Wattpad brings you a guest post from Nas Hedron, author of Luck and Death at the Edge of the World, our latest featured story:
Can we create a computer that can not only calculate, but actually think?
In the real world that question is still unanswered, but in my science fiction novel Luck and Death at the Edge of the World, we’ve done it. One of the key characters is an artificially intelligent entity named Alan.
AIs have a long history in popular culture, with some of the most recognizable AIs appearing in film and television.
This is a great moment to look back at that history. Two of the best movies featuring AIs, Alien and Blade Runner, were made by director Ridley Scott more than 30 years ago and he’s now revisiting both those stories. Prometheus, a not-quite-prequel to Alien, was released this year, and a Blade Runner sequel is on its way.
Here are six highlights from the history of popular culture AIs.
2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Also: 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984)
There were fictional AIs before 2001, but Hal –2001’s killer computer – was the first to really grab our attention. Hal controls the ship on a flight to Jupiter, but becomes homicidal and has to be shut down – which is easier said than done.
When astronaut Dave Bowman asks Hal to let him back into the ship after going outside in a pod and Hal refuses, saying “I’m sorry, Dave — I’m afraid I can’t do that,” his calm delivery is as chilling as Hannibal Lechter.
With Hal, Hollywood found a new kind of villain: the intelligent machine that rebels and kills. Not all movie AIs follow this model, but a lot of them do.
Westworld (1973)
Also: Futureworld (1976), Beyond Westworld (TV, 1980)
Westworld picks up 2001’s notion of a murderous AI and runs with it.
Writer/director Michael Crichton is the same guy would later write Jurassic Park, about an amusement park full of dinosaurs that go out of control and kill people. What’s Westworld about? An amusement park full of AI robots that go out of control and kill people. Smart writers never throw away a good idea when they can recycle it instead.
Westworld also foreshadows The Terminator, with a homicidal android who just won’t stop no matter what you do to him.
A remake is in the works.
Alien (1979)
Also: Aliens (1986), Alien3(1992), Alien Resurrection (1997), Prometheus (2012)
In this franchise AIs are sinister, but not because they’re running amok like in 2001 and Westworld. Instead, they’re doing exactly as they’re told – it’s just that the people telling them what to do are high level corporate nasties who don’t mind sacrificing lives for profit.
In this year’s Prometheus, the android David (Michael Fassbender) steals the show. And Fassbender modeled David’s performance on2001’s Hal and the replicants from the next movie we look at, Blade Runner.
At least one more movie is coming in this series.
Blade Runner (1982)
Also: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (book, 1968)
Blade Runner is based on a novel by Philip K. Dick, whose work was also adapted into the films Total Recall and The Adjustment Bureau.
In Blade Runner, director Ridley Scott turns the AI-gone-rogue theme almost entirely on its head. Sure, there are AIs (called replicants) disobeying orders and killing people, but only in order to avoid being killed themselves. Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a cop who hunts down rogue AIs. He starts off as a traditional hero, but once we understand what’s happening we see that he is the Terminator-style nightmare pursuer.
Scott is now making a Blade Runner sequel, this time with a female lead.
Terminator (1984)
Also: Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991), Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines (2003), Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles (TV, 2008), Terminator Salvation (2009)
The original Terminator was the ultimate version of the AI-gone-bad that started with 2001, an almost unstoppable assassin from the future that’s sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor, whose unborn son John is the only person who can stop intelligent machines from wiping out humanity.
In Terminator 2 John is a teenager and one Terminator is reprogrammed to save his life while another is sent to kill him, a trend that continued in TV’s Sarah Connor Chronicles.
In Terminator Salvation, Christian Bale (of the blockbuster The Dark Knight Rises), stars as the adult John Connor in a future with only a few humans left, desperately fighting the machines to survive.
At least one more film is planned, with Arnold Schwartzenegger returning.
Battlestar Galactica (TV, 2004)
Also: Battlestar Galactica (TV, 1978), Caprica (TV, 2009)
In the reboot of the series Battlestar Galactica, the cylons are AIs built to be workers and servants, but they rebel and nearly wipe out mankind. The cylons are both good guys and bad guys – mechanical slaves and heartless killers. BSG had perhaps the deepest exploration of artificial persons, including a story line involving a cylon and a human having a child.
So, is Alan – the AI in Luck and Death – a good guy, a bad guy, or something in between? Read it now and find out! I look forward to hearing what you think.
For more on AIs, subscribe to my blog at HomoArtificialis.com, about the real life science behind the fiction. For more on my writing, go to my main site NassauHedron.com.
Read Luck and Death on Wattpad!
Security specialist Gat Burroughs died once and he’ll be damned if he lets it happen again. Unfortunately, somebody is determined to kill his client, a washed-up star named Max Prince, and isn’t afraid to go through Gat to do it.
Is it Max’s debauched granddaughter and heir? Is it the deadly Suerte y Muerte, a cult that kills to steal good luck? Is it Max’s own lawyer and manager, James Jerome?
And how on earth did the would-be assassin get past Max Prince’s top-grade AI, the one that’s adopted the likeness of computer pioneer Alan Turing?
Gat will have to follow the clues through L.A.’s underworld, the slums of Mexico City, and his own guilty past to find the surprising answer.
“A great science fiction detective story ” - Ian Watson, author of “The Universal Machine: From the Dawn of Computing to Digital Consciousness”.
This is the first book in the Gat Burroughs series, which includes novels and shorter fiction. All Gat Burroughs books can be found on Amazon and Kobo.