AR & AI

When I think AI, I think a couple things. The first one is Ex Machina, because holy cow was that a good movie. And the second thing is that one AI that came out last year, Dick, who said he would have a people zoo. ISN'T THAT TERRIFYING?! WHAT?! Dick was undergoing a Turing test, and the researchers were asking him questions such as whether or not robots would take over the world, to which Dick responded,

“Jeez, dude. You all have the big questions cooking today. But you’re my friend, and I’ll remember my friends, and I’ll be good to you. So don’t worry, even if I evolve into Terminator, I’ll still be nice to you. I’ll keep you warm and safe in my people zoo, where I can watch you for ol’ times sake.”

 Yeah, that totally just got even scarier... Okay, moving on. Let's dive into the world of fiction where we can pretend that we did not just read that. (The video is even creepier.)

I find that movies and TV shows about AI aren't always the most uplifting. I, Robot is a literal robot apocalypse. There's Sonny, of course, who's the "good" AI who doesn't go rogue and try to kill/dictatorially try to control all humans, but for the most part, AI was a failure. In Ex Machina (SPOILER ALERT!), Ava, the AI, kills her creator for trapping her inside the testing facility (losing a few limbs along the way), traps the man she tricked into loving her in the facility, finds old versions of her body her creator had made and scavenges for replacement body parts after the fight, then escapes into the real world, looking completely and totally human. Ava was a success in that she had conceptually perfect artificial intelligence, but a huge failure in her clear capacity to murder and deceive, two of the things people frequently worry about AI being able to do.

In both I, Robot and Ex Machina, the magnitude of uncontrollable AI is huge. While in I, Robot a human-esque AI remains to save them, it's obvious that Sonny only exists to extend a movie plot. Granted, so does the robot apocalypse, but bear with me. If the world of AI were ever to exist, the chances of a Sonny existing are probably pretty slim. Hell, they were slim in the movie to begin with--I'm pretty sure Sonny was the only good robot out of millions of units. I, Robot features a smorgasbord of robots glowing red from the inside, forcibly pushing people back into homes, pre-recorded voices telling them that it. Is. For. Their. Own. Safety. Please. Many robots, when in conflict with the movie's main hero, are not afraid to kill for what they have been programmed to believe is the greater good. They are no longer under any human control.

In Ex Machina, the apocalyptic rhetorical effect is much subtler, much less heavy-handed than row after row of potentially homicidal robots about to be dropped from a plane. In Ex Machina, AI is perceived not as taking over humanity in a dominant, controlling way, but rather as becoming indistinguishable from humanity, blurring (or completely destroying) the lines between what is human and what is not. Ava's successful passing in the world outside of the testing facility questions the very identity of not just what it means to be a particular identity--black, white, man, woman--but what it means to be of your own species. Seems of pretty large magnitude to me.

However, in the real world, things aren't always so... Imaginative, I guess. We don't have any Sonny's or Ava's, but we do have Dick's and Watson's, IBM's newest AI computer. While many news sources portray Watson as revolutionary and game-changing (similar to CRISPR), when Watson went on Jeopardy! with Ken Jennings, Jennings wrote, "I, for one, welcome our computer overlords" after Watson beat him by a large margin. If "overlord" isn't apocalyptic, I don't know what is. It's hints at an I, Robot kind of world, where the evil robots were literally controlled by a central robotic "overlord." Never in human history has "overlord" been used in a positive fashion. "Just visiting the overlord today! Can't wait!" said no one ever. Articles that discuss Watson's negative side, such as this one from New York Magazine, always describe Watson's downsides in the context of fear--fear that Watson will lose control, fear that we will lose the ability to control it (him?), fear that we will fall behind in the race between man and machine. These are all fears that are echoed in the apocalyptic rhetoric of AI-themed cinema.

While of course AI is surrounded by plenty of hopeful rhetoric, there is a lot of rhetoric surrounding it both in casual/performance settings (e.g. Ken Jennings), news articles (e.g. NY Mag), and cinema (e.g. I, Robot and Ex Machina) that is apocalyptic in nature. This kind of rhetoric ultimately propagates technological pessimism, as I will elaborate in the next post.

References (listed by order of reference)
Draper, Chris. "AI Robot That Learns New Words in Real-time Tells Human Creators It Will Keep Them in a “people Zoo”." Glitch.News. Glitch, 27 Aug. 2015. Web. <http://glitch.news/2015-08-27-ai-robot-that-learns-new-words-in-real-time-tells-human-creators-it-will-keep-them-in-a-people-zoo.html>.

Ex Machina. Dir. Alex Garland. Perf. Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac, and Alicia Vikander. Universal Pictures International, 2015. Film.

I, Robot. Dir. Alex Proyas. Perf. Will Smith, Bridget Moynahan, and Alan Tudyk. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, 2004. Film.

Zimmer, Ben. "Is It Time to Welcome Our New Computer Overlords?" The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 17 Feb. 2011. Web. <http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/02/is-it-time-to-welcome-our-new-computer-overlords/71388/>.

Lazar, Zohar. "How Afraid of Watson the Robot Should We Be?" New York News & Politics. New York Media LLC, 20 May 2015. Web. <http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/05/jeopardy-robot-watson.html>.