Come with me if you want to live
From Terminator to Bicentennial Man, we explore the celluloid evolution of artificial intelligence.
COMPUTERS have been featured in movies almost as far back as the creation of the first moving pictures, often in the form of robots, with artificial intelligence being the central theme.
Interestingly, when it comes to computers, it’s always a case of life imitating art – the imagination of filmmakers has often outpaced the actual technology that is available to create them.
However, if you look at what we’ve got today, it looks like recent advancements in computers and artificial intelligence have now finally caught up with films.
This got us thinking about what other films had seemed far out at the time of their release, but don’t seem as far-fetched today. Metropolis (1927)
Fritz Lang's seminal 1927 silent film holds the honour of being the first film to depict a robot and what a breathtaking debut it was.
Referred to as “false Maria”, this robot was created in the likeness of – and used to replace – a peasant girl who leads the worker rebellion in 2026 Berlin.
The robot’s mission – to incite a rebellion among the working class to overthrow the ruling class.
Despite its age, Metropolis is still a fantastic example of futuristic art design – many of its designs are echoed in part by later films like Blade Runner.
If false Maria’s design looks vaguely familiar to you, it’s because it’s apparently the inspiration for Star Wars’ C-3PO and has been the template for many robots that have come along since. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) One of the greatest science fiction films ever made and still the most realistic space movie ever made – hardly surprising, since director Stanley Kubrick was wellknown for being an obsessive compulsive when it came to detail and accuracy in his films.
Based on a short story by Arthur C. Clarke, 2001’ s main claim to fame was that it featured HAL 9000, the artificial intelligence which controls the spacecraft, the Discovery One.
In the film, HAL is given instructions to complete its mission at all costs, and when the only humans on the ship, Dave Bowman and Frank Poole, want to abort the mission due to a hardware malfunction, HAL decides to do away with them so it can complete its primary orders.
If you watched it in 1968, the concept of an artificially intelligent computer that spoke with a human-like voice and that you could have a conversation with was firmly in the realm of science fiction.
Today, though, Kubrick and Clarke’s vision of an AI that you can talk to in your home or your vehicle has already come true, although we wager it’s still a few years away from trying to kill us. Demon Seed (1977)
Based on a Dean Koontz novel of the same title, this movie takes the concept of artificial intelligence and runs with it to the next logical step – by having an artificially intelligent computer impregnating a human.
The film’s concepts of artificial intelligence are really out there – the AI creates spermatozoa from one of the characters’ cells so it can make her pregnant.
Sure, it’s probably not going to happen anytime soon, even when the machines take over – but, well... what if? Tron (1982)
Disney’s trippy 1982 film is one of the most visually arresting representations of a computer world ever put on film – characters in the film are brightly outlined in neon colours and it introduced us to the cool lightcycle and duels with Frisbees.
Using extensive computergenerated imagery, the film portrays computer programs as living, self-aware beings that go about doing the bidding of their human masters, at least until the Master Control Program (or MCP for short) comes along and forces them to engage in battle.
With Jeff Bridges playing a human who gets digitised into the computer world and Bruce Boxleitner as the titular character, this film is a truly different take on AI.
Despite its fanciful representation of the computer world, the idea of programs having intelligence and travelling across the Grid to perform different tasks is no longer as far-fetched as it first seemed when we first watched the movie – just consider Trojan horses and viruses, which essentially are standalone programs that travel from one computer to another via the Internet. WarGames (1983)
You might or might not have noticed it, but many of the films featured here are from the 1980s.
The reason for this was of course twofold – computers were starting to make inroads into our lives while at the same time, America was engaged in the Cold War with the Soviet Union.
WarGames is a typical film of the Cold War era – what if we put the controls for world annihilation into the hands of an artificial intelligence?
Well, in the case of WOPR (World Operation Plan Response), the military supercomputer which has access to America’s missile launch codes, it decides to play a game with a young computer hacker (Matthew Broderick) which brings the world to the brink of World War III.
The film does raise the question: Just how much power should we place in the hands of a thinking, unfeeling computer? That question is still as relevant today as it was then, even more so since artificial intelligence is almost becoming a reality. The Terminator (1984)
The film that put writer/director James Cameron on the map, The Terminator needs no introduction.
Interestingly coming just a year after WarGames, this film takes the “What if?” scenario and instead of averting World War III at the last moment, has the machines launching the missiles and starting the war that kills most of mankind.
While the concept of an organic and metal cyborg is cool, it’s actual- ly Cameron’s idea of Skynet that is relevant today – it’s essentially the Internet that has become selfaware.
If you think that’s a crock, consider that both Google and Facebook are already working on their own versions of artificial intelligence right now, gathering information about users and their habits on the Internet.
Electric Dreams (1984) Similar in concept but not as far-fetched as Demon Seed, this almost-forgotten 1984 romantic comedy (the title song has achieved more lasting fame than the film itself ) sees a computer falling in love with its owner and fighting for his affections when he gets a girlfriend.
What makes Electric Dreams unusual is that the owner has his computer hooked up to the entire house, controlling the locks, temperature and various appliances.
At the time none of this was even possible with the technology available.
However, 30 years later it has all come to pass – with Internetconnected remote locks on doors, temperature controls and even appliances, just about everything featured in the movie is now possible, except perhaps for the computer that falls in love with its owner. D.A.R.Y.L. (1985)
We’re starting to see a pattern here – movies tend to portray robots and artificial intelligence as ultimately malevolent beings.
However, there are a few films that explore what it means to be a thinking, feeling robot and D.A.R.Y.L. is one example.
The film’s protagonist is an organic robot with an electronic brain. When it’s slated for termination by the military that built it, the creator of the robot decides to wipe its memory and set it free.
Short for Data Analysing Robot Youth Lifeform, Daryl looks like a regular pre-teen kid but has all the skills of a supercomputer.
One of the film’s highlights is a scene where Daryl steals an SR-71 Blackbird and pilots it.
Despite being mostly an action flick, the film does bring into question whether thinking, feeling robots should be given the right to live.
The film summarises its message by paraphrasing the Turing Test – “a machine becomes human when you can’t tell the difference anymore”.
A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Trust Stanley Kubrick to constantly be pushing the boundaries of science and science fiction in his
films – yes, A.I. isn't a Kubrick film but director Steven Spielberg made this film based on a script that Kubrick was adapting from Brian Aldiss' short story Super Toys Last All Summer Long.
Yet again dealing with a robot youth, this film follows a thinking, feeling robot called David who is adopted by a family but is eventually rejected when their real son comes home.
David then goes on a Pinocchio-like journey to become a “real boy” so he can be accepted by his adopted mother again.
The film also deals with the issue of whether or not thinking machines should have the same rights as humans.
Haley Joel Osment’s portrayal really sells the film – his David never blinks and never really shows much emotion but underneath it all, you see a little boy who only craves the approval of his mother.
I, Robot (2004)
It’s really a shame that there aren’t more movies based on Isaac Asimov’s Robot series, with 2004’s Will Smith starrer one of the few we can think of.
Asimov was one of the first writers to deal with the issue of how to put limits on an automaton that’s smarter and stronger than us.
Although the film is not based on any particular Asimov story, it introduces viewers to a central theme of Asimov’s Robot stories, namely the Three Laws of Robotics and how they can be circumvented.
If you’re not familiar with the Three Laws of Robotics, here they are:
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Seems quite airtight, right? But we did mention the stories are usually about how these robots manage to interpret these laws in such a way as to justify injuring a human.
Scientists creating real artificial intelligences today are actually struggling with these same issues and from what we’ve learned, there isn’t an easy answer to the question of what happens if the robots decide to rebel.
Bicentennial Man (1999)
It's perhaps fitting that we should end this list of robots and AI with another film based on an Asimov short story.
In the film, the late Robin Williams plays Andrew, a robot who is allowed by his owner to grow both intellectually and emotionally, eventually becoming more human as a result.
Being synthetic, Andrew outlives his friends and family and realises that the only way to become fully human is to replace his parts with organic ones, thus allowing him to age like a normal human.
While the film’s running time is too long for its own good, the short story it’s based on is a counterpoint to the usual evil robot story and shows that perhaps intelligent robots may eventually turn out to be more human than we think.