If you are fine with fiction, I think the Minds from Iain Banks Culture are a much better starting point than dancing naked girls. In particular, the book Excession describes the “Infinite Fun Space” where Minds go to play...
Thanks, I’ll have a look. And just to be clear, watching *The Machine” wasn’t driven primarily by prurient interest—I was drawn in by a reviewer who mentioned that the backstory for the film was a near-future world-wide recession, pitting the West with China, and that intelligent battlefield robots and other devices were the “new arms race” in this scenario.
That, and that the film reviewer mentioned that (i) the robot designer used quantum computing to get his creation to pass the Turing Test (a test I have doubts about as do other researchers, of course, but I was curious how the film would use it) - and (ii) yet the project designer continued to grapple with the question of whether his signature humanoid creation was really conscious, or a “clever imitation”, pulled me in.
(He verbally challenges and confronts her/it, in an outburst of frustration, in his lab about this, roughly two thirds of the way through the movie and she verbally parrys plausible responses.)
It’s really not all that weak, as film depictions of AI go. It’s decent entertainment with enough threads of backstory authenticity, political and philosophical, to tweak one’s interest.
My caution, really, was a bit harsh; applying largely to the uncommon rigor of those of us in this group—mainly to emphasise that the film is entertainment, not a candidate for a paper in the ACM digital archives.
However, indeed, even the use of a female humanoid form makes tactical design sense. If a government could make a chassis that “passed” the visual test and didn’t scream “ROBOT” when it walked down the street, it would have much greater scope of tactical application—covert ops, undercover penetration into terrorist cells, what any CIA clandestine operations officer would be assigned to do.
Making it look like a woman just adds to the “blend into the crowd” potential, and that was the justification hinted at in the film, rather than some kind of sexbot application. “She” was definitely designed to be the most effective weapon they could imagine (a British-funded military project.)
Given that over 55 countries now have battlefield robotic projects under way (according to Kurzweil’s weekly newsletter) -- and Google got a big DOD project contract recently, to proceed with advanced development of such mechanical soldiers for the US government—I thought the movie worth a watch.
If you have 90 minutes of low-priority time to spend (one of those hours when you are mentally too spent to do more first quality work for the day, but not yet ready to go to sleep), you might have a glance.
Thanks for the book references. I read mostly non-fiction, but I know sci fi has come a very long way, since the old days when I read some in high school. A little kindling for the imagination never hurts.
Kind regards, Tom (“N.G.S”)
If you are fine with fiction, I think the Minds from Iain Banks Culture are a much better starting point than dancing naked girls. In particular, the book Excession describes the “Infinite Fun Space” where Minds go to play...
Thanks, I’ll have a look. And just to be clear, watching *The Machine” wasn’t driven primarily by prurient interest—I was drawn in by a reviewer who mentioned that the backstory for the film was a near-future world-wide recession, pitting the West with China, and that intelligent battlefield robots and other devices were the “new arms race” in this scenario.
That, and that the film reviewer mentioned that (i) the robot designer used quantum computing to get his creation to pass the Turing Test (a test I have doubts about as do other researchers, of course, but I was curious how the film would use it) - and (ii) yet the project designer continued to grapple with the question of whether his signature humanoid creation was really conscious, or a “clever imitation”, pulled me in.
(He verbally challenges and confronts her/it, in an outburst of frustration, in his lab about this, roughly two thirds of the way through the movie and she verbally parrys plausible responses.)
It’s really not all that weak, as film depictions of AI go. It’s decent entertainment with enough threads of backstory authenticity, political and philosophical, to tweak one’s interest.
My caution, really, was a bit harsh; applying largely to the uncommon rigor of those of us in this group—mainly to emphasise that the film is entertainment, not a candidate for a paper in the ACM digital archives.
However, indeed, even the use of a female humanoid form makes tactical design sense. If a government could make a chassis that “passed” the visual test and didn’t scream “ROBOT” when it walked down the street, it would have much greater scope of tactical application—covert ops, undercover penetration into terrorist cells, what any CIA clandestine operations officer would be assigned to do.
Making it look like a woman just adds to the “blend into the crowd” potential, and that was the justification hinted at in the film, rather than some kind of sexbot application. “She” was definitely designed to be the most effective weapon they could imagine (a British-funded military project.)
Given that over 55 countries now have battlefield robotic projects under way (according to Kurzweil’s weekly newsletter) -- and Google got a big DOD project contract recently, to proceed with advanced development of such mechanical soldiers for the US government—I thought the movie worth a watch.
If you have 90 minutes of low-priority time to spend (one of those hours when you are mentally too spent to do more first quality work for the day, but not yet ready to go to sleep), you might have a glance.
Thanks for the book references. I read mostly non-fiction, but I know sci fi has come a very long way, since the old days when I read some in high school. A little kindling for the imagination never hurts. Kind regards, Tom (“N.G.S”)