From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Sat Jun 30 2001 - 16:46:49 MDT
To sum ump: Home Alone meets 2001. Here we have a very intelligent
idea that collides with standard filmmaking. The result is neither movie
history or a total loss, which is perhaps more annoying.
It feels like Kubrick's spirit fought Spilbergien cuteness at every
turn, and from time to time it works: the movie shows depth, asks
intelligent hard questions and is visually stunning. Then back to sugary
sweetness. In the end I think Spielberg's desire to make something
palatable (i.e. more sugar) kills the movie. Some scenes were pure
kubrick, like the first days with the robot boy at home. Eerie, visually
elegant and really shows the problem with a robotic child.
The movie asks some valid ethical questions. Not "Should we build
robots?" but "Can we meet up to the demands our creations make on
*us*?". It forces the viewer to think about human dignity as applied to
machines - which is cute in the Pinoccio story, but people tend to shy
away from it when you ask about AI. It also shows that even a 100%
friendly AI may fail at making people happy. While it has plenty of
Spilbergian sentimentality, I wouldn't call it mystical. In a way it is
a coldly logical story, albeit with some romantic twists. I guess
Kubrick would have made the purely logical story, visually stunning and
without sentimentality - an artistic masterpiece we and a few film
critics would have loved, and would have flopped at the box office
(except in Silicon Valley).
In the end, this will not be one of the great films of all time, but it
has the emotional impact to become the big AI movie. Unlike the cold
agents of the Matrix, this provides excellent imagery for people to use
in their future shows about AI and transhumanism to depict emotional
machines, AI and perhaps even posthumanity.
Spoleresque details:
I disagree that it is a deathist movie. The big tragedy is that the
android gets his meaning of life from loving somebody. He lives only for
his love, making him fundamentally unable to be an independent being. He
can't grow up, he can't live without his dreams of Rachel. The future
belongs to the cynical gigolo androids :-)
The fleshfair stoning scene, despite the frightening amounts of
Spielberg pathos lathered onto it, really works at making people feel
for AI. The announcer may to some extent have been right - a chatbot in
a robot body crying for help would have had exactly the same effect -
but it still is great ammunition for the @AIs are people too@ camp.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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