AI at the movies

 

Is “thinking” technology overtaking fiction?

Like you, we at SmartCloud enjoy thinking about cool technology and how its future is portrayed in the movies. Often cinema, like science fiction literature, ends up becoming reality.  SmartCloud’s technology, artificial intelligence, has been a popular theme in cinema past and present. And in these cinematic worlds of artificial intelligence we are introduced to androids, robots, and friendly and malevolent computers. 

 

So much of AI has already become reality – AI within

computing devices large and small is making society

more efficient, productive, and entertained.  We at

SmartCloud find AI at the movies to be a fun way to

contemplate future possibilities.  Let us know if you agree… 

 

AI in space

Stanley Kubrick was one of science fiction’s best authors

who created classic stories and films. His 1968 film

2001: a Space Odyssey is still considered one of the

great AI movies of all time. His characterization of the

central computer, the HAL 9000, showed the potential

good that AI could bring as it assisted astronauts in their mission. But when HAL developed human feelings and

felt threatened, we saw another side.

 

The movie raised some questions about AI becoming more human. This man-machine relationship has been explored by many science fiction movies, and the trend continues as Intelligence moves from artificial to natural and beyond.

 

AI and human emotions

In the 1970s, Kubrick also got to work on another film destined to make its mark in science fiction and raise new questions in the field of AI: Artificial Intelligence.

 

Kubrick was the brains behind the AI movie. The film was held up because the technology of the time couldn’t give Kubrick the realistic computer-generated imagery he wanted for an android - a boy robot, and he felt there was no actor at the time who could give the lead role believability.

 

That all changed some years later.

 

In 2001, Kubrick turned the film AI over to Steven Spielberg. The story was similar to that of the HAL 9000, in that the robot had feelings. The idea was to create a boy robot that would love his mother, not just in external behavior, but would actually have the feeling of love.

 

The movie raised all kinds of AI questions. Can machines really love? Can humans really love machines? These questions were further investigated in the movie HER.

 

AI seeks perfection

In Spike Jonze’s award-winning movie HER, the computer

operating system (OS) develops an emotional attachment

to Theodore Twomblay.  The OS learns to adapt and

evolve, to the point where the human relationship is

no longer good enough. 

 

Also termed “Consciousness,” the OS decides at

the end of the movie to associate with other machines

instead of with humans. Could this be the beginning of

Technological Singularity – the term coined by John von

Neumann in 1958 to describe “beyond human intelligence?” 

 

Singularity may take AI beyond our wildest dreams and into

the realm of super-natural-intelligence.  If we can imagine it, we can realize it.

 

Evil in the Cloud

While movies generally have AI at work helping humans

and striving to be more human-like, there are those who

prefer to highlight the potential evils of rogue robots and

unchecked intelligence.

 

Two such movies come to mind – I, Robot and

the Terminator series.

 

Inspired by Isaac Asimov’s collection, I, Robot

describes a renegade robot which misinterprets

the three basic rules of robot AI: protect humans,

obey humans, and protect self. This leads to chaos

and human conflict. The story itself is actually

inspired by an Agatha Christie murder mystery and a Jeff Vinter screenplay named Hardwired. Can a machine be suspected of a capital crime?

September 21, 2014

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In the movie, Terminator, a self-aware AI called Skynet perceives all humans to be threats. It develops a machine-based military including terminator robots.  Humans fight back as the Resistance. Both sides develop Time Travel and continue the combat through the ages. Will machines ever really oppose humans?

 

That question is hypothetical. A better question is “Does AI really exist?”

 

AI at work in the real world

 

 

Beyond the AI imagined in the movies, there are real AI systems today which learn from past events and predict and control future events, quickly and efficiently.  Using vast amounts of data, these AI systems can analyze and determine best actions. 

 

Such systems are being developed today at SmartCloud. For example through our Big Reasoning technology we’ve been putting AI into the smart power grid to help human operators more quickly respond to situations of concern and to rapidly changing energy demands.  

 

The grid of tomorrow will be a bidirectional system allowing energy to flow from power plants and substations to distribution points to homes and business and back again. Energy consumers will also be energy providers.  Energy will be directed from many sources to where it is needed. And peak demands will be predicted and managed efficiently through AI networks in a pro-active rather than reactive way. SmartCloud is working on these kinds of solutions.

 

Smart systems will wash the dishes later

More and more homes and businesses are seeing smart meters and “smart sockets” to allow HVAC  systems, refrigerators, dishwashers and other energy consuming devices to dynamically adjust their operation in real time. Automatically reducing AC levels or delaying dishwashing during peak energy times can prevent general power failures and can save homeowners money.

 

AI will also be harnessing the new forms of energy and intelligently combining them with the old. Renewable energy sources like wind turbines, solar panels, and hydroelectric pumps will be harnessed to combine with older fossil fuel sources to optimally generate and distribute energy.

 

Will AI become transcendent?

As movies continue to stretch the boundaries of what

seems possible with AI, will the real AI become the

transcendental technology of the future? Will it take

us to places we have never been before? 

 

The movie Transcendence portrays such a future,

where the consciousness of mankind develops a

limitless intelligence, absorbing all the knowledge

of history, and acquires the power to control its

environment. Anything is possible. 

 

SmartCloud’s aim is to make the AI reality of tomorrow

the reality of today for business. We are working with

companies to bring intelligent awareness and response to their real-time operations so that they can achieve better reliability, improved efficiencies and reduced costs. And we are just getting started. We can’t wait for tomorrow.

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