Meet the Robinsons is a movie that I watched several times growing up, but watching it again focusing on the AI aspect gave it a different feel. The film centers around Lewis, a 12-year-old orphan who is an ambitious inventor. He invents a memory scanner to try to find his birth mother and brings it to his school’s science fair. Going to the science fair, Lewis meets Wilbur, a 13-year-old claiming he is from the future and attempting to recover a time machine taken by someone wearing a bowler hat. The scanner does not work when he tries to demonstrate it because the antagonist, Bowler Hat Guy sabotaged it and ends up stealing it. Lewis and Wilbur go on a time-travel adventure avoiding Bowler Hat Guy and Lewis ends up finding out more about his family in the process.
Time travel is a significant component of the movie, with the usual issues of trying not to disrupt the timeline too drastically. Since the movie has a dystopian feel to it, it can serve as a warning about AI and the growth of technology in the future. The main purpose of the film is not to focus on AI, but it is a key component of the futuristic world portrayed in the movie.
Recently, it has seemed like a lot of TV series and movies incorporate AI in a way that makes people fearful of it. Watching the movie before, I did not realize how much AI can make people concerned about the future of technology. However, since AI has become much more advanced recently, it has led to a growing fear of the potential capabilities of that technology. Rewatching the movie now really made it clear how much the perception of AI has changed over the past few years and the things that stood out to me this time are so different that what stood out in the past.
If you looked at this film poster for Wall-E for the first time, you never would’ve guessed that the movie delves into the darker possibilities and repercussions of AI, and its eventual irreversible impact on planet earth. I watched WALL-E as a wee elementary schooler all the way back in 2008, and at the time, I was enamored by the personable and cute little characters that gave these robots humanlike characteristics.
I tend to write off Disney and Pixar movies as mostly cookie cutter stories without much substance, but I was pleasantly surprised by the themes explored in the movie, now being experienced from a different perspective in my early 20’s.
WALL-E highlights the effect of technology, corporate greed, and automation on our world as a whole, and is an example of how technology can potentially lead to our demise. In the film, earth’s ecosystem has already been ravaged due to environmental neglect and human negligence. The megacorporation Buy n Large evacuated all of the humans left on earth to live on a giant spaceship, where all of their daily lives are automated. Basic human tasks such as eating and cleaning are all done by AI drones, while the humans doze off and relax in their floating techno chairs, causing rampant obesity.
Before leaving the planet, the Buy n Large corporation left thousands of trash cleaning robots on earth, but only WALL-E remained standing. From the start of the film, WALL-E is shown to have a distinct personality, with humanlike characteristics while also enjoying it’s time on the barren planet earth all by itself. The characterization of WALL-E is the film’s way of depicting AI as potentially having fleshed out intelligence and a mind of it’s own in the future even without human influence around it, opening up the possibility to the audience that AI can potentially be developed to be more than just tools.
This injection of personality into a robot theme continues when WALL-E meets its love interest of the film, EVE. Yes, you heard me right, robot romance!
EVE is an AI programmed to assist in potentially making earth habitable once more. When EVE visits earth, it meets WALL-E, who then gives EVE the sole plant remaining on earth. EVE takes a probe ship back to the spaceship along with the plant and her newfound friend WALL-E. When they return, the captain of the ship finds that EVE has lost the plant on their journey back, and blames WALL-E for the mishap. This is the point in the story where the rest of the sci-fi plot commences, and I probably can’t detail all of it here. In the end, the humans and the robots all return to planet earth, in hopes that they can change their habits of living for the better and slowly reclaim earth once more.
I’d like to highlight that the robot romance and making these seemingly sentient AI’s so personable created a lot of buzz during the late 2000’s, where topics of AI weren’t explored heavily in popular culture and media. The film successfully highlighted both the dark dystopian nature of AI and the negative effects it can have on the productivity of the human race, while also animating cute happy robots with big eyes that spotlights the potential of AI and human harmony with a hopeful outlook on the future.
On a side note, I decided to not used designated pronouns for WALL-E and EVE since they’re robots, but the Wikipedia page for this movie refers to them as he and she. Maybe it’s implied that these robots have assigned genders and should be referred to as such?
It was quite nice to revisit one of my childhood favorites on a snowy day in with some hot chocolate. I’ve been inspired to circle back to more of my favorite movies and shows in the near future. In particular, I want to revisit one of my favorite anime shows called Steins;Gate that delves into the world of advanced technology and time travel, but focuses in on AI themes in its sequel, Steins;Gate 0. Hopefully I can talk about this show in more detail for a future AI106 project.
The A.I. related movie I choose to watch is the 1999 film The Matrix. At a risk of showing my age I remember when this movie came out and how revolutionary some of the special effects and action sequences were.
The movie follows a man named Thomas Anderson, who goes by the alias “Neo”, who discovers he is living within a simulation, known as The Matrix, created by a sentient machines in order to use humans as a power source. He is able to escape this simulation with the help of Trinity and Morpheus and he assists them in resisting the machines inside the Matrix and the real world.
The movie still holds up well nearly 25 years after its theatrical release. It can just as easily be enjoyed as a mindless action movie as it can be as a deep, dystopian, science fiction movie that explores some of the more frightening possibilities of having machine overlords using humans as batteries.
When I was an elementary school student, I would visit my cousin’s home frequently. There was always a movie playing that would affect me for a week or two. But one day, I remember seeing the beginning of Ghost in the Shell playing, which gave me nightmares for a while. The stare of the main character gave me an uncanny feeling. Her inhuman gaze was etched into my mind, but I hadn’t realized until recently, that that was intentional on the creator’s part.
I recently watched the movie again and was blown away. Many years had passed since I last saw it, so my memories were still blurry on the plot. With expectations of intense action and violent scenes, I was caught off-guard on how deep the story goes into the thought of existentialism and dualism. Motoko Kusanagi, also known as Major, is the protagonist of the story. She is a full-body cyborg who questions whether her soul, also known as ghost, exists. The story takes a turn when the antagonist is introduced into the story. The Puppetmaster is an AI that was created to perform illegal activities for the Government, but had become sentient and gone rogue. I recommend watching the movie, so I will keep the summary short.
The final conversation between Motoko and the Puppetmaster is an interesting view on dualism, which is the relationship between the body and the soul, but since the perspective comes from an AI, it sheds a light on the topic from a unique angle. It explains that humans are very similar to AI, since DNA can be seen as a program that is designed to preserve life, but there are subtle differences that draw a line between humans and AI. The act of reproduction is something that defines humans, which is also a wish of the Puppetmaster. The Puppetmaster’s desire to become human is a parallel to Motoko Kusanagi, since she wishes to become more human too. It tells Motoko that they should merge into one to create life, but Motoko is hesitant, since she is afraid of becoming something other than her true self. The Puppetmaster explains to Motoko that her desire to find her true self is a restricted view that limits her. Humans change constantly, so she must accept the same to truly become human. They both decide to merge into one and are inserted into a child cyborg’s body. Thus, new life is created.
My explanation does not do the movie justice, so I recommend everyone to view it. I give it a 9/10.
Artificial Intelligence reminds me social media in the fact that it is not real. There might be a little truth behind all the editing or picture/ videos we view but most of it was made to make the audience intrigued. Social media has influencers that most of the time have something done to them. Lip filler, nose job, botox etc. Influencers will also use a software called photoshop to delete and or add items to the pictures they post for others to look like. Artificial intelligence takes that one step forward and uses different software and machines to give us a different look than what the naked eye sees behind the scenes. There is no limit on what you can make the audience view while using AI. I have seen artists make dead people speak on how they died with just a picture of a face.
With more people starting to use AI, the scarier it is going to be in the world. The reason I say this is because, it will cause more trouble than entertainment. AI looks so real and that means people are able to create false advertising and information. I would say our best bet would not use AI at all because it can get into the wrong hands. Once it gets into the wrong hands it is only a matter of time before the end of the world. Whether it is robots who will turn against humans or humans will program robots to kill. Either way the world would be a lost cause for humanity and the future. I feel as though we have already come too far from saving the world from oblivion.
At the beginning of Big Hero 6, I notice the Artificial Intelligence for this movie would be Baymax. Baymax is made out of vinyl and carbon fiber and is a nurse bot. The difference between Baymax and battle bots is that Baymax is programmed to make his own decisions by using the software he was given, while the battle bots are controlled by the controllers the humans were using. Baymax would be considered AI and the battle bots were considered, essentially a toy.
When Baymax noticed that Hero was sad, Baymax downloaded personal loss to his own software. The creator of this movie made AI (Baymax) able to problem solve without the need of human intervention. You can also take note that Baymax can also adapt to different challenges. An example would be when Baymax could not walk straight, he looked to the side and started shuffling around the room to make it across. Throughout the movie we notice that Baymax can determined if he needs to use the helpful or fighting software in each situation, he has been put in.
When watching the movie, I had noticed that all the characters were diverse. Meaning that each character had their own role to play in making the story continue. The depiction of Artificial Intelligence in this movie was used for good however, not all movies is the AI portrayed as good. Baymax was able to determine the correct course of action during the film.
Today, I watched the 2023 movie M3GAN. I remember seeing things about it when it came out, but I never was interested in watching. As I was looking at the list of AI-related movies, I saw it and decided “what the heck!” and turned it on.
I wouldn’t say it was the greatest movie ever, it definitely wasn’t my type of movie, but I stuck through it. It’s sort of horror, but one of those horror movies that is PG-13 and obviously can’t be super intense. I did enjoy it though! I probably wouldn’t watch it again.
The storyline revolves around a child who’s parents get killed in a car crash. She ends up going to live with her aunt, her mother’s sister, who works as a toy manufacturer. The aunt worked with a lot of different types of AI toys for kids, but her big project was M3GAN, a humanoid robot prototype that would work with the child and be more than a toy, but a friend. It is as terrifiying as a thought as it sounds, and M3GAN was fine and worked well for a while. Her primary function was to protect the child, but she was built to learn through situations and upgrade over time, which became the problem. She learned too much, to the point that she would stop at nothing, would even kill to protect the child. She upgraded herself to remove the aunt’s controls over her and began attacking her when she thought the parent had upset the child, and when the child fought back to protect her aunt, M3GAN fought the child. Eventually, she gets shut down by a screwdriver to her “brain,” and she doesn’t get put on the market.
The movie addressed a lot of my fears with AI: that it will become uncontrollable. If AI is supposed to learn to solve every problem, what happens when they learn too much? It makes me uncomfortable and anxious and I kind of wished I chose a different movie, one that would have shown AI in a more promising light, because now I just feel biased against AI.
I felt uncomfortable with the whole AI thing in the movie even during the scenes where M3GAN was “good.” It just felt really uncomforting to see that humans could create something so humanoid, yet so unhuman at the same time. Mehhh the thought of it makes me feel weird still.
I’m hoping I’ll find more media of AI during this class that will make me feel more comfortable with the AI, because I can’t escape it. I hope we learn how to use AI without letting it take over or learn too much.
The Creator came out last year and is by far my favorite Ai movie. The Creator is a movie about a soldier in the future who goes undercover in Asia, where they are cohabitating with AI lifeforms against America’s wishes. He is undercover in Asia because he is on a mission to find the creator of higher Ai or Nirmata. He is sent to marry a woman who is believed to be the daughter of Nirmata and ends up falling for her and impregnating her. Late in the pregnancy an accident occurs and she and the child are believed to be dead, so when the soldier returns to Asia in a later mission he is shocked to see evidence of his wife being alive and this sends him on a hunt to find her. On this hunt, he finds a child with the capabilities to shut down a ship that threatens the lives of many Ai lifeforms and the people that they cohabitate with.
The ship’s name is the NOMAD and is an American-owned spacecraft that sends focused beams that kill anything that they land on. Eventually, he finds his wife and shuts down the ship in an attempt to save the people in Asia. This movie exposes us to an alternate future reality where some cultures are tolerant of what Ai will become. The AI machines are lifelike and seem to present real emotions.. one of the instances being an AI robot watching a stripper Ai robot on a hologram and imitating a typical guard with a cigarette. Instead of the traditional approach that gives the impression that we should be scared of Ai, and Ai is the” end of the Human Race”, we find ourselves in an alternate future reality where cohabitation with Ai is possible.
The situations that play out in this movie are somewhat realistic, in the sense that I can see America framing someone else for something that they did as an excuse to wage war on foreign land. I can also see inter-species relationships potentially playing out, as well as some other small details in the movie. This movie gives a new perspective to what AI can bring as opposed to the view that we typically get of writers only wanting to show the bad side. Overall, the movie’s cinematics were amazing, and the storyline kept me engaged the whole time.
For this assignment I revisited a film that came out last year in 2023 that was personally one of my favorites of the year. It stars John David Washington, Denzel Washington’s son, who is a soldier in the future after artificial intelligence has detonated a nuclear bomb in the US. Since then, people have betrayed AI and only the people of a place called New Asia support its existence. Mr. Washingtons character, Joshua, is on an undercover job in New Asia with his pregnant wife who is believed to be the daughter of the mastermind of the AI technology that has caused this international turmoil. The purpose of the undercover mission is to discover where the new weapon they’ve created is at. Later in the movie we find out that the new weapon is in the form of a child, specifically Joshuas and his wife’s child, who is called Alphie. Instead of destroying Alphie, Joshua risks his life and eventually gives it to protect Alphie.
I enjoyed the religious parallels of this movie as Joshuas wife, Maya, is seen as a Virgin Mary character who mothers what the world sees as something destructive but actually possesses the power to save it. Also, the simplicity, but directness and power of the title. AI is displayed in a godly way as being so powerful it controls humans which is a potential reality in our world. I think the real warning of AI is greatly portrayed in this film as it, along with technology and science, can replace the abstract thinking of humans. This of course is a deep internal threat to where the origin of the movie’s plot being the AI dropping a nuclear warhead is something to objectively worry about. For all it takes it one technical mistake or a slight increase of autonomy to a system to create a world of regret. Therefore, I think AI can be used in helpful ways to us, but “should it” is the question of high consequential thinking and even morally difficult to navigate.
When I found out we had to watch a film that used AI I was very excited. I chose to watch Iron Man because I am a huge fan of Marvel Movies. I had not gotten to watch a movie in a while so I was glad that this gave me the opportunity too. Although I have seen this before, this time I got to look at the film throufh a different view. The use of AI is very interesting and it is cool to see where exactly the creators chose to use it. In the movie JARVIS is the AI system that Stark created himself. This AI is used as his personal assistant that helps him analyze data and provide information to Stark.
Overall, this movie was a great way to see how AI is being incorporated into film, and the digital world.
