Thursday, May 14, 2015

Making a Better Artificial Intelligence Movie

The AI genre has some interesting contenders and there are always new twists to throw in this direction because there is tremendous research toward understanding brain function.  There are electronic add-on devices which range from simplistic in RFID chips which seem to be little more than storage devices and on up to DARPA trying to come up with direct brain stimulation.  I believe they have a study in which they attempt to send live information to a pilot's optic nerve for a head's-up display you won't even believe.

The devices involved in research I've seen have been for implantation in an existing subject rather than trying to modify the genotype in some way as perhaps some genetics whiz kid has the bold idea to put another thumb on the other side of your hand.  It would be a cool idea but (sob) Heinlein thought of it first.  In any case, that's not what they are doing.

The really twisted AI stuff comes through in AI humanoids who can reproduce themselves and this inevitably draws the genetics into it unless they clone them in factories in some kind of magical engineering process.


One immediate thing strikes me about AI movies of the Colossus genre (i.e. one great computer mind takes over the Earth) is they rarely compete with any other Colossus.  It's so rare that they made that idea the twist for Colossus in, lo and behold, the Russians have one as smart as he is.  Ka-boom.

In the evolution of ideas, they rarely come in only one place.  Darwin could have been beaten to print by another geneticist with similar ideas.  When the time for the idea has come, it suddenly pops up with some frequency.  You can see examples of that commonly but that of Darwin is one of the best-known.

It seems reasonable then that there wouldn't be just one mad computer mind but actually a number of them.   U.S. has one, Russia as well, Euros build one, and Chinese are at it too.

Tip:  never ever teach those systems about contract bridge or likely you will never see them again and your movie will never be made.


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