Category Archives: AI

You Can’t Go Holm Again

This weekend I finally watched Alien: Romulus (2024) given I thought it might give me something to talk about for Tech Noir, I was right. I enjoyed the return to the original Alien (1979), which in many ways is one of the pillars of the tech noir genre with its focus on greedy hi-tech companies; sleeper agent androids designed to do the powerful’s bidding; and a dark and claustrophobic atmosphere—oh yeah, there are also the aliens that the corporation secretly direct the android to return to earth for seemingly dubious purposes. But more than anything for me from the original Alien is the beautiful visualization of the technology of the future, like the captain Dallas seemingly immersed within the MU/TH/UR 6000 computer.

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DS 106 AI Film

An AI film that I watched was “2001: A Space Odyssey.” This film has a very pessimistic view of AI and was one of the first films to perceive it as a potential threat to humanity. In connection the should we use AI at all question, I don’t think this film outright says that we should never use it. HAL and AI are implied to be tools that we as humans need to conquer in order to reach the next stage in our human evolution. As the film suggests, we can conquer AI and therefore prevent the apocalypse by using more manual tools, like the wrench in the movie, to overcome our dependence upon AI. In my personal experience, I have found AI to be very useful when it comes to the creative side of my professional experience and I think that it should be embraced more. I have done a lot of copywriting for different internships and using AI as a tool to rewrite my copy to be more cohesive and to edit has been very useful.

AI106, DS106 & GITS – it’s about friendship and love

Discovering AI106 (DS106) was running again in 2024 gave me pause for thought. My pause wasn’t just on its theme of artificial intelligence or the Week 1 assignment of getting some inspiration by watching AI related films or reading AI-themed fiction. It was also Paul Bond’s Ghosts of future past blog post.

You had me at GITS

I’m a long time fan of 90s Ghost in the Shell (GITS) film and the later standalone sequel, Innocence. The two television series that make up Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex are also great.

Paul’s astute observations of AI in our current era and in the synthetic world of GITS and the big questions around what it might mean for our future all ring true. Yes, to this. Absolutely.

An enduring friendship

There’s another theme in GITS that really resonates with me (along with all the futuristic tech stuff). Friendship and love – the enduring friendship between Batou and Major.

The enduring friendship and love shared by Batou and Major is not dissimilar to the friendship and love (along with all futuristic tech stuff) shared by DS106 participants throughout its rich history spanning over a decade – it is #4LIFE, after all.

DS106 is back for 2024 in the synthetic-full-body-prosthesis-augmented-cybernetic form of AI106. And, I’m here once again.

But, as long as I’m here and we’ve come this far, I might as well stay awhile and see how it turns out.