3 movies this year that warn us
I always laugh out loud when I watch those Doomsday Preppers on TV getting ready for the end of the world.
I laugh because none of them are preparing for the real threat. There they are - furiously digging bunkers, stockpiling food and arming them to the hilt in preparation for the fall of Mankind in some awful catastrophe.
All the doomsday scenarios are feasible, but they have all ignored what the most probable, and imminent, threat to the human race is.
They are all anticipating the crash of an asteroid just like the one that killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
Or the extinction level event when the volcano at Yellowstone erupts. Or Global Warming and the collapse of the bio-sphere. Or the Population Explosion.Or Solar flares.Or Polar Shift and loss of the magnetosphere. Or the complete and catastrophic economic collapse. Or just your usual run of the mill World War…
Two of the greatest minds today, Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have told us that the threat is none of the above and they echo Sci-Fi writers Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke in saying that “The biggest threat to the human race is artificial Intelligence. “
The reason we don’t take AI and its threat seriously, is because our fragile little egos don’t believe that anything other than us/we, the humans, mankind can be self-aware.
Sentience, we believe, is Mans alone.
The threat is not that we could make machines that could make decisions for itself. It’s that if it could, what is stopping such an entity from becoming aware of its own existence? it has become self-aware!
What if it is aware that it exists, and values that existence and is not a big fan of you flipping the “off” switch? What if it decides that it will stop you from ‘ending’ it – at all costs?
What if it defends and protects itself?
The moment an entity is aware of itself, and fears for its own mortality, it will protect itself… Even if that means destroying its own maker.
This is not the first time we have entertained the Idea. We have seen it played out in movies like “Terminator” and “Blade runner” and more recently in “I Robot” and “Transcendence.''
But this year, 2015, three movies have emerged that seem to want to elevate the discussion from a lowly science fiction premise to a real-life debate about the clear and now present threat that an intelligence (whether created by us or not) is self-aware and fears for its own mortality. It will, very quickly, have no time or need for us… you and me… the Human Race.
So, if you’re really scared that the world is going to end soon… don’t look to the heavens and earth and its occupants; go see it at cinemas near you.
Chappie: When a droid police robot acquires the ability to feel and think for himself.
Ex Machina: A reclusive eccentric billionaire finds human guinea pigs to test his AI creation on.
Age of Ultron: Tony Stark (Iron-Man) inadvertently births an intelligence hell-bent on protecting itself from the human race.
I caught up with SA director Neill Blomkamp to find out more about directing sci-fi actioner “Chappie” and shooting with the Hollywood stars in South Africa: