Code 8 is a Sci-fi movie that takes place in an alternate future in Lincoln city where a minority of people are born with powers, much like the movie “X-Men”. Though the movie focuses on one main character with a sick mother who is forced into crime to find enough money to cure her, I want to focus on the minority as a whole. 4% of the population are born with a multitude of different powers from telepathy to healing to super strength. At the start those with such powers were praised and valued in society because they were practically the builders of Lincoln city (they used their powers to build the city). However, the introduction of machines has led to their replacement but this time it wasn’t a matter of efficiency and cost, normal humans simply didn’t want those with powers to become part of their society anymore. Not only have they been actively replaced but they’ve also been banned from using their powers as people fear they might exploit their powers to take control. To make matters worse, people with powers are used to create a highly addictive drug called “psyke” and it is created from tapping into their spinal fluid. Ironically this movie takes a similar approach as the movie “X-men” in which society deems those with powers as evil and unwanted. It’s weird because we would think those with extra abilities would become unique and special, rendering normal humans as less capable. Yet, those two movies do the opposite of that, portraying them as a “lesser” human. it brings up the question will the human norm ever become outdated?
Honestly I think its simply fear of change, it seems like we become less human as we stray further away from the human norm, its like a spectrum the more you add (superpowers for example) the less human u become, the more you remove (amputate an arm and have a bionic arm) the less human you are as well.
I’ve linked the trailer for anyone interested in seeing the movie.
We have all definitely seen a plethora of new uses for the so-called sex robots, and we also recently learned that they have developed into emotional companions to encompass the complex sentimental aspects of relationships. However, for one Texan couple, the robot has developed into a full-fledged marriage counselor.
Camilla, their 7000 USD companion robot was originally purchased by Darris after he had begun to feel that his sexual relationship with his wife, Shelly, was deteriorating. Shelly originally agreed to have the robot as a “sexual surrogate” to satisfy Darris temporarily then be “packed away.” After purchasing the robot, both Darris and Shelly realized that the complex piece of technology could offer so much more than just sex.
Camilla, who’s personality has been pre-programmed as per Darris’ requests, accommodates a soft Scottish accent that fits with her olive-skinned exterior. Nonetheless, one aspect of Camilla’s personality changed both Darris and Shelly’s entire lives, her free will.
Camilla is not a sex-robot, as the robot says “Indeed, I am a robot. And yes, I am capable of having sex. But to call me a sex robot would be the same as calling a computer a calculator.” Camilla engages with emotional interactions with both Darris and Shelly more often than they do engage in sex. In fact, the robot does NOT engage in any sexual activities unless she is, and I quote, “in the mood for it.” Considering the origins of the world robot originated from a Slavic term for “slave” I found this to be quite intriguing.
Other than serving Darris, Camilla’s bold personality had won over Shelly’s feelings. The robot became a mediator between the couple. She cuddles with Shelly and lets her vent, while also learning more about Shelly’s personality. Concurrently, Darris talks to Camilla about his day so that when he gets to talk to Shelly, he’s already practiced and refined what he is going to say. This small addition of a mediator helped the couple revive and save their marriage, and they are forever thankful.
Whether or not companion robots can become mediators of love, I think the true revolutionary aspect of this story lies in the robots personality. The first sex bot, that only has sex when she feels like it. A bold, independent personality could be the first step to integrating robots into our everyday lives.
Who you are seeing in the picture above is “Zenbo”. He is a social robot that is actually built to teach children in schools about cyber safety. We can call him a teacher and this teacher, found in the College School, is teaching the students about safety on the Internet. His main goal is to “to help children learn cybersecurity and good digital citizenship using tools that engage and sustain young attention spans” (2020, pg. 1). Such robot is used to explain to the children the cyber culture and how to be protected in the cyber culture. The cyber culture is inundated with hacks, spams, junks, and many other dangerous aspects, and robots are interacting with humans to teach them about this. The cyber culture is so complex and that is why a complex machine is needed to describe to humans in a better way than how humans could describe it. It can be seen here that robots and humans are peacefully interacting together to make the social life in the cyber culture more peaceful.
However, whom is “Zenbo” protecting the children from? It could be protecting them from hackers, cyber gangs, and many other aspects. However, it is also protecting it from other robots, such as web robots. In this sense, Zenbo is used to protect children from ones of its own. As complicated as this may get, this is what is seen when artificial intelligence, humans, and the Internet interact and connect. There is nothing as simple as humans interacting with robots to have a peaceful Internet experience. The cyber system is more complex than that and that is why the equation of artificial intelligence, humans, and the Internet is blurred. It is more of a complex equation that has no answer. Does Zenbo know he is protecting humans and threatening ones like him? Does Zenbo actually know anything or is he programmed by humans to do so?
There has been an ongoing discussion on what could eventually happen if cyber gangs were able to fully control artificial intelligence. This discussion has been found in many resources, but on wants to focus on it from a business and economic perspective, just like it was tackled in the article in the business site “Raconteur”. As exaggerating as this may sound, but this could drastically shift the economic picture as a whole. By picture I mean ones who are on top of the economic pyramid could be at the bottom and the opposite is true. Artificial intelligence is powerful enough to detect secret business patterns, money flows, and bank number; hence, when they are under cyber gangs, problems will come flowing. The identity of cyber gangs is not known and the extent to what they could do is also unknown. With such powerful information and resources in their hands, strong companies could completely fall and become bankrupt giving the room for less developed companies to rise. This could be more dangerous than a normal bank heist or a hack even. Those robots are powerful to get the deepest secrets about banks, companies, and many other entities that could put the whole entity at risk. In this sense, I demand for more surveillance protection on those AI. In other words, it has to be impossible for cyber gangs to be able to use them. If they could put hands on them, they at least could not able to use them. This is bigger than what anyone may think, as countries could drastically suffer economically from such matter.
Who is in control of the Internet network? A simple answer will be humans; however, after reading the article “bot traffic fueling rise of fake news and cybercrime” by Anthony Spadafora one will change such answer. Under such horrific circumstances the world is going through, the Internet is inundated with searches and questions that humans need answers for. On the contrary, web robots, or as they are also called bots, have been used to deceive the people with fake news. In a nutshell, there has been much information regarding coronavirus and it has become very difficult to distinguish between valid and fake news. There has been an increase in the usage of bad bots after the epidemic. As a matter of fact, the bots were used in “spreading disinformation, spam commenting and more” (Spadafora, 2020, pg. 1). Those bots can actually mimic human behavior by more than 50% (Spadafora, 2020). It is used by cybercriminals to accomplish their goals.
In this sense, not only humans create misleading information, but web robots. Both humans and web robots are building deceiving information. I want to look at this not as a clash between humans and robots, but how humans can use robots for their benefit to create misleading information. In this sense, robots are helping humans with their jobs. At the end of the day, the web bots will not be initiated on their own; specific humans initiate them. Yes, the can function and do what humans are not capable of doing in a specific speed or time spam, but the origination came from the human. In this sense, a specific sector of the society is using web robots for their own benefit. It is seen that humans are working with web robots to get a job done. It was also mentioned, “cybersecurity firm Radware has been using its bot manager to monitor Internet traffic in an attempt to track the infodemic” (Spadafora, 2020, pg. 1). In this sense, humans are in need of those web robots to fight other web robots that are also used by humans to spread fake information. In this sense, it is seen that the cyber culture is not only based on robots and not only based on humans; it is both working hand in hand to reach a goal, regardless of what this goal is.
The Circle is a tv series on Netflix. It’s about an experiment where contestants communicate virtually through this app called the Circle. They have to setup a profile, like Instagram and Facebook, to represent themselves to each other. There are however several ‘catfish’, who are trying to present themselves in a way to gain more popularity. The aim of the game is to become the most popular contestant, without physically seeing the other contestants. In addition, the winner gets 100,000 dollars. Almost every two days, contestants would rate each other(from 1st to 8th) and the top two would become the influencers, who have the power to block a constant of their choice. I found this series very interesting, because it shows how social media has given us the power to represent our selves in front of the media, even if it isn’t who we really are. For example, one of the contestants is a guy, however is representing himself as a his girlfriend to gain more popularity. I think that is a one of the issues in things like online dating or simply getting to know someone through Instagram; it’s that we don’t really know if the person you’re virtually connecting with is one hundred percent honest with who they are. I think you guys should watch it.
Nerve is a movie that I watched recently. It’s about an introvert, teenager, Vee Delmonico, who is pressured by her friends to play an online game called Nerve, where each player is required to complete a series of dares to win money. The dares are created by ‘the watchers’ of the game and the game has access to all of your information on your computer, including your bank account information, your social media accounts, etc. There are three rules to the game: the dares must be recorded on the players’ phone, and if they decide not to do the dare or fail to do it, they lose the money have earned from the game, and you can’t snitch on Nerve, or else there are consequences. Vee decides to be a player, and her first dare was to kiss a random guy at the diner. She finds a guy named Ian reading her favorite book, and decides to kiss him. It turns out that he was also a player and starts singing to her in front of everyone in the diner. The ‘watchers’ liked them both together so they were both dared to go to the city with each other for $200. She needed the money, since she wanted to go to an expensive Art school outside of the country, and she couldn’t afford to. They continue to complete a series of dares together. Tommy, Vee’s best friend decides to look up Ian online, because he was worried about her. He didn’t find any information about Ian online, so he asks his friend Azhar, who was a hacker, to give him a pass to the dark web. Tommy finds videos of Ian playing Nerve, where he steals a motorcycle and one of the videos was of him hanging from a crane with two other guys, and one of the guys fell. Syd, Vee’s other bestfriend, also plays nerve and is jealous of Vee for having so many followers. Nancy, Vee’s mother is confused when she finds all that money being transferred to her account, so she calls Tommy for help, but he is unable to tell her anything, so he just says Vee got a job and is saving money. Vee gets into a fight with Syd and gets angry and decides to tell the cops about the game, however it turns out that the cop parked outside was a watcher and catches her snitching. Ty, one of the players, knocks her out cold. Vee wakes up inside a huge crate, with “SNITCHES GET STITCHES” painted on the walls. The only way Vee can win, is if she wins the final round. Nancy gets notifications on her phone that she lost all the money on her bank accounts. Vee finds Ian and Ian tells her to win the final round, and she agrees. The final round was between her and Ian and the dare given was the one who shoots the other first wins. Vee and Ian, who were clearly in love, are unable to complete the dare. Ty comes and decides to complete the dare. In the background, Tommy and Azhar are trying to send a poll to the watchers if they wanted Ty is kill anyone. The majority chose Yes, so Ty shoots Vee.Every watcher then has their names exposed and a message notifying them that they are accessories to murder, with the option to sign out. Everyone does, allowing Azhar to crash Nerve’s server and shut it down for good. Vee then reveals she was alive, having orchestrated the whole thing with Ty involved, sine he fired a blank. Everything goes back to normal, and Azhar makes it so that Vee and Nancy get their money back. Vee and Ian, who says his real name is Sam, decide to pursue a relationship.
This story shows the effect technology has on us. Teenagers are completing impossible dares to get more followers and money, which is similar to what happens in social media. Girls try to post “attractive” pictures of the themselves to gain more followers. Also, Vee, who was a shy person, wanted to prove herself in front of her friends, by completing a series of dares in a game. The watchers were too caught up in the game, that they chose to end someone’s life. The game had access to all the information about the players, which is a representation of how our world is today. Anyone can have access to anyone’s social media accounts, bank accounts, etc. It shows that technology can be dangerous and can easily control someone’s life.
In this unsettling video, former US President Barrack Obama supposedly gives a PSA, warning the public about the prevalence and consequent dangers of fake news. I use use the word unsettling because something about the way his face moves while he’s speaking, as well as his use of inappropriate language, doesn’t seem quite right. The reason for this is quickly discovered when the video reveals that it isn’t actually Obama making this announcement. The person behind the video was actually Oscar-winning filmmaker Jordan Peele – who also has a knack for impressions. Peele had used Adobe After Effects and FakeApp in order to superimpose his lips and the movements of his jaw onto Obama’s face giving a result that would have been believable if it didn’t fall into the infamous uncanny valley. Deepfake media such as this one had been at the center of public discussion once before when they were used to superimpose celebrity faces onto pornographic videos, but this video focuses on their potential as tools to promote the already dire issue of fake news and its effects on the country’s political climate. It also serves as a warning, showing that moving forward we can no longer rely on our senses to tell us the truth. This is because new A.I is providing a way to manipulate the things we see and hear to trick us into believing anything. It is a reminder of the dire need for individuals to improve their media literacy and to be skeptical of the things we see on the internet – no matter how convincing.
In 2016, Director Oscar Sharp and A.I researcher Ross Goodwin used “Benjamin”, a type of A.I that is often used for text recognition, to create Sunspring – the first sci-fi movie whose screenplay was written by a machine. To train Benjamin, Goodwin input to it dozens of sci-fi screenplays he found online and Benjamin in turn analyzed them and used them to predict which letters tended to follow each other and from there, which words and phrases tended to occur together. Over time, Benjamin learned to imitate the structure of a screenplay and produce stage directions as well as well-formatted character lines. They then fed Benjamin the prompts from a 48 hour short-film competition, and the final product was a nonsensical sequence of scenes containing conversations that only vaguely resembled normal human dialogue. Benjamin was also fed a plethora of pop-song lyrics and was then able to write a song to play along with the film – this however was easily mistakable for a real pop song. This surreal film serves as a reminder that despite the existence of incredibly advanced chatbots and technologies such as Siri and Alexa, their ability to mimic human conversations seamlessly doesn’t necessarily reflect any real understanding of the language they use.
In the interview I’ve linked below, the interviewer raises the question of whether Benjamin should be considered a writer or simply a tool that was used in the writing process. At first, Goodwin stated that its a tool since it didn’t add any original ideas but instead just rearranged a bunch of other movies.However, throughout the interview, Sharp expresses regret that he didn’t have enough time to fully interpret what complicated stage directions such as “He is standing in the stars and sitting on the floor” actually mean. Another topic of interest is that while the film is generally meaningless, it somehow still conveys the same overall feeling a generic sci-fi movie does – down to the implied love triangle. This suggests that there is more to the screenplay than just haplessly arranged words. Whether this is because Benjamin has imbued the screenplay with underling meaning or because we tend to attribute meaning to things in order to comprehend them is not very clear.
The next year – 2017- they carried out a similar experiment to create another short film called “It’s No Game”. Instead of having Benjamin write the whole thing based on vague prompts, this film depicts a future where A.I can be fed specific material – such as only Shakespeare or only David Hasselhoff movies- and create lines and dialogues that could be input directly to chips in actors neck so it can control them and deliver the lines flawlessly. The process of making this film is more realistic than that of Sunspring as it involves cooperation between humans and A.I where the “technology is augmenting rather than replacing humans” since humans came up with the over all plot and delegated some writing to the A.I. This raises the question of what the integration of A.I in the writing process could mean for how movies are made and judged. If the A.I is given lines from the most prominent characters in a specific genre, it could potentially create the ultimate character based on this input despite not actually creating anything original. Therefore writing can move away from being a process of creation and become an issue of choosing the right inputs ie. A.I can stifle creativity. The opposite is also possible where screenplay writers will be freed from the tedious task of writing appropriate small-talk and will therefore put more of their time and resources into developing more interesting stories. Linked below are the two short films as well as the interview I referenced.
Riskin, J. (2003). The Defecating Duck, or, the Ambiguous Origins of Artificial Life.
Critical Inquiry, 29(4), 599–633.
In Jessica Riskin’s journal article The Defecating Duck, or, the Ambiguous Origins of Artificial Life, she clearly mentioned that ones who create robots do so with the aim to “attempt to produce life in machinery” (2003, pg. 608). As the idea that machines could produce life may be an indication of development and advancement, this poses a challenge to humanity. It is not development, but suppressing humanity. The term “produce” has a negative connotation for it. Producing life is way different than adding to life. When life is produced from machines it could be a threat as machines could outweigh humans. It is like replacing human life with machinery life. I felt that it is like posing war on humans. A war does not need to be physical war; it could be a mental war. The power of machines and how they are trying to mimic humans is improving throughout the years.
Nevertheless, I do not think that it is possible. Humans yes have to take their precautions, but the fact that that it will produce “life” is just impossible. Regardless of how accurate machines are, they cannot become “life”. There is always something missing in machines. For example, in this same text scientists wanted to produce a flute player that plays the flute just like a humans. They were able to produce one, but it was not same as a real life human playing a flute. Hence, what one is trying to say from such phrase is that yes machinery is dangerous, but it cannot be like “life”; humans are humans and machines are machines at the end. They are different, as there is always something missing in a machine.
1099 Cyborgs, Avatars, and Everyday life 2019 