On the one-year anniversary of ChatGPT and the confusion that led to the capitalist onslaught of artificial intelligence, there are still more questions than answers and the imagination is brimming with advances.
Can a chatbot have emotions? Is it possible for a machine to respond beyond the patterns it has been programmed with? It will take a long time for science to find the answers, but cinema, always forward-thinking, has in many cases been able to imagine artificial systems achieving consciousness and displaying emotions unique to humans. We choose here a dozen great titles From science fiction, breaking down barriers machine and person.
”Metropolis” (Fritz Lang, 1927)
In the city of the future designed by Fritz Lang and her husband and screenwriter Thea von HarbouIn a place where the rich live very well and the poor live very poorly, a mad scientist creates a robot in human form to replace María, the leader of the proletarian rebellion, and wreaks havoc. In 1927, a robot with human instincts cannot be good because the devil kills the android. Beyond his visionary understandings of the city of the future and his naive political rhetoric, ‘metropolis’ It was the first film to reflect the (low) emotions of artificial creation. The film is available on Movistar Plus+ and Plex.
‘Lemmy vs. Alphaville’ (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965)
At the height of the New Wave, Jean Luc Godard He filmed a movie set in a future city on another planet, but shot in present-day Paris in 1965. Attention LemmyThe hero of crime novels and cheap TV series is faced with a scientist-dictator who controls the fate of the city. alpha 60, a large computer that controls everything and speaks in a husky voice. It’s as crazy as it is sad, with references to Dick Tracy, Flash Gordon and Nosferatu. Anna Karina is a Level 3 seductress with a robotic appearance who is excited by literature. It’s in the movie.
‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)
The influence of ‘Metrópolis’ was still visible, but his masterpiece Stanley Kubrick He took the concept of a thinking machine that rebels against humans much further. Along with millions of years of time ellipses, the monolith, the journey beyond Jupiter and the emergence of the Nietzschean super child, ‘2001’ is remembered with the struggle of humanity. Hal 9000 supercomputer It continues with the famous sequence of two astronauts and one of them managing to disconnect. Knowing that it will be gone forever, the machine says goodbye by singing an old song. Available on HBO Max and Movistar Plus+.
‘The Blade Runner’ (Ridley Scott, 1982)
The dystopian science fiction classic is about to celebrate the 40th anniversary of its release in the United States. Ridley Scott I was inspired by the novel Philip K. Dick It retains both the dazzling visual exuberance and the deep resonance of its existential reflections. Nexus 6 series replicants, physically indistinguishable from humans, are programmed to live for only 4 years and aware of their imminent end, return to Earth to demand answers from their creator, bioengineer Eldon Tyrell. Is there any real difference between a human and an android when the imitation is so perfect? Available on HBO Max.
‘The Matrix’ (Lana and Lily Wachowski, 1999)
The philosopher’s stone of the new cyberpunk science fiction. The Wachowski brothers made a mix of dystopian adventure and philosophical treatises. Human beings became slaves of artificial intelligence and stay connected to a virtual reality device called Matrix. The Resisters live in the city of Zion and raid the Matrix to save other people. A future dominated by red and blue pills, a barrage of digital letters, ‘bullet time’ and scary machines. Tetralogy is available on HBO Max
‘The Bicentennial Man’ (Chris Columbus, 1999)
The action takes place in the first decade of the 21st century, in a time we have already overcome. A father buys an NDR-114 robot. With usefully created features Robin WilliamsThis model shows creativity, emotions and contradictions. The movie is adapted from a story. isaac asimov It is based on the Three Laws of Robotics: A robot cannot harm humans, must obey the orders of its owners, and must protect its own existence as long as it does not conflict with the previous two laws.It can be rented on Apple TV, Google Play, Microsoft Store and Rakuten TV.
‘AI (Artificial Intelligence)’ (Steven Spielberg, 2001)
If he could achieve this, ‘AI’ in Stanley Kubrick’s work would mean an extension of what was said about artificial intelligence in ‘2001’. However, the filmmaker died in 1999. Two years later, spielberg He reactivated the project and moved it into a more personal, domestic and humanist space. The smart robots here are called Mecca. An android boy (Haley Joel OsmentThe person who sees ghosts in ‘The Sixth Sense’) is programmed to love. The problem is not with that, but with people’s inability to understand and assimilate that revolution. It is available to rent on Google Play, Microsoft Store, Prime Video and Rakuten TV.
‘His’ (Spike Jonze, 2013)
It is a sad and beautiful movie, played by its main protagonist, which is romantic and not at all utopian. Joaquim PhoenixHe falls in love with his newly acquired artificial intelligence device. The lonely and shy character who tries to write letters for third parties buys it because the virtual assistant is promoted as a model that will meet all the needs of the user. The relationship between the human and the operating system speaking with the voice of the operating system is gradually Scarlett Johansson– reaches levels never imagined by humans or machines. Available on Prime Video and Film.
‘Old Machina’ (Alex Garland, 2014)
Author and screenwriter in his acclaimed directorial debut Alex Garland He explored the emotional boundaries that separate humans from robots. An eccentric businessman assigns a programmer from his company to subject his latest artificial intelligence creation, the gynoid (or female-looking anthropomorphic robot), to a Touring test to discover whether it has consciousness. A. Fascinating revision of the ‘Frankenstein’ myth for the digital ageIt’s stylized, tense and deep, like Garland’s later directorial work (the “Devs” series, “Annihilation” or the upcoming “Men”). Available on Prime Video and Starz.
‘The Mitchells versus the machines’ (Michael Rianda, 2021)
One of the best, if not the best, animated films of the last five years is this crazy and funny Sony production (released on Netflix due to the pandemic) about how the stricken Mitchell family must save humanity after the disaster. An artificial intelligence in the style of Alexa or Siri rebels and decide to finish us all. It’s an implementation called PAL (halfway between 2001’s HAL 9000 and Apple’s English pronunciation without the initial a), and it’s an implementation that resists being replaced by a new line of domestic robots. Available on Netflix.