AI in Popular Culture
The concept of AI has been in media since the start of the early 1900s. Today it has evolved into a much popular topic and can be seen frequently intertwined in many shows and movies.
But how has AI in media changed our perceptions and thoughts on what AI actually is? Read on to learn more!
AI Characters: Wall of Fame
Let's take a walk through memory lane and remember some of our favorite AI characters in popular movies and TV shows!
2001: A Space Odyssey
Hal 9000
The HAL 9000 (Heuristically Programmed ALgorithmic Computer) character i what we know as the modern day voice assistant, like Alexa and Google Home.
Star Wars
R2D2 & C3PO
R2-D2 is a resourceful astromech droid and C3-PO is a droid programmed for etiquette and protocol and a companion to R2-D2.
Star Trek
Data
Data is an android with a storage capacity of 800 quadrillion bits (1000 TB) and a total linear computational speed of 60 trillion operations per second. In the series he grapples with wanting to become human and what it means.
The Matrix
Agent Smith
Also an android, Smith becomes an Exile program and manifest as a computer virus. He has the uncanny ability to copy himself over the minds of bluepills, redpills and programs alike.
WALL-E
WALL - E
WALL-E is a rover robot who is the last remaining of his kind. He almost exclusively communicates through physical actions and expressive robotic sounds.
Iron Man
J.A.R.V.I.S
J.A.R.V.I.S is an artificial intelligence system that worked for Tony Stark. It uses many AI techniques such as natural language processing, speech recognition, face recognition, and reinforcement learning.
Big Hero 6
Baymax
Baymax is a healthcare robot and AI system; with a scan, he can detect vital stats, and can treat nearly any ailment.
Popular Movies & Shows
Here's a list of popular AI-based movies and shows that will open your eyes to the imaginative worlds in which artificial intelligence could live, or destroy.
Top AI Movies
The Matrix (1999)
"Neo (Keanu Reeves) believes that Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), an elusive figure considered to be the most dangerous man alive, can answer his question -- What is the Matrix? Neo is contacted by Trinity (Carrie-Anne Moss), a beautiful stranger who leads him into an underworld where he meets Morpheus. They fight a brutal battle for their lives against a cadre of viciously intelligent secret agents. It is a truth that could cost Neo something more precious than his life."
SUMMARY FROM GOOGLE
Top AI Shows
Westworld
"Westworld isn't your typical amusement park. Intended for rich vacationers, the futuristic park -- which is looked after by robotic "hosts" -- allows its visitors to live out their fantasies through artificial consciousness. No matter how illicit the fantasy may be, there are no consequences for the park's guests, allowing for any wish to be indulged."
SUMMARY FROM GOOGLE
What implications do these popular references to AI have?
Luke Goode discusses this in "AI and Popular Imagination" where he explores the three key strands of discourse exist in the popular imagination around A.I. and where it could take us in the future.
Science Fiction
Much of modern-day Sci-fi movies that deal with AI have a similar theme: events where AI begin to overtake human intelligence and are setting up for a machine uprising narrative. Movies such as 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Matrix and The Terminator franchise follow this common trope where "machine intelligences [gains] consciousness and self-awareness" and as a result rebel against its human creators. Over time we see more introductions of AI but in varying contexts, some even entering morally gray areas where our humanity finds ourselves feeling for the AI (for example: Her and Ex Machina). Overall, these fictional narratives help us "channel and contain the unsettling power of AI within the realm of entertainment fiction"; however in recent times we are seeing increasing non-fictional representations of AI that resemble what we perceived to be only within science fiction.
Contemporary Futurology
This tipping point is what Goode refers to as the "technological singularity", a hypothesis coined by computer scientist Vernor Vinge on the concept of dramatically accelerating technological advances and the impact of doing so. The technological singularity is a powerful story about the future where it sees humanity approaching an "event horizon -- an irreversible tipping point beyond which we will be powerless to resist the gravitational pull of a technological revolution vastly more radical than any other in history, and which promises to fundamentally change everything."
The Non-Fictional Modern Day of AI
What we thought we would leave at fiction has started to become increasingly prevalent in our own day-to-day. Super intelligence is now a growing presence in our technological pursuits -- for example, Amazon's Alexa. Goode talks about how similar to relationships depicted in sci-fi media between AI and human, stories emerge of how children are beginning to form attachments to Alexa. We also see a growth in a related field -- AGI (Artificial General Intelligence). In theory, AGI could learn a wide range, if not all, of "human skill and behaviors" -- this would mimic the notion of the beginning to the end that we see in many sci-fi media as we know it.
