EDITORIAL: How Do People See AI in Movies?

How Do People See AI in Movies?

AI in the real world isn’t remotely advanced enough to allow it to have a true personality. But in movies, AI has been a constant source of interest for many people since the very beginning. Movies allow filmmakers to explore a world in which AI is truly sentient. But that sentience hasn’t always been good.Interestingly enough, when you spread out AI in movies by intelligence and morality, you may start to see a strange correlation. In general, childlike robots tend to be typed as “good,” while superhuman robots tend to be typed as “evil.” Walk through this ranking of AI in movies and see how people tend to type AI across the board.

Childlike and Good

The largest singular group on the map of AI is that of characters that have a childlike temperament or intelligence and a good moral compass. From the excited learning of Max from Flight of the Navigator to the rapport between R2-D2 and C-3P0, childlike robots seem to ping people’s radars to really be a force for good.

R2-D2 – Star Wars
Giant – The Iron Giant
Robocop – Robocop
Max – Flight of the Navigator
Robot – Robot & Frank
Johnny 5 – Short Circuit
Chappie – Chappie

Adult-like and Mixed

Adult-intelligence AI characters, of course, have a variety of uses in movies. They tend to simply bring a science fiction element of drama to a movie. Comic relief characters, like Bender from Futurama, pull the viewers further into the canon of the story while also fulfilling many of the same tropes that another adult character would.

KITT – Knight Rider
TARS – Interstellar
Bender – Futurama
Evil Bill and Ted – Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey

Next are characters that are essentially just shells. These may be humans, like the Agents in The Matrix, who are just being filled by the AI in question. They may also be intelligent sources of information, like the spider robots from Minority Report.

Spider Robots – Minority Report
MU-TH-UR 6000 – Alien
Connecticut Housewives – The Stepford Wives
Agents – The Matrix

Last in the adult section are characters that fulfill a dramatic purpose in the story. These storylines, interestingly enough, tend to revolve much more around the fact that they are an AI. Comedy relief characters, on the other hand, don’t tend to get this type of heavy story.

Ava – Ex Machina
Maria’s Double – Metropolis
Bishop – Alien

Superhuman and Evil

Next up is the group of characters that are both superhuman and evil. You’ll see in this list that many of these AI entities claim to know everything there is to know, and they invariably use this knowledge for sinister purposes.

Borg – Star Trek
VIKI – I, Robot
Skynet – The Terminator
Ultron – Avengers: Age of Ultron
HAL 9000 – 2001: A Space Odyssey

Exceptions to the Rule

Of course, there are exceptions to the rule. There are two especially substantial exceptions to the superhuman rule, showing that sometimes people do think that superhuman AI can be good.

Data – Star Trek
Marvin the Paranoid Android – A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

When it comes to childlike AI that’s either neutral or evil, it’s typically being utilized by someone else. Their childlike demeanor may in many people’s minds keep them from creating evil on their own.

Droids - Elysium
Gort – The Day the Earth Stood Still

Conclusion

What kind of lessons has movie AI taught us over the years? Humans have definitely taken inspiration from science fiction when it comes to building real things. But at the center of it all isn’t necessarily a distrust of computers, but in fact a distrust of knowledge itself. And that’s what’s so interesting to see about AI in movies.