From: zeb haradon (zebharadon@hotmail.com)
Date: Sat Jun 30 2001 - 20:01:02 MDT
From: hal@finney.org
Reply-To: extropians@extropy.org
To: extropians@extropy.org
Subject: Re: Movie Review - AI Artificial Intelligence
Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2001 15:22:55 -0700
This has spoilers so if you don't want to read them please skip
the message.
But all the while he asks, "Have you seen David? Where is David?"
His questions are ignored. This seemed strange to me. Granting a world
where "supertoys" can talk, wouldn't it make sense that they might be able
to tell something about their owner?
I think that there was a moral (or at least a question) in this movie about
determinism and that the questions the bear was asking relate to it.
Notice the way the robots keep repeating things. In David, a few key phrases
like "is this a game?" are said more then once. I was imagining this as an
advanced ELIZA-like heuristic: when you have tried to figure out what is
going on and still cannot, then maybe the adult is playing a new game, try
to learn how to play first by asking "is this a game?".
In the same way, Joe keeps dancing around, following women, and generally
acting like the Gigilo that he's programmed to be, but he still thinks about
and takes creative self-preserving actions. A very nice and subtle balance
was acheived between making the robots seem "only able to do what they're
programmed to do", versus sentient beings.
In retrospect I felt that the key issue which was left unstated was the
morality of the creation of David himself. Is it right to create a robot
so helpless, so dependent, so locked into loving its surrogate parent?
One of the reasons people always have been and will be nervous about
creation is because of this type of question. Every time you even have sex,
you're risking the creation of a being which in its long life will surely
feel, at some point, the most bitter jealousy, the darkest sadness, the most
terrifying anxiety.. possibly ending up feeling like this the majority of
the time. Or it could be a child born with no arms. Is it right to do this?
Certainly there's deep moral questions involved in AI, human cloning.. it's
unfortunate that people don't realize that the same issues are involved in
natural procreation as well.
When we mistreat our creations now, we develop habits which may carry
over to when they become more alive than they are today. This movie
is something of a reductio ad absurdum of such a trend. I have always
assumed and hoped that as our creations "wake up" we would begin to see
that creations are human and deserve human rights.
I wouldn't count on it. If there are ever AIs (it's a technology I'm more
sceptical of then others), it will be a long time before people begin to
think of them as conscious. There are two reasons for this. One is that
people find it easy enough today to de-humanize a group of people based on
something as insignificant as skin color, if it serves their purposes.
The second reason is that very few people know anything about consciousness
and intelligence and would have a hard time believing that a manmade object
could have either. I'd wager that most people don't even realize that you
wouldn't be the same person if you got a brain transplant. Check out Roger
Ebert's review of AI ("http://www.suntimes.com/output/ebert1/ai29f.html") to
see how easy it is for an otherwise intelligent person to take the easy view
on these issues. He's been reading Searle it looks like.
Generally I liked the movie, but:
- They lab where they kept the frozen son had a sign that said "Cryogenics"
instead of "Cryonics"
- Why did the oceans freeze?
---------------------------------------------------
Zeb Haradon (zebharadon@hotmail.com)
My personal webpage:
http://www.inconnect.com/~zharadon/ubunix
A movie I'm directing:
http://www.elevatormovie.com
"What is this, some Three Stooges episode where everyone is armed with pies?
Bill Gates is supposed to walk through the airport with an armful of pies
so that he can stoop to the level of his attackers?" -Chris Russo
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