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Posts Tagged ‘Steven Spielberg’

If you like Michael Crichton’s novels, you’ll like Daniel H. Wilson’s sci-fi story about artificial intelligence gone wild. As I was listening to the audiobook, I thought “I can see the movie already”. Turns out that Steven Spielberg is producing an adaptation for release in summer 2013. The CG guys will have a blast making this film and it will be interesting (and ironic) to see how advanced the computer graphics technology will be by the time of the movie’s release.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1541155/

The plot is pretty simple. We humans are depending a lot more on computer driven robots and machines in our daily lives. A scientist creates a device, Archos whose artificial intelligence is so great that it creates self-determination, goes rogue, takes control of all the world’s computer-driven machines, and starts annihilating the human population. A definite page-turner.

Since reading this book, I’ve seen the documentary “Transcendental Man” about Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil is a fascinating scientist/academic/futurist who talks about how the information we have & our technological capacities double every couple of years. He believes that during the lifetimes of many people who are now alive humans and robots will become merged with the release of nanorobots into our bloodstreams. This nanotechnology will enhance our mental and physical capacities to the point where we will evolve into a new species. Of course, hearing Kurzweil speak about this utopian vision reminded me of Robopocalypse.

In fact, Hugo de Garis appears in the documentary to dispute Kurzeil’s vision and warns of an “Artilect War” which is at the core of the story in Robopocalypse. Click between to watch a debate between de Garis and J. Storrs Hall about the two different visions:

Engineered Utopia or Artilect War? from Jeriaska on Vimeo.