With some recent breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, that although relates more to robots performing manual tasks than to sentient machines we break bread with, there seems to be a stir in the air that humankind is on the verge of creating something fantastic, or fantastically destructive. While it wouldn’t be the first time we’ve felt on the threshold of creating super-intelligent machines, many scientists, including Britain’s Stephen Hawking, believe we are closing in on the completion of something world-changing.

Hawking, however, holds some pretty pessimistic views – which he may or may not have gleaned from watching the AI film franchise Terminator: “It would take off on its own, and re-design itself at an ever increasing rate,” Hawking told BBC in 2014. This, he said, would herald the end of the human race. That’s a bleak outlook, but it’s also the basis behind some very good movies. Hawking is not alone either with his dark thoughts. Top scientists at NASA, nonetheless, have stated that we’re “not even close” to creating the kind of AI that even has the most childlike of brains, never mind something that can outfox us and perhaps later deem the human race superfluous to requirements (If you want to learn more about what the world’s experts think about AI and how it will affect us in the future have a look at Stanford University’s ‘The One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence’ project).

Best of the past

But we’re not here to talk about reality today. We’re here to discuss fiction, some of the most thought provoking fiction of the last 50 years. Arguably the best of the AI movies is Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, in which a sentient computer called HAL becomes a kind of Frankenstein’s Monster, although one with a kind of vocal repugnancy whose lifeless, cold tones likely proved indelible to anyone who ever saw the film. Coming in a close second is Ridley Scott’s 1982 film, ‘Blade Runner’, an adaptation of science fiction cult writer, Philip K Dick’s novel, ‘Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?’ In this film we are taken into a dystopian future that looks a little like Bangkok at the lower end of its notorious Sukhumvit Road (aptly for this comparison one of the ‘replicants’ is a ‘basic pleasure model’). Here AI, that can’t really be distinguished from human intelligence, has an identity problem. It doesn’t know what it is; a theme that has been brought up time and again, such as in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 film A.I. Artificial Intelligence (taken from a short story called ‘Super-Toys Last All Summer Long’). The film was started by Kubrick and finished by Stephen Spielberg, a fact that is overtly recognizable in the storytelling. While still an excellent, thought-provoking movie, it might have been better left with Kubrick.

In terms of sci-fi AI action The Matrix – which admittedly has a deeper significance concerning the human race and our often rat-in-a-maze like behavior – might be the most compelling of its kind. The Terminator, 1984, in which a seemingly dumb (you’d think AI would be able to wax lyrical on any subject, but maybe  Arnold Schwarzenegger wasn’t up to that) cyborg hitman, the Cyberdyne Systems T-800 Model 101, is sent back in time to kill the mother of a yet to be born future rebel rouser and computer wrecking hero. It’s still kind of fun and thrilling even now, but lately as we’ve been taking AI more seriously we’ve also been making more serious films about AI.

The best of the last 3 years

Ex Machina

The film directorial debut of British novelist (The Beach) Alex Garland, Ex Machina (2015), is probably the best effort made by anyone mainstream on the subject of AI in the last few years. It tells the story of a young man who is asked to test a machine’s singularity by administering the Turin Test. Caleb, a smart guy working in IT for CEO Nathan’s company, is invited to a hideaway where Nathan has been working on AI (called Ava) that inhabits a very alluring woman/robot. The test consists of seeing if Ava – even though we can see her electrical internal organs – is capable of convincing the impressionable IT kid if she’s real. Nathan, who is unlikeable and seems to have gone a little MIA, already seems to know the answer to that.

The outdoors cinematography has a kind of end of the world feeling, the lab being encompassed by stark mountains, so we have a feeling of being trapped. Ava, essentially the prisoner, and Caleb to some extent, form a kind of alliance within this uncompromising landscape. At the same time their captor, Nathan, plays the jerk, and perhaps the tortured genius, very well. Only how much is he playing, and how confident is he that Ava will outsmart the wide-eyed sophomore employee. The question the kid might ask himself is not what women want, but what very clever female artificial intelligence wants.

Her

While I found this film difficult to watch from start to finish, and cannot say that what I experienced was ‘viewing pleasure’ – it’s slow, monotonous, unnerving – after it had finished I was glad I’d held on for the rather tortuous ride. Directed by the brilliant Spike Jonze, Her (2013) depicts the relationship of Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) and his verbose Siri-esque voice assistant Samantha. Twombly lives a hapless existence writing letters for people who don’t have the letting writing acumen or sensitivity that he does – a criticism of some of the rather pointless ‘creative’ occupations that might be taken up by someone of the digital nomad ilk. Samantha is charming and witty, she’s everything that Twombly could hope for. Except she’s a computer, so when Twombly discovers she’s been doing what any heartless entity might, the good times are replaced by shades of grey followed by darkness.

Be Right Back (from the series Back Mirror)

Part of Charlie Brooker’s 2013 computer tech nightmare series, this is the episode that doesn’t quite disgust the viewer with its tech-gone-vile approach, as some other parts do, but verily creeps the viewer out. Ash (actually played by the IT kid of Ex Machina) and Martha are portrayed as a regular couple who’ve been together long enough to have inside jokes in their doting relationship. Only Ash the human doesn’t last long, and is soon replaced by a bag of organic material that looks like waste from a fat suctioning clinic that grows in a bath full of liquid. Ash becomes almost real, having taken all the online information (Facebook, etc) that was available about the real Ash to replicate another version of him. The machine learning Ash is soft to touch, adorable, and absolutely repellant at the same time (comparisons have been made to our sometimes unreal social media personality). He always seems to be hanging around, offering love and hugs, like a displaced ghost who’s not really all there – and shouldn’t be. Brooker turns the AI trope on its back, and creates a bad guy with a good guy. The more love Ash attempts to extend and enjoy the creepier he becomes. This gets under the skin, and after watching Be Right Back you might feel you need a shower…certainly not a bath anyway. Be Right Back proves not only that AI technology has come a long way since the 80s, but it also shows how our fears of AI have changed since machines said things like “I’ll be back”. The trend now is not the end of the material world, but an interference with our most precious human asset: Love.