The Electric State

Over the last few years there's been a handful of futuristic series and films on streaming that have mixed tech, robotics and humans startlingly well in my opinion.

Fall Out was one such show, the story of underground human settlements surviving a nuclear winter. The standout character was the mutated sheriff in the badlands.

Then there was the film The Creator, which blew me away with it's ground-searching floodlights emitted from vast government flying craft. Amazing imagery all round.

Recently came The Electric State, which I enjoyed a lot. I know it's a polarising film but I liked the juxtaposition of old tech, ai tech, cyborgs and people. The abandoned amusement park-style zone where old bits dwelled was great. I particularly liked the big ball-headed giant bot in the last battle. At it's heart though was a desperate quest and a vein of sorrow.

This of course has been done before with the film AI many years ago, a film for personal reasons I find difficult to watch, although I think it's a terrific flick.

Last week came the Artifice Girl. Again, whispers of AI's David, together with his longevity as the AI girl outlives it's creator. I didn't see all of it. 

The sentiment that AI robots will outlive us all seems to run through all these films, a machined longevity which brings them nothing but loneliness.

What do you think readers?

2036 ORIGIN UNKNOWN

I saw this flick on Netflix last night. A low budget sci-fi movie, I must say I rather enjoyed it. There are very few actors and largely one location. Essentially its about AI and how AI can go AWOL. Think HAL and you're in the right ballpark.

Its given me an appetite for other AI movies I haven't seen like Her. 

Have you seen any AI flicks? 

Here's one top 20 list I saw, although some of them I wouldn't say are AI, I'd say they were robotic.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/gallery/2015/jan/08/the-top-20-artificial-intelligence-films-in-pictures

does alexa dream of electric sheep?

I heard a strange story today about Amazon's new talking home avatar butler called Alexa. 

A kid ordered a doll and some cookies via Alexa, who [which?] has the ability to order stuff online [a bewildering thought in itself] and the story hit the TV news.

Whilst on the news the kid's voice must have been repeated telling Alexa to order a doll and some cookies. 

Now the unbelievable bit. Many other Alexas in other homes heard this and went on to order dolls and cookies too! 

I don't know if this is true [please don't let it be fake news] but it reminds me of the trope of IT going sentient in so many sci-fi stories and films. Just think of Cyberdine Systems in Terminator - and we all know where that lead! - 

and what about the classic ending of Lawnmower Man, where the digitised Jobe goes sentient and makes all the world's landlines ring at once.

I suppose I can't ignore Wargames either where WHOPPER orders nuclear strikes everywhere. Maybe WHOPPER started by ordering dolls and cookies! 

Does anyone have an Amazon Alexa unit [which maybe called Echo] ?

PERSONA SYNTHETIC HUMANS: ARE THEY FOR REAL?

During the UK network premiere of Prometheus on telly last night there was an advert for a synthetic human. I thought it was a clever commercial joke given that the best character in the film is David the android.

However, checking Ebay just now I saw the above advert - for the same synthetic humans! Really! Looking at the auction, Charlie and Sally above can be yours for just £20,000 each! Blimey! I had to check the date to see whether we'd slipped back to April 1st!

Here's the advert that's on TV and on the Ebay auctions. Pure Isaac Asimov! Enjoy and wonder at the dawn of the synth family. What do you think readers? Is it a joke?

POSTSCRIPT:

Its a week later and the cat is out if the bag! For a while they really had me fooled too! The Ebay listings, now ended, were genius! Talk about product placement!

Turns out that the whole PERSONA thing is hype for Channel 4's new AI series called HUMANS coming to UK TV June 2015!

In a neat twist of casting as well, they even have William Hurt starring in HUMANS. He played Prof. Hobby, the father of the mechas, in Spielberg's Kubrickesque epic AI [released in 2001 no less!], which was based on the Brian Aldiss short story Supertoys Last All Summer Long. "Have you seen David?"

The new HUMANS teaser is on the PERSONA SYNTHETICS website and appears here courtesy of You Tube:

HUMAN NIGHT, ROBOT MORNING

Professor Stephen Hawking this week predicted that Artificial Intelligence will eventually kill us all. This dark proclamation got me thinking about an old 'friend' I abandoned in the attic a decade ago, the toy robot called PINO. Having tried to 'care' for him I was literally anguished by his constant mewling like a stricken kitten. This is how he was advertised on TV.

The thought that PINO, boxed up in my loft with his limited but untested intelligence, is hatching a plan to take over the world does give me the creeps. Even worse is the notion that all the worlds' PINO's possess a single hive mind and are working invisibly together on some evil scheme.

It calls to mind Yeats's line

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

and HG. Wells' 

"Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.”

When I look at ASIMO, Honda's cutting-edge adult version of PINO, I see that he is no longer a toy. At first he could go down stairs, something the Daleks could never do. As technically dazzling as it was, I had a simple coiled toy that could do the same in the Sixties called, rather robotically, SLINKY.

But now ASIMO serves drinks, shakes hands, plays football, hops and most disquietingly of all, watches humans and follows their facial expressions.

I suppose it was inevitable that one of our toy robots would grow up and become a reality. Of all the thousands of toy robots produced since the Fifties I didn't expect it to be PINO. Maybe its because they are more humanoid than most, made to be more than a simple toy.

This idea has been a staple of Sci Fi for years. Brian Aldiss's "Supertoys last all Summer Long", springs to mind, where android children take the place of real ones in a world of controlled childbirth. Kubrick filmed it as AI, an essentially sad movie suggesting that supertoys will outlive us all. David, no longer a mere robot toy, becomes a boy, enduring the loss of childhood in a lifeless, parentless world forever.

We all miss our childhoods and collecting toys is a way of keeping some of the spark alive. In a way our Action Men and Zeroids have grown up with us and may indeed outlive us. Should they ever be imbued with artificial intelligence I hope they enjoy childhood as much as we did and remember the sparkling lights of Christmas before plotting to kill us all!

What do you think readers?