Alex garland: people ruin everything; the machines a pretty good track record compared to us

Alex garland is one idea, when it comes to the revolution of artificial intelligence to implement it. Having realized yourself as a novelist ("the Beach") and screenwriter ("28 days later" "Dredd"), he decided to try himself as a Director with the movie "the car" that will be released and raises a lot of questions about artificial intelligence and ethics.

Technician (Oscar Isaac) is secretly developing a robot named Ava and asks one of his employees (Domhnall Gleason) to rate its ability using the Turing test. The scandals, intrigues, investigation, danger — as usual, but unlike the stamped androids who live by the principle of "think therefore kill," Ava is smart, even kind, and can be a much more suitable heir to this world than the person who created it.

"From the machine" — an unusual film about artificial intelligence. Where did your passion for thinking computers?

I'm 44 and I grew up with the development of video games and computers. When I was 12 or 13, there home computers; your parents bought them, expecting that you will learn from them, but all you did was play video games. However, I was a little programmed in Basic. I did simple programs like "Hello World", which gave the car a noticeable sensitivity. I quite well remember this kind of electric feeling which you felt like the car was alive — though definitely knew it was wrong.

Years later, I entered into a long argument with my friend who is seriously into neuroscience. He believes that computers will never become intelligent, and he has good scientific arguments urging this. But at the gut level I'm with him I just disagree. I started to read a lot about AI, mind and consciousness.

Have you worked with difficult subjects before, so this area is for you is nothing new.

In "the Beach" is the theme of the theory of the multiverse and such a plan. I worked on a film called Sunshine, which was the question the heat death of the Universe. And for a while there were interesting from a scientific point of view, themes, for the most part it's garbage — in the sense it was the same as in the warp engine in Star trek. A disappointment. I'm not saying the movie is bad — there are things that I love, but something is still wrong. And when I started to work on this topic, I thought it makes sense.

What is your education in the field of AI?

I have an intellectual limitation that I can understand. This is partly intelligence, partly the understanding of mathematics; when they collide, formed an impenetrable brick wall for me. But I can read and understand, it is the philosophical ideas that surround them.

In particular, I came across a book by Murray Shanahan, Professor of cognitive robotics at Imperial College, the British version of the Massachusetts Institute of technology. I liked his reasoning when I read the book. Therefore, when writing the script I contacted him and several other people and said that he would like to strictly get a grasp of the script and made sure that he held.

So what happened?

We have twice been presumptuous. First, I created a thinking machine, and secondly, got a robotics extremely high level which allowed a reasonable car to have a face to have character. It's almost unbelievable, and you can rightly say that this is the equivalent of a warp engine. But this is science fiction, and even in spite of our arrogance, I tried to be very tough.

What is science fiction about artificial intelligence you are focused, drawing its?

You can assume the level of literacy of the audience for movies, but not books. People could read or not to read "Heart of darkness", right? But they probably saw "Apocalypse now." So when you are working on a sci-Fi movie that artificial intelligence and robots, you can be sure that people know something about HAL and 2001. You can even be sure that they know about "Running on the razor's edge" and the Replicants. Thus, you can rely on competent audience, because it almost certainly will.

And, most likely, they will take down your film into pieces too.

There could be a problem. When designing a robot I don't want people to think about another movie, when it [the robot] will appear on the screen. If it is gold, you almost immediately think of C-3PO, and a female image that is not canceled. We had to stay away from the iconic robots from the movie "metropolis", from live Bjork, directed by Chris Cunningham ("All Is Full of Love").

It seems people want to compare "car" with "She" s different, but you play with the theme of creating the "perfect woman".

There are two completely separate chains in this film, as far as I can tell. One about AI and consciousness, the other about social constructs: what was this guy doing to create a machine in the shape of a girl twenty years to show this car to the young guy for testing.

How important was the design of the ava for the picture of the film?

He looks familiar, but it remains quite unique. It can be a bit of Maria from "metropolis," but nothing more. It supervazhnye. This is critical because she needs to look pretty special. She needs to look very, very nice and visually evident.

When Nathan explains why he made the ABA what it is, it's creepy.

Yes, but that's what it takes. You have to think that it's creepy. You should feel upset, uncomfortable. And because of her need to be rescued.

Nathan in many ways — the archetypal guy from Silicon valley. His character is cast with these dudes?

It's more when an alpha male meets a non-alpha male. I like the mixture of someone who is incredibly aggressive and bykovatye, but said familiarly, as if teaching something their little brother-little guy, even if it's something beyond the scope of his employment.

Have you followed the recent debates in the field of AI and ethics?

It's a great question. I think that if you talk a lot about irrational AI — augmented versions of what we already have — that is, nothing to worry about and what to take into consideration. It is easy to imagine a situation where drones operated by the AI, to be more effective on the battlefield than drones controlled by people, and do not suffer from PTSD as men. You would literally trust a machine to make decisions about life and death. Ethical problems associated with it, is absolutely obvious.

But generally speaking, if you are creating a new consciousness in the form of the machine, it is not so will differ from what two adults create baby, in my opinion. You may have problems with the fact that the new machine is more reasonable as their parents, but, again, we kind of learned how to cope with this. You can have two parents that create Einstein, and the other two are creating Stalin.

So about Skynet you are going through.

I even welcome. People are going to die on this planet. This can happen because of environmental disaster or due to changes in the Solar system or the Sun. But when that happens, we will not be able to go through the wormhole to another galaxy and find the old planet. It just will not happen. Among us will survive only AI if we manage to create them. This is not a problem, it is, on the contrary, something to aspire to.

"From the car" felt, made with reference to this.

I hope it's clear from the film. This movie was definitely conceived as supporting the idea of AI. This people ruin everything; the machines a pretty good track record compared to us.

You seem to be lucky with the stars, especially with Oscar Isaac and Danelon by Gleason.

Because they are in Star wars?

Well, Yes.

When I started casting "of the car", the only thing I knew 100% that it is not necessary to pull the movie stars. They could drown the entire enterprise with ease. Therefore, it was necessary to find a good actors. The problem was only that we couldn't figure out who's going good, but took them because there were other people who wanted them. published

Source: hi-news.ru