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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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What I thought was unrealistic about Ex Machina when I saw it was that a guy was working on it on his own in the middle of the woods.

You are not alone with this opinion, Yoshua Bengio basically says the same. I don't really think it is fair point of criticism. To me, it is sort of like saying an action movie is unrealistic because of a car chase with guns and explosions, since cars don't blow up like that real life. True, but kind of missing the point. Nathan is the representation of the scientific/tech community. Had they included a team of researchers working with him, the tone of the film would have been very different. It is supposed to have a creeping feeling of isolation from the outside world. The windowless rooms and hallways of the bunker as well as the sweeping but desolate vistas, when they are outside, enforces that. Caleb can't tell friend from foe and is becoming increasingly paranoid to the point where he starts to question his own humanity. This wouldn't work well if there were other people around for him to interact with. It is, after all, not really a film about how the AI was created, but how it interacts with humans and whether it is malicious or not.

An interesting sci-fi movie about AI I saw recently in light of the alignment debate was Colossus: The Forbin Project.

Never heard of this, but it looks interesting. I'll have to check it out.