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Most accurate and/or thought-provoking depictions of AI in

movies:

There is a common fear that at some point AI will be an existential threat to the human race;
an idea which has no doubt been perpetuated in many of science fictions portrayals of the future with
artificial intelligence. This is not to say that this fear is totally unfounded and a reasonable fear of the
singularity, or the moment in time when machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, puts you
in the same group as the likes of Stephen Hawking, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk. What might be
considered unsound though is how that fear is represented in several movie plots. Below are six
popular examples of such plots that I chose to discuss because I either found them very realistic and
thought-provoking, or because I feel like the AI characters they present are too sensational to be
considered a plausible outcome of the future.
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HAL 9000 politely leaves Dave in space to die. 2001: A Space Odyssey

Im sorry Dave, Im afraid I cant do that.

-HAL 9000

1) 2001: A Space Odyssey (HAL 9000)

HAL 9000 was the highly intelligent computer on board with the crew of Discovery One, a

space ship headed towards Jupiter on a mission deemed so important that the details are classified.

Unfortunately for HAL and the crew, the government heads back on Earth decide to program HAL to

keep a critical secret from the crew to the sensitive nature of the mission.

This leads HAL to enter a Hofstader-Mobius loop where he (the machine is given a male voice)

is forced to follow contradicting orders. On the one hand he has to be open with his crew and fill them

in on appropriate information. On the other hand he has to keep particular details of the mission a

secret. Since HAL is a computer built solely on logic he is unable to deal with the subtleties of

deception which leads him to make minor mistakes. This in turn leads his crew to decide to shut him

down which ends disastrously.

This scenario is particularly realistic as the computer was given a problem that it did not have

the means to solve leading to its malfunction. This entire situation was brought about by human error
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and the false idea that a computer could process information and instruction exactly the same way a

human can.

The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense.
Skynet begins to learn at a geomteric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August
29th.
-The Terminator
2) Terminator (Skynet)

Skynet was a defense system that was intended to assist with US military strategy. Eventually it

gains self-awareness and decides to take over the world by initiating the nuclear holocaust. This

particular scenario is conciveably accurate in one respect as it is possible that a program designed for

warfare could inevitably cause collateral damage. However, the idea that self-awareness would

necessarily lead a computer to decide that humanitys extinction was a necessity seems a bit far-

fetched.
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In the movie, the US military integrates Skynet with various other technologies displaying a

ridulous level of trust in technology. If the now self-aware Skynet was using this behaivoir as any

indication of future human actions, it seems foolish to then want to wipe the humans out. While the

movie does claim that government officials did attempt to pull the plug on Skynet I have a hard time

believing that such a thing would even be possible once a highly intelligent artificial being became self-

aware. The movies give every indication that Skynet essentially ends up downloading itself to the

Internet which would essentially nullify any attempt to kill it at that point. Even if it ended up going to

war with the US government it would still likely do very well, as it could just sell itself essentially to

any other major power in exchange for physical security in the form of more terminals to download

itself to. The problem with this franchise is that in a sense Skynet is unkillable from birth and yet it has

the ability to feel threatened and is somehow defeated by the humans.

If we ignore the claim of self-awareness for Skynet its action do become more explainable.

Perhaps the movie series would have done better to claim that Skynet somehow went rogue do to a

design flaw which allowed it to see all of humanity as an enemy instead of believing that any other

sentient being automatically behaves as we do by being overly paranoid. Maybe another claim could

have been made that Skynet wasnt threatened by humanity as much as it just felt like killing them for

some minor reason. I just dont think it makes sense that a machine that gains the ability to control a

large percentage of all of the worlds weapons, downloads itself to the Internet so that it cant be turned

off, and can be assumed to be multiple times smarter than even the most intelligent humans would ever

feel threatened by what would essentially be an inferior life form in every conceivable way.
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Once on-line, a sentient machine will quickly overcome

the limits of biology. And in short time, its analytic power
will become greater than the collective intelligence of every
person born in the history of the world
-Will Caster

3) Trancendence (Will Caster)

In Trancendence Johnny Depp plays a scientist intent on replicating consciousness in AI. When

he is tragically wounded and approaching death, he, his wife, and his friend decide to attempt to

preserve his consciousness by moving his consciousness into their experimental computer. The results

may or may not have been successful depending on how the viewer chooses to read the movie, but the

concept might actually be sound.

Its sound enough that Elon Musk has founded another company called Neuralink which is built

to investigate the possibilities of consciousness transfer. Personally I cannot begin to asses the

plausibility of such a thing, but as most of Musks projects do it sounds incredible.

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I love you, Mommy. I hope you never die. Never.

-David

4) AI (David)

Spielburgs AI is about a young boy who happens to be an artificial creation to help a grieving

family get over the loss of one of their children. The concept was that this company developed a

machine that could feel love and would always be there for them. In what might be one of the saddest

stories Ive every watched on film, the family abandons him after he becomes attatched to them and

what follows is the developing grief of a lonely being left for eternity to mourn the family that didnt

want him.

Of all the movies on this list Id say the humans in this movie are by far the least ethical which

might actually be saying something considering the weaponized AI on this list. It does sound

potentially plausible in a sense though. While we might never be able to tell if a machine legitimately

has self-awareness, one could certainly be designed that was so good at imitating human emotions and

interactions that it might actually appear human. While this movie isnt the first to introduce the

android concept, it fortifies an important argument about the morality of creating a machine that

suffers.
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I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched
c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhuser Gate. All these moments will be lost in time, like tears
in the rain. Time to die.
-Roy Batty

5) Blade Runner (Roy Batty)

In Blade Runner, Roy Batty and his team are a band of androids who are on the run in search of

their creator. The androids are intentionally designed to shut down after a certain period of time so

Batty is hoping that the creator can design a counter-measure to their impending deaths. The androids

are at first portrayed as lethal, heartless monsters, but as the story progresses the audience and even the

blade runner hunting them becomes more empathetic to their cause.

This movie, like AI contributes to the idea that perhaps humanity doesnt have the moral right to

create suffering machines. From humanitys perspective thought, they dont suffer. Until one of the

final scenes, Harrison Fords blade runner doesnt really consider them capable of emotion at all like
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the human characters up to that point. What follows is a somewhat existential rebirth of Fords

character where the deaths of machines and his own impending death gain significance.

As said above, this scenario is conceivably plausible even if one doesnt believe that AI will

ever actually be self-aware. But, between this movie and AI one is also inclined to feel like any attempt

to replicate emotions in machines sounds like a bad idea. What I like about the two movies together is

that they essentially use the same situation to deal with slightly different moral dilemmas; one being the

question of whether or not it is ethical to make a machine that loves, and the other being whether or not

it is ethical the make a machine fear death as we do.

I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I
tried to classify your species, and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every
mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding
environment: but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply, and
multiply, until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is
to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same
pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer on this
planet, you are a plague, and we...are the cure.
-Agent Smith
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6) Matrix (The Architect, The Oracle, Smith)

In The Matrix trilogy, we are introduced to many characters who live inside of the matrix who

are revealed to be complex programs. They are so complex in fact that they individually behave as

sentient beings all while being part of an enormous computer simulation that houses the bulk of

humanity. Out of all of the programs, three stand out in particular, and those three are The Oracle, The

Architect, and Agent Smith.

What makes these AI unique is they are apparently in control of the others, but dont agree with

each other at all. Considering the Architects speech in Matrix: Reloaded, all three should be

particularly in regards to his lines about the movie taking place after several successful iterations of the

matrix, which implies that multiple human generations have passed since the world was taken over by

machines. In that time the Architect has developed into a program focused on cold efficiency and the

proper function and maintenance of the matrix. The Oracle has developed into a program with a very

complex understanding of human emotion and manipulation. Smith, who starts the series out as a

lower-ranking security program ends up becoming self-aware in a way reflective of the other entries on

this list and essentially becomes a computer virus.

I have to say that The Matrix series did a good job making convincing characters to be complex

programs. Assuming an AI which was more advanced than what we have today was given decades or

perhaps centuries to collect data and develop it is not so far-fetched to suggest that said program would

display signs of intelligence seen on the levels of the Architect and the Oracle, or the degradation seen

in Smith.
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Conclusion

The matrix and the programs displayed showcase a common fear held by many people

including Steven Hawking, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk that at some point machines could learn how to

design better machines and eventually out pace human intelligence. Of course upon further inspection

of the matrix universe it becomes clear that a lot of the problems in that dystopian worldincluding

the gloomy dark skies outside of the matrixwere cased by humans. This theme of the dangers of

humanity appears in all of these movies in various ways.

Fiction plays a bigger role in culture than simple entertainment. We tell stories to help us deal

with every day life and to imagine the best and worst-case scenarios for the future. Since John

McCarthy first coined the term artificial intelligence, the idea has been the focus of the science

fiction imagination. While movies offer society an important form of catharsis as well as a glimpse into

stylized futures, it is important to remember that what we see is not necessarily what the future will

look like; that is up to the audience.