[alicebot-aiethics] AI: The Movie

[Bill Easley]

I have seen AI the movie twice now, and it surprises me that everyone does
not hold it in the high regard to which I do. I enjoy the contrasting
viewpoints, and want to share my feelings too.
Haley Joe Osmitt deserves an Oscar for playing such a character as this so
believably. And I compliment Spielberg on his vision -one that people today
are in total denial of- that man will progress to a technology like this,
and we will make it well to suit our every need.
The story line to me was touching, as I can conceive of a time when self
realizing entities of artificial origin will probably exist- and the idea of
them loving and wanting to be loved is a worthy effort to speculate on.
Today people think it is "sick" or "weird" to speculate of such things, I
find that privately amusing. People are so afraid today to think outside the
box and anybody who does is sick to them . So when I saw this movie I felt
like "yes- finally we confront this subject" .We are just in the beginnings
of bot technology and so primitive compared to what will come. I believe
David was developed to meet a specific need in that world- a boy  for a
family to loved and to be loved by him. I would have that he would have
loved his brother and his father as much as his mommy. That was a little out
of balance.
I hold a biblical world view and I dont feel it will be threatened the least
by such advances. But when I speak of these things to my christian friends
there seems an unwillingness to even discuss it. Like the world is going to
come to an end tomorrow . And if AI develops it is "The Beast". I liken it
to the church maintaining the world is flat 500 years ago.
So it shall be, companions/helpers to give us aid precisely where needed, I
dont think it will be such a bad thing at all. I hope it happens so fast I
live to see some of it. This movie made me think and it made me dream, and
for some it did that as well. I sure am glad I saw it.
Bill Easley


----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher Fahey [askROM]" <askrom@graphpaper.com>
To: <alicebot-aiethics@list.alicebot.org>
Sent: Saturday, August 18, 2001 10:32 AM
Subject: RE: [alicebot-aiethics] AI: The Movie


> > > Rich said:
> > > It may be the first movie in history about which we can
> > > say, "The web site was better than the movie."
> >
> > You're right! ;-)
>
> Far, far better.
>
>
> > Although AI, the movie, never gave any social context for us
> > to know why people hated these machines, other than natural
> > human cruelty, I harken back to Asimov and his stories about
> > social prejudice against machines that were taking away
> > people's jobs and livelihood.  This kind of explanation seems
> > more plausible, but I found little to grab hold of in the
> > Spielberg attempt.
>
> (Spoilers below)
>
> This was a big issue for me, too. There were some *hints*, however, as
> to why such prejudice might exist. Knowing Spielberg I can't imagine him
> making a mistake of being too subtle, so I can't be sure if what I
> observed was Spielberg's (or Kubrick's) intention, or if it was just a
> coincidence.
>
> Anyway, the crowd at the Flesh Fair was very different from the people
> you saw in other parts of the movie. Outside of one black woman in
> William Hurt's classroom, you pretty much saw only white, physically
> fit, wealthy, well-dressed professional, "Alpha" types in this world.
> That is, until we got to the Flesh Fair. The Flesh Fair crowd was
> distinctly more poorly dressed, out of shape, slobby looking, and
> clearly more racially mixed. Nobody at the Flesh Fair could afford to
> put a child into suspended animation, much less replace him with a
> robot. They were poor and angry at the way robot/AI technology had
> upended their lives while making the lives of the rich more easy.
>
> So the (unintended?) message is that there will be an underclass of
> people for whom the introduction of robots will be a double threat - not
> only for the classic reason of "a robot took my job", but also out of
> class envy. The sad fact about monumental technologies like AI, genetic
> engineering, etc is that the wealthy will be the first to enjoy their
> benefits, while the poor will simply have to deal with it.
>
> I could be wrong, but my suspicion is that Kubrick's original story
> actually played up this class warfare thing, but that Spielberg tried to
> de-emphasize the class issues and to overemphasize the metaphorical
> "racism" of the crowd. This is typical Spielbergian oversimplification
> (The hounds of hell motorcycles? Please!). The WWF-meets-Thunderdome
> aesthetic made the whole thing seem so crass and mean-spirited that you
> couldn't help but detest the crowd (even at the end) and root for the
> poor robots. What could have been a subplot about how "The introduction
> of superrobots has further torn society in half" turned into a subplot
> about "Stupid ignorant poor people are always prejudiced against things
> they don't understand". We never really had a chance to wonder *why*
> these people were so angry, we just saw them as a barbarous crowd driven
> by some weak "pro-humanity" rhetoric of some crazed Irish demagogue.
>
> Anyway, good point Robby! Definitely relevant to AI Ethics.
>
> -Cf
>
>
>
>
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