“WHAT HAPPENS WHEN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE BECOMES SELF-AWARE?”
Just two days ago, film director Wally Pfister (best known for being a protégé of Christopher Nolan on the “Dark Knight” franchise, and winning an Academy Award with Nolan for “Inception”) has released trailers for his new sci-fi film “Transcendence.” This is the directorial debut of the longtime Nolan cinematographer.
Johnny Depp is getting his brain uploaded!
In the film, Depp plays Dr. Will Caster, a renowned AI (artificial intelligence) researcher, with work focused on creating a sentient machine. His work as a scientist is centered on the “Singularity,” the point at which artificial intelligence overtakes human intelligence and the two merge. (Trivia: In a “TIME” story featuring Google’s Ray Kurzweil, he predicts the Singularity will be reached by 2045.) Depp’s character faces off against anti-technology “extremists” who are seeking to stop his experiments, even as his colleagues question whether the experiments should continue. The climax of the film seems to be when an incident causes Dr. Will Caster to upload his “consciousness” into the mainframe after the “extremists” attack his work.
Check out the trailer:
“For 130,000 years, our capacity for reason has remained unchanged. The combined intellect of the neuroscientists, engineers, and mathematicians pales in comparison to even the most basic A.I. Once online, a sentient machine will quickly overcome the limits of biology,” Depp says in a voiceover. “In a short time, its analytical power will be greater than the collective intelligence of every person born in the history of the world. Some scientists refer to this as the singularity. I call it transcendence.”
The film also stars Morgan Freeman, Cillian Murphy, Kate Mara, Rebecca Hall, Paul Bettany. Clifton Collins Jr., and Cole Hauser. Screenplay written by Jack Paglen, produced by Christopher Nolan
Director Pfister said in an interview with EW,” It’s a timely subject as we find we have to update software on our cell phones before we can even make a call.”
The Facebook fan-page says: “The story will feature real future predictions, about the Technological Singularity, AI, Nanotech, and Transhumanism. The Facebook page links to a site that features predictions by Ray Kurzweil, Hugo de Garis, and Jason Silva.
http://www.thatsreallypossible.com/news/755/transcendence-movie-features-real-future-predictions/
Here’s one more trailer, due out April 25th. What do you think about the film and subject?