Sweeny79 said:

The danger of human beings becoming obsolete, with machines having superior intelligence.

Ace said:

I agree, I thought Eyes Wide Shut was intriguing.

Sweeny79 said:

I'm tellin' ya, the story in A.I. was about two things: What is "love", and what is it that makes us human. The boy didn't outlast the human race because he was smarter or more advanced intellectually...the only reason the boy lasted as long as it did was because of the physical materials it was made of. In that sense the Blue Fairy statue could have demonstrated that point...it outlasted the human race, too...The advantages of using more durable materials is hardly a great concept for a movie...

In one real sense, A.I. was like one of those family movies where Scamp the golden retriever gets accidentally left behind when the family moves to Iowa, and he spends the next 3 months walking from Oregon to Iowa and getting into all sorts of whacky adventures while looking for them. When he finally finds them, it's all hugs and crying and we're supposed to say to ourselves "That dog really loved his owners"...and some part of us is meant to feel warmth at the contemplation of what that type of love is really like.

Well, imagine that A.I. kid, searching for his family/mother..."traveling" for 2,000 years instead of 3 measly months. We were supposed to have the same reaction, though, as we are with Scamp: "That robot really loved his mother". The movie wants us to, after all is said and done, have that same contemplation about love...and about what being human really means.

AlfofMelmak said:

hi Alfie!

Ace, no!

Lleena said:

Is that what ended the human race in the movie?
Seriously it's been a LONG time since I saw it... all I recall is a whole lotta ice.


I do hear what you are saying.. I think there is a Warning of sorts imbedded in the film...but I think that it is secondary to how the boy did feel love and how he showcases the purity of the human condition more fully than the real humans in the story.

AlfofMelmak said:

but he still was smarter

and more efficent

he didn't need to eat or sleep or have false sunlight...he didn't have to be but into a deep freeze in order to make the journey to Jupiter.

The only thing Hal couldn't protect himself from was Human drive and human determination.

Dave uses a screwdriver to disable Hal.

He used his own hands.

(That was all reguritated from the kubrick site I posted earlier)

Byron said:

Ok what you say is true but you can't just discount the fact that he is a robot, not a dog named Scramp.

Sweeny79 said:

I love typos





Get some sleep Sweeny

AlfofMelmak said:

I think I will!

Sweeny79 said:[quote]

Byron said:

True, using a robot instead of a dog allows for other issues to be touched upon along the way, but those other issues are barely touched upon (playing God, the existence of even more advanced technology and our fear of it, etc, etc..)...like in most movies, those subplots can either help the movie by adding to the narrative flow and pace, or they can be a distraction, barely touched upon as to sometimes wonder why they were brought up in the first place.

The sentence/line that kicks the entire movie and its plot into gear, is the one that William Hurt utters to the "Mecha" that he's using in his conference speech...he looks at her, and asks her "Tell me...What is love?" The movie then goes on to make answering that question it's central theme and purpose...Speilberg (sp?) called the story for A.I. one of the "nicest" stories he had ever heard, and said it was a "contemporary, albeit futuristic, fairytale"...If Speilberg is calling the movie a faitytale, you can be sure the story is about love...

Byron said:[quote]

Sweeny79 said:

grrr... I give up.

Night night

Sweeny79 said:

That's your way of saying you agree with me, isn't it...lol

Nighty night...

Byron said:

No that's my way of saying that I give up

What some other has to say about Kubrick's obsession with man and machine.



http://www.2001exhibit.or...e/a_i.html

A.I.
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Robots
— By Randy Jensen

Stanley Kubrick buffs have noted a running theme in his work revealing an admiration for the beauty of machines and the possibility of seemingly warm intimate moments toward and even between machines. This appears numerous times in Dr. Strangelove, from the opening midair refueling coitus scene to even the semantics of the title itself. And of course it has been noted that in many ways the HAL 9000 seems the most human character in the movie 2001, for HAL's interest in art and even his quaint rendition of "Daisy" as he seemingly mourns his own impending demise, while the astronauts on board seem cold and robot like as they carry out their mission tasks. So it's natural that Kubrick would have had a keen interest in the concept behind the movie "A.I.", a story whose central question is: "If it is possible to build a machine that can love man, is it possible for man to love such a machine?" Now, I might love a 53 Buick Super, and I might have more of a love/hate relationship with my computer, but these are both clearly on a different level than the question above, which refers to the kind of love shared uniquely between humans.

But before exploring this further, let's pause for a simple working definition for AI, or Artificial Intelligence - essentially it is the collection of technical disciplines involved in making machines behave like people. The most famous litmus test is the measurement known as the Turing Test - have a human subject sit in front of a terminal and carry out a dialog with an unknown second party. When the technology reaches the point where subjects cannot tell whether the second party is man or machine, then you have AI!

As a discipline, AI has a history of being a bit fragmented, because after all, there are so many components to what makes us human. AI research is what I do for a living, but unfortunately this doesn't mean we have neato bots cruising around the office. Like any other office, sometimes we're just lucky to get the printer to work. The vast majority of AI work fits into one of three categories: (1) mature technologies developed to consumer-level usability, at which point nobody thinks of it as AI anymore; (2) highly academic papers and concept work that seek to anticipate developmental technologies by several years; and (3) iterative work that builds on previous technologies, adding small innovations bit by bit. Within this framework, a great deal of exciting work is being done! So when we look beyond the state of current science fact and look at the issues raised by science fiction, particularly in film, there are some very important and interesting questions to ask.


One of the consequences of the history of fictional treatments of machine systems with human behavior is that they set the bar very high for the AI systems being developed in reality. People may be pretty happy with a graphics tool that comes with a few new paintbrushes, or an email utility that can filter messages based on keywords in the title or address line, or even an expert system that can make "intelligent" suggestions using a deep repository of domain knowledge. But when it comes to "natural" interaction features (voice recognition, speech generation, context representation), the most-common reaction to anything less than true, Turing Test-worthy AI is one of frustration, disdain, or even repulsion. There might be some amazing technology behind the Microsoft paperclip, but it's almost universally hated, for making the wrong suggestions at the wrong time and in a mildly irritating way.

Taking the example of natural sounding speech, even the monotone computer voice in Star Trek was more natural sounding than that generated by today's text-to-speech engines. And the disembodied voice of HAL 9000 sounds extremely natural, but a little creepy as the audience wonders what it really means when HAL says he's "concerned" about something or sees "improvement" in artwork. Of course the "AI voices" in films sound natural because using a real human voice or actor is the easiest route for the filmmaker. It sounds natural because it is! There is an inverse relationship between the worlds of filmmaking and technology development in this sense. It's easiest for a film to depict AI that is so advanced that it successfully appears human, and this gets progressively more difficult with each step BACK in progress, because it's more difficult for humans to act convincingly machinelike.
The flipside in the technology world is that it's progressively more difficult for machines to act convincingly humanlike.

The central "character" in the film AI is a "mecha" (as in mechanism vs. Organism) who has been programmed to be imprintable with emotional love for a designated human. He is VERY close to passing the Turing Test, but not quite. Just get him to eat some creamed spinach and watch what happens - it'll be pretty clear he's not human. He has an outstanding command of natural language understanding, speech generation, face recognition, concept representation, machine learning, and a host of other AI disciplines. But somehow in the process of building a massive and mostly effective knowledge repository about humans and how to interpret the ambiguities and contradictions in the things we do and say, he still missed out on some major concepts. Like, if you hold a human child underwater, you are endangering him. Or, if something is described in a book, it doesn't necessarily mean it exists, especially if the book is a widely known fiction like Pinocchio.

Ultimately the film AI is an exploration of the human capacity to love humanlike machines, which is why it makes sense that Kubrick originally tapped Spielberg to work on it. The film bears the Kubrick stamp in its episodic nature - two sequential plot-oriented segments followed by a conceptual, philosophical conclusion that presents an answer to the central question about the breadth of human love. Maybe there are really two kinds of answers. From a literal perspective, if a person believes another being is truly human, then it's logical that this person can love the other being, even if the hidden truth is that it is an artificial being. A more spiritual answer might be that such feelings of strong affection may FEEL and SEEM like true love, but they cannot be, because they are missing a fundamental "soul connection" ingredient that can only be established on the metaphysical level. To me, either of these perspectives is reasonable.



Perhaps one of the best features of the film AI is the range of issues it relates to. Around the time it came out, my coworkers and I noticed that at least we got fewer blank stares when people asked us about what we do. Even though the film presents VERY difficult technologies that are still years away in reality, it stimulates thought on a host of related questions. How much testing is necessary on a "mecha" product before it can be released - how can we possibly anticipate all the interactional scenarios and possibilities for problems? The "mecha" in AI can be programmed to love a human, but that programming is irreversible. Why? What about humans - is love irreversible for us too, or is it possible for us to ever truly fall OUT of love? If technology can build a machine that completely passes the Turing Test in the most thorough sense, is there still a moral requirement to designate the machine as such, rather than just letting it interact in the human world? How do you know for sure that your best friend or girlfriend or boss isn't in fact already a "mecha"? (If so, somebody must've built a remarkably effective "irrationality" chip, but you never know.) And if emotions can be programmed, how do we choose which ones to program?
Bottom line? Maybe the words of the great Western philosopher who once said "Can't buy me love" will someday be proved false.

Sweeny79 said:

MOVIE TRY TO SHOW SWEENY

THAT MONKEY MOST ADVANCED OF ALL CREATURE

AND WILL ONE DAY RULE PLANET WITH IRON BANANA!

an iron banana sounds really dirty.

It's been over 20 years since I watched this movie, and to make matters worse I fell asleep during it. Maybe it's time to see it again.

Sweeny79 said:

Ok, so that basically backs up what I was saying, then...lol

Sweeny79 said:

Paul McCartney is a great Western philosopher???