***Official A.I.: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE Discussion Thread - Page 9

Adam, I think your point is one that is often glossed over when people argue David lacks the "abstract" aspects of human thought.

David is told the Blue Fairy isn't real by his mother, is all but told he can't be a real boy, and yet he refuses to accept it. Instead, he opts for believing in a being that is outside the rationale he is programmed to operate within. Furthermore, the fuel for his faith s rooted in his love. A "programmed" feature, but one that causes the side-effect of a dawning sentience and the ability to think creatively, however limited you want to define it.

Thanks for responding Paul. Your response is a typical one and one that I have heard many times before. To me the last 45 minutes is where the film came completely together. AI could not have been the masterpiece it was without that third act that so many think would have been so much cooler if it had ended for instance with David trapped under the Ferris wheel. That would have been the copout.

As it is, the ending brought David's journey to a wonderfully emotional end. Powerful, sad, profound, thought provoking and thouroughly satisfying for this viewer. Perfect.

And regarding the Mechas ability to only bring back Monica for one day, remember that the Super Mecha explained that a life entity can only journey through life once. Once that pathway has been used by an individual entity, it cannot be repeated. That's why they are only able to bring back people for one day, cheating life if you will, until that reborn entity falls asleep and "dies" for the final time.

A.I gets better every time I watch it. I really enjoy being part of the crowd that loves it and, in our own way, understands it and admires it for what it attempts, and ultimately succeeds at presenting.

A wonderfully thought provoking, deeply moving, completely entertaining Science Fiction film.

It's a plot device, no question. But I agree that it's a plot device that really furthers the themes the movie is getting across. Most definitely. That why Hobby considered David such a success.

I can't. A toaster is a toaster is a toaster. And how is David's "love" as real as ours? Does he have need for nurturance from parents for food/shelter/clothing? Does he maintain the ability to love to later reproduce sexually and provide for offspring? No. We projected the ability to love on David. David does not "need" love for any sort of life function. His love is a sham.



And then leaves him to rot not terribly far from his office. Yet another plot hole along with the police department that hasn't heard of Lo-Jack.

no problem

I didn't say it should have ended with him trapped under the Ferris wheel, did I? The ending could have been condensed to 5 minutes or less, easily. The points made were not something that required 30 minutes. It made them very weak, and the movie, overall, very weak.

Glad you liked it. I wish I would have


whatever, to me it was a stupid plot device.

Just so you understand that others understand it and do not admire it in the least.


I'd boil it down to a trite, overblown, poorly paced Sci-Fi yarn with great potential that failed miserably for this viewer.

YMMV as always

It's hard to explain your love of someone completely to another person. If I asked you to prove your love of someone else you might tell me what qualities you like about that person and go in depth about your relationship. David is built to love as a very young person (8-11? years old i can't tell exactly but a person that young would love another person on a different level than what you're expecting.


He doesn't need food but he does 'need' shelter and clothing just like anyone else his 'age'. Technically he could survive without these things but if you wanted to buy an artificial child it wouldn't make any sense to keep him in the backyard or in a closet all day...


Is reproduction a requirement of love? So if someone is sterile they cannot love? A selling point of David is he doesn't age, he doesn't get 'sick'.


David wanted to become a real boy because then he thought he would be loved. In the end all he was looking for was love.

Paul

I never said that you said that AI should have ended with David Trapped under the Ferris Wheel, did I?

My point was that that is a common complaint among the many that do NOT understand AI.

IMO, there are three camps of AI:

1.Those that understood it and loved it.

2. Those that didn't understand it and thus hated it.

3.And the few who understood it and still didn't like it.

I and many are in the first. You and a few are in the third. A great many are in the second.

Well, that's the way I see it at least.

sounds right to me. At least I don't have to be labelled as "just not getting it"

I will always find this 'didn't get it' or 'didn't understand it' sentiment to be patronising.

I love Fight Club, for example, but many people didn't. It's not that they didn't 'get it' - it just had no resonance for their lives, or it wasn't their sort of movie...

I would say that you'll find a lot of the 'haters' will be people for whom this just isn't their sort of movie. A film is a film. I don't like the Mummy, but how ridiculous would you consider it if a Mummy fan told me I was in the majority who didn't understand it and so hated it? I think the majority of users of this forum would find that pretty funny.

Sorry.

I haven't seen AI. I am going to rent it when I have a spare evening (rare) because the reviews I've heard are so totally conflicting I cannot for the life of me work out what I will think of it...When I do that I'll post here!!

Yes.

And "pursuing mysteries of faith and existence" is precisely what the future mechas are doing when they dig up David.

You really think this is a relevant analogy, dontcha? Well, tell it to my toaster! I was all set for a nice crusty muffin last Sunday, and my wife informs me that our General Electric Six-Slicer took a leave of absence to go excavate an ancient bakery site... something about establishing a scientific basis for some lame-ass appliance creation myth. Advanced, yes, but all this religious hokum sorta gets under my skin. Next thing ya know, he'll be giving all his money to L. Ron Hoover of the First Church of Appliantology, and then who'll darken my muffin?

Then he'll hook up with Cy-Borg. He wants to kiss you always.

Theo, the analogy with the Mummy doesn't work. Everyone understands the Mummy. Not everyone understands A.I. I don't care if it sounds pretentious, it's just true; just like some people don't get 2001, A Clockwork Orange, and the very many who can't follow David Lynch films.

Thanks Seth - didn't know I was going to be around that long!

My hyperbole was showing to be sure and the term programming will surely have a different meaning in the future.



Ah but is that more a reflection of our limitations? We do not possess divine sight.

Just because we cannot discern there is no difference - does not mean there is no difference.

It comes down to the concept of soul. Does David possess one by the end of the movie? My take on it was No.

Fick mich, du miserabler horensohn....

What is life without a government-issued pansexual rotoplooker, anyways? Just watch out for the golden showers..."I must have plooked him to death."

Really, Lou? How exactly do you figure? I mean, are you substituting your own faery tales for those in film, or do you think that this definition of a sentient being is one that the film establishes as being "David's goal"?

Short of joining Mahalia Jackson for a few really convincing choruses of "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands", how can you tell?

But maybe I understand, say 2001, but I am expecting more from it or I don't see what I understand as particularly important.

I guess what I mean is that to claim 'you don't understand this' sounds patronising not pretentious. What you really mean is 'you didn't connect with it emotionally'...

The point about the Mummy is this. I say it's crap. I didn't enjoy it because of all sorts of reasons like dull characters. Someone else might easily say "You don't understand. The bad characters are part of the movie. They're meant to be there." But of course I do understand the movie - I just don't connect with it. It doesn't work for me.

HOWEVER: I'm not saying that it's impossible not to understand AI. Just that it's easy to get into a mode of thinking that because you enjoy something, you've understood something...

No the film definitely doesn't even try to tackle the 'soul' issue at all. David's goal is his to fulfill his programmed 'Love' module in respect to his mother.

In his journey to accomplish that the dramatization of him acquiring that spark of empathy, self awareness & freedom of choice, soul or whatever you want to label it would have gone a long way to providing a more satisfactory - IMHO of course - movie.

Since David never strays from his goal - it's left up to us to decide whether he is sentient or not.



Exactly, there is no meter, gauge, or objective measurment for sentience just like emotions. It is not something that can be displayed in a mathematical or analytical context.

It can be observed through behaviour. How one views the behaviour is subjective. For me, the movie failed to show David doing anything beyond his programming.

I think it's David's journey in obtaining his goal, the way he has to adapt to new surroundings, but never losing sight of his goal is what leads to the breakthrough in A.I. That's part of the point of the film. It's the adaptation and improvisation that David develops that's what's important in that next step in the development of A.I. David represents that spark, that leap into A.I. sentience that results 1000 years later.

Interesting point Patrick.

To whom does the film title refer to? David, the beings at the end, or both?

Hmmm right now I'm leaning towards both. Up till now, I must admit, I would have said David.

Perhaps, just the evolution of A.I. It's sort of like when man learned how to create fire, and then committed violence on one another to inflict their will upon a weaker person, and somehow you get that great cut in "2001" between a leg bone that's rotates end-over-end and the space station.

Well that is the moral question that films like A.I. are challenging us to explore beyond the knee-jerk, "humans is life, all else is crap" attitude that we have.

I would not save anything in my house above my fiance, and following that I would not save anything else above my cats.

But then I would probably give up on the fish and try to save something of personal value given that choice. So what's wrong with fish? I like em. It would be hard to save them, but they also feel "replaceable".

And what is wrong with the cats that I would let them die to save my fiance. I can assure you that while she would be happy to live, her opinion would be to save all 3 of them first if I could (which I would ignore of course, and I'm sure she would too if I said the same thing to her).

So in Blade Runner would you expect Deckard to save Rachael over Gaff or Bryant? I sure would. Why? Well he loves her. Yet she is replicant and they are not.

Then take this onto something like Ghost in the Shell. Is Kusanagi less saveable than Togusa since she is almost all machine? Doesn't seem like it in the film and certainly it seems like Bateau would save Kusanagi above all others.

So if it came between saving one of you and saving a replicant version of my fiance on the level of what is depicted in Blade Runner...you better get your asbestos underoos on.

How far an AI has to go to cross that threshold is what these films/stories are all about. How much flesh, how much emotion, must a creature like this have before it becomes lovable and "saveable"

Which, of course, are the same thing. Both the brain and heart run on biologically generated electrical impulses.

For example, your heart generates a voltage which then goes from the top to the bottom (basically) with current passing through cells on the way down which in turn makes the muscles clench/release. Sudden Death Syndrome (most common heart attack) is when the cells get damaged making the circuit path blocked or slowed. The electrical signal starts to lose it's flow path and ends up going back up against itself and falling into confusion (fibulation) making the muscles twitch all out of order (and therefore not pushing blood smoothly throught the system, but instead back and forth in the heart - again roughly).

So this is one big reason why AI researchers feel this confidence, because we know the human body IS based on ELECTRICAL SIGNALS.

Just like Neural Nets are based on the understanding that in the brain memories seem to be made by electrical signals going between some cells creating stronger bonds (like exercising) while less used bonds leave weak connections. The patterns of these connections seems to be memories at this point.

Take an input (via electrical signals from all the various nerve endings, including ear and eye) and place those patterns against and existing template in the brain in a massively parallel fashion and you possibly/probably get "recognition".

Then on top of that place patterns for other things on the same place and there could be a "match" that is not a true match that "reminds" us of something, thus making us think of something other than what we are seeing, like making an artistic connection. In terms of near match but not actual match, think of a square and circle of similar size. Not literally I mean, but just how patterns can sorta match, yet also be definately different. In this case you recognize what it really is, but at the same time you also are made to think of something else as well.


The big leap in AI work was the recognition that LINEAR thinking would not get it done (this is the "programming" you guys are talking about), and a PARALLEL system needed to be used.

At this point we simulate such a system by doing each individual NEURON linearly for an entire pattern, like scanning a video line rather than flashing a single film frame on the screen. Two different ways of producing a very similar effect (moving visual images).

How computers are traditionally used is NOT an attempt at AI. That is CPUs as a tool. AI takes different approaches to "thinking" that are not necessarily efficient and are therefore not used for current problem solving. It's cheaper to pair a person with a traditional CPU to cover all your thinking basis.

But there are plenty of reasons to think that day is coming, just like landing on the moon. Sci-Fi like AI is asking us "then what" before we get there.

not AI, the movie related, but parallel is not the answer either, IMHO, because parallel is no different than multiple linear pathways. IMHO, and based on the AI/brain theories I've read, the human mind is much different than any systematically programmable system (linear or parallel), and is why researchers haven't yet uncovered how we actually create memories, think, create, etc. They have many theories, and very little hard data to support them, let alone the capabilities to express them in such a way as to actually build them. (and, btw, neural nets aren't close to what A.I., the movie, was attempting to show...)

This may sound too simplistic, but given the issues and concepts A.I. is asking us to consider, the above quoted statement, to me, rings to the equivalent of, "If there was a kid of your race and one of a different race (both human), which one would you save?"

One may retort that it's made clear David is a machine, but if the movie doesn't make clear that he is not, it is less clear whether his love is real or not. It is also less clear whether he is truly "alive" or not. And no matter how clear or unclear you think the film is about how "alive" David is, it is definitely raising the issue. Frankly, if the film does not make it clear that David is a life-form, then it does make it clear that David is on the virge of being a life-form - an intelligent one, on the level of humanity.

So perhaps think of it this away - if you wouldn't have a dilemma over letting David burn, would you have one over saving one of the future-mecha's "lives?" One or the other ought to illicit some consideration.

if one were blind, your view of David being more than a machien would change, IMHO, since many of the characteristics he displayed that make you think he is "real" or can "love" are visual in nature. Without the visual, David's actions are very much in line with a simple programmed machine....

You're right--programming is a rigid set of codes. Just take a look at this program, for example:

for i = 0 to dendrites.length
dendriteSum = dendriteSum + dendrites[i]
end loop

if dendriteSum > threshold then
ActivateAxon(firingFreq)
end if

Greg you're describing the medium not the messge.

On a basic level it comes down to "input" and "output".

You know, the passions (positive and negative) and discussion that this movie has elicited are not what one would normally associate with a movie that "just sux".

It may have disappointed at the box office, and it has its detractors (what movie doesn't?), but no one can deny that it has prompted people to think, and rethink, and think again. If that's not an artistic success, what is?

BTW, I am in a different category than those three that Tino identified above: I partially understood it, and loved it. I have gleaned more from reading this thread, and that makes me appreciate it all the more.

Me too, and it is interesting that this thread is still so active (and that you learn new things every time you open it). It seems fitting that I had actualy planned to rewatch AI tonight, now I'll see it with the added benefit of his discussion .

I think it's more about the 'black box' between the two.