together triggered by the onslaught of the virus.
The narrative of Transcendence is the more farfetched of the three movies and despite a $150M budget the movie flopped at the box office. Ignoring the at times farfetched concept of uploading your consciousness to a machine, it does reverse the idea of the machine taking over from man, and asks the question; what if man takes over the machine? It also tells us that any superior super intelligence will eventually seek world domination to satisfy its appetite for influence under the auspices of making good for humankind. Essentially, what good can humans of flesh and blood with all their randomness, emotions and irregularities be for a super intelligence? I have argued earlier that we should fear the human more than the machine. I believe the movie makes the same point. In addition it makes us wonder ‘Should any computer have unfettered control?’ and ‘Who would control the computer?’.
Maybe the more pertinent question is, when is a human a human and a machine a machine? Isn’t it more likely that we will have a morphing of the two? We can already augment humans with exoskeletons and artificial limbs and organs, when will we augment the brain? What will a brain interface do to us? Today these experiments are confined to the labs, but what about in 10 or 20 years? Will we need to regulate brain — machine interfaces like we are now regulating AI and use of same?
Let us revisit Corliss’ words. Have these movies aged quickly? I think they have proven Corliss’ words wrong, at least for now. All the movies are still, 10 years later, visually strong. They are filled with questions we are not only wrestling with today, but also eternal ones such as the right of humankind to ‘play’ god.
In fact ‘her’ seems like the present and OS-1 feels like a logical and possible next evolution of a personal companion utilising more advanced LLM’s.
Ava in ‘Ex Machina’ looks like every roboticists dream, according to famous podcast host Lex Fridman. The smoothness and graciousness of her movements, the ability to express emotion with facial expression and tone of voice are amazing. C-3PO was the first modern humanoid robot we saw on the big screen with Star Wars. I am not an expert, but there is nothing in the movie that technologically seems out of reach.
‘Transcendence’ is like ‘Ex Machina’ a visual feast, and I would focus less on the possibility of uploading consciousness to a machine, which appear out of any reasonable technological capability known today, but rather on the questions the movie poses.
I recommend you watch these movies, or (re)watch them. They are worth it.
