Artificial Intelligence on the big screen

Isaac Asimov has contributed greatly to the way we think of artificial intelligence (AI) today, and a lot of his ideas are being used in movies. Of course, he is not the only one. From Asimov, through Philip K. Dick and Arthur Clark, to series of movies on robotics and artificial intelligence, writers, screenwriters and producers have more or less successfully dealt with this intriguing concept. There is one big theme within the field of artificial intelligence: technological singularity (TS), a term representing the development of artificial intelligence up to the point where it can “learn from experience”. From that point on, artificial intelligence can improve and create better versions of itself.

This term started its' linguistic life as “strong artificial intelligence (“strong AI”), and the phrase was coined by Irving John (“I.J.”) Good. Some of the names also linked to this phrase are Sci-Fi writers Damien Broderick, Charlie Stross, futurologist Ray Kurzweil, as well as Aubrey de Grey – a programmer, also working on prolongation of the human life.

What most movies do with artificial intelligence is actually impossible in reality. We had the opportunity to see that in Chappie and Ex Machina movies – one programmer, one man creates a complex program and its' accompanying hardware all by himself, somewhere in his lab or a modern high-tech house in the wilderness. Most experts agree that no one is genius to that extent and that the development of a program which enables artificial intelligence to learn and evolve its' consciousness can't be done by one man only. A number of people has participated in the development of robots that learn how to keep moving after endured trauma, and teams of programmers are working on the development of complex programs and applications we use today. At the same time, none of these programs can be characterized as independent artificial intelligence that evolves and improves itself. However, Chappie learns on the principle of trial and error, an algorithm that already exists in aforementioned robots which adapt in case of trauma.

Also, in almost every movie, artificial intelligence develops very fast. The only franchise that explained this process well is the Terminator – decades pass from the first signs of development of such systems, independent weaponry, prosthetic arm and Skynet system until the moment when machines develop such consciousness to attack people.

In movies that deal with the problem of origins of consciousness, like Ex Machina, it is not explained how the consciousness “happened”. In some inexplicable way, Ava managed to use the information from the search engines which mystically “gave” her powers. A similar thing happens in the movie The Bicentennial Man, film based on Isaac Asimov's novel The Positronic Man: it was never explained how the robotic positronic brain evolved. We don't know our own consciousness that well in order to program one.

When we talk about artificial intelligence and the concept of technological singularity, Blade Runner is a movie impossible to bypass. It would seem that this Ridley Scott's piece is not that dear to scientists – they don't believe in the concept of organic cyborgs, nor memory implantation. However, they all agree that AI has been - through the concept of replicants, portrayed in the most original manner.

Goeffrey Ling from Pentagon's DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, responsible for the development of new technologies in the military) says that it will be possible to download and upload consciousness. We see this in movies Transcendence and Captain America: The Winter Soldier, where the consciousness of Arnim Zola, member of Hydra – a Nazi organization, is being uploaded to a supercomputer. However, this idea is still just a movie fantasy.

However, movies that have thematised artificial intelligence as software are much closer to reality, like the OS Samantha from the movie Her, which is in some way reminiscent of an advanced version of Apple's Siri. The topic of this movie reminds us of another movie, Spielberg's Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) where robot Dave is programmed to seek and give warmth and love, because he was created to be a substitute for a family's ill son. Dave stays buried under ice for 2.000 years and when they revive him, he does what he was programmed for – gives love.

But, one movie AI has gained cult status – HAL 9000 from the movie Space Odyssey 2001. Does HAL have feelings – we don't know, but there is one moment when this supercomputer shows fear – during his deactivation, when he dies. The greatness of this Kubrick's movie and Clark's book lies in the fact that up until the end the question if HAL is just an ordinary machine or something more stays open, and the proof that he is more than a machine is showed in his last minutes.

The questions of artificial intelligence, its' development and the possibility of technological singularity – the spontaneous evolution of information systems' consciousness is not just a question of technology: behind all this stands a glimmer of question – what is human and what id human consciousness.