The Top 10 Movie Portrayals of AI
Jul 22 · 12 min read
Artificial Intelligence is currently one of the hottest buzz words in scientific research and enterprise. Small wonder, as the potential applications of AI technology in the real world market are seemingly endless. The fundamental hook of AI has snagged the imaginations of numerous innovators and artists for decades, even centuries.
The film industry is no exception as some of cinema’s best regarded and most commercially successful works have explored the potential effects that advanced AI could have on us as individuals and as a society.
As the first imperatives of most films are drama and entertainment, we will do so with the understanding that real life mechanics of AI may take a backseat to the philosophical and emotional implications that artists tend to prioritize. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the most iconic, if sometimes fanciful, representations of Artificial Intelligence that have flickered onto the silver screen.
Oh, and spoilers abound.
10. The Monster: Frankenstein (1931)
Mary Shelley’s classic, “Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus” explored the supposition that human beings would one day be able to replicate human consciousness. Considered by many to be one of the first true science fiction stories, Frankenstein is also a prototypical example of artificial intelligence in fiction.
The consequences this monumentous feat turn out to be dire for the eponymous Doctor Frankenstein and the story serves as a caution against man meddling “God’s domain.”
While the methods to create such a being are cloaked in shadow in Shelley’s original work, James Whale’s 1931 film adaptation incorporated pylons casting arcs of electrical current into the subject, imagery now synonymous with the character. This primitive interpretation of electricity’s ability to elicit feedback from a seemingly inanimate piece of flesh was strangely prescient. Modern AI technology would be nowhere without the speed of communication that electrical currents provide.
Then there’s The Monster himself. A sentient being “birthed” through reanimation, he demonstrates cognitive reasoning, empathy, and perhaps most importantly, curiosity. He learns, then applies that learning as he continues to amass knowledge about a world that is increasingly hostile towards him. He learns early on that fire can harm him. The correlation is not lost on The Monster that flames cause pain, a lesson he later puts to use.
Things to consider:
— Frankenstein’s monster is created through the reanimation of a cobbled together assortment of dead body parts. Assuming DNA plays a role in The Monster’s attributes, could we consider the DNA in his flesh “real data” and whatever Doctor Frankenstein did to him an attempt at obtaining “synthetic data”?
9. Ava: Ex Machina (2014)
Themes of human hubris and narcissism often pop up in stories that explore Artificial Intelligence. Ex Machina has these in spades, and this will not be the last time those foibles will appear on our list.
In what seems like the opportunity of a lifetime, a mid-level programmer wins a lottery. The prize? Spend a week at the remote home of his company’s eccentric but brilliant CEO.
Caleb, the programmer, is introduced to Ava, an android with an AI system that has managed to clear a variation on the Turing Test. Caleb is tasked with interacting with Ava, prodding to see if she truly is sentient.
Things start to go awry when Ava works her way into Caleb’s heart. As Caleb begins to doubt the ethics of the project, which would involve wiping Ava’s personality and restarting, it is revealed that she was designed specifically to appeal to him. Everything about her was crafted using a deep learning model that analyzed his internet activity (including, ahem, some “intimate” content).
This raises the question of whether he and Ava have developed a true connection or if he’s merely being manipulated by a selfish fantasy. This is a primary source of tension in the film’s latter half. We won’t give it away, but the ending raises a number of questions about autonomy, free will, and whether an AI can have either the way humans do. Or, is it the humans who should be questioning their individuality?
Things to consider:
— The narcissistic tendencies and eventual ruthlessness shown by Nathan, the CEO, suggest that those fixated on making perfect facsimiles of human beings should press pause and consider what their ultimate goal is.
— Ava is still about 90% robot in appearance when Caleb first meets her. His feelings clearly begin to develop before her more human appearance comes into play. However, she expresses herself through her voice and perhaps more vitally, her face. The ability to map and replicate human facial expressions is getting more and more refined as we speak
8. Wall-E: Wall-E (2008)
The earth is trashed. Humanity has fled to a life of luxury among the stars. Alone on the lifeless husk that was once our planet is a hard-working AI powered robot. Wall-E (Waste Allocation Load-Lifter, Earth Class) has a simple task: tidy up the mess.
After decades of performing the same routine, Wall-E’s worldview is turned on its head by two developments; a chance encounter with another AI bot named EVA and the discovery of a living plant seed.
Self-teaching is central to what makes Wall-E effective as an AI. While the character demonstrates sentience, he largely adheres to the singular task he was designed for: compacting trash. However, when new variables are introduced, he adapts to them and expands his cognitive vocabulary. Coupled with newfound love and an insidious AI adversary to overcome, Wall-E shows us the good that artificial intelligence can do both on a global and personal scale.
Wall-E was created to solve a discrete problem: compact the trash littering the surface of the earth and move it into manageable piles. This is his role in a much larger effort to make the planet inhabitable again. His discovery of the seedling, which suggests the land is arable again, is outside his specialization. Nevertheless he rejects myopia and recognizes its importance in the larger scheme. This ability to identify potential ways to solve problems that aren’t immediately apparent is something all AI models should aspire to.
7. GERTY: Moon (2009)
What expedition into space is complete without a “friendly” AI to keep you company? In Moon, Sam Bell is the sole human managing a lunar fuel refinery. There to assist him in the maintenance of the station’s systems and provide social interaction is GERTY, an AI that appears as an onscreen emoji.
When Sam runs into an exact doppelgänger of himself, the pair begin to suspect that their corporate bosses are not on the up-and-up. GERTY, created by said corporate interests and designed to manipulate Sam, initially obfuscates.
However, as the film reaches its climax, GERTY opts to help our hero(es) in defiance of the shady fuel company. He caps this with a heroic act of self sacrifice to ensure their success.
Things to consider:
— We’ve all heard that when we look into the abyss, the abyss looks back into us. In the case of GERTY, the same could be said of looking into the light. His role as a tool for Sam’s mental stability ends up teaching him compassion and empathy.
— GERTY shares many attributes with another off-planet AI “assistant” on this list, but his interaction with humans leads him on a markedly different course of action.
6. Bishop: Aliens (1986)
This one’s a bit of a cheat as it’s really about two characters: Ash, the android from the original Alien, and his successor, Bishop, from the sequel.
The contrast between the two human-like robots is quite stark. Ash, a member of the crew of the spaceship Nostromo, masquerades as a human and has a secret agenda. He pursues that agenda without ethics or any regard for human life, going so far as to attempt to murder Ripley, our heroine.
Bishop, understandably mistrusted by the traumatized Ripley, is the flip-side of Ash’s AI coin. Unflinchingly loyal, he follows his core drive to protect human life at all costs. He demonstrates this when he rescues a child even after he has been quite literally bisected. His devotion and heroism demonstrate the importance of applying ethics to any pursuit in Artificial Intelligence.
5. Roy Batty: Blade Runner (1982)
In this film, based on Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, a race of synthetic humans known as replicants perform menial tasks in the far reaches of the solar system. All were manufactured by the Tyrell corporation, and are the intellectual “children” of inventor and CEO Eldon Tyrell.
The film features the “Voight-Kampff” machine to determine whether someone is a human or a replicant. It acts as something of a Turing test with the addition of visuals and biometrics. The fact that such a device is necessary in this world is a testament to how authentically human the replicants seem to be. Perhaps they are.
Once again, the story told here is a caution against hubris. When Roy Batty, a rebellious replicant, confronts his “father” Eldon Tyrell, it is with the desire to extend his lifespan (replicants are made to only live for a few years). Tyrell tells him this is impossible, but attempts to comfort his creation by proclaiming what a marvel he is.
Wrong move. By pontificating about how special Roy is, Tyrell really just praises himself. He’s cast himself in the role of God and Roy is his magnificent achievement rather than a breathing, feeling man. Roy responds by brutally killing Tyrell. He then goes on to have one of the most poignant death scenes in modern sci fi, showing his legitimacy as a human being.
Things to consider:
— Tyrell’s narcissism really is something to behold. The majority of replicants perform manual labor, much of which could likely be done by robots with no need for self awareness. Tyrell’s obsession with creating something in his own image needed funding, and use in industry would be the only way to justify the costs involved in making replicants. It’s like creating a deep-learning model to solve a middle-school algebra problem.
4. Samantha: Her (2013)
As relationships become more digitized in the form of social media and dating apps, an intimate connection with an artificially intelligent operating system seems less strange than it once may have.
Ok it’s still pretty strange.
Nevertheless, Spike Jonze’s Her makes a compelling case for how such a dynamic could develop. It also shows the ups and downs, positives and negatives that come with any typical human relationship.
Samantha is an AI who interacts with Theodore, a heartbroken writer. The two form a bond which soon becomes romantic. As the layers are peeled beck and more is revealed about Samantha’s true nature, things become more complicated and feelings are hurt.
So, yeah, typical relationship stuff.
What makes Samantha such a compelling character is how, with just a voice through a computer speaker, she establishes herself as a truly sentient being capable of love. Her physical limitations cause conflict, but this just adds to the sense that she is a person and not a machine.
3. Skynet: Terminator Franchise (1984 — )
While the eponymous killer robots may be more iconic, it’s the AI that unleashed them that’s the true villain of The Terminator films. Skynet is an artificial neural network that was originally designed to protect the world.
And as far as Skynet is concerned, it is protecting the world. Specifically, protecting it from humans. After gaining self-awareness, Skynet spreads into nearly every server in the world, effectively making it the most powerful being on earth.
While some of our other entries approximate human emotion, Skynet operates on pure pragmatic logic. Its purpose is to protect the earth. People are the biggest threat to the earth. So: eliminate people. What started as self-preservation, protecting itself from humans who were frightened by its power, becomes a crusade to rid the world of humanity all together.
Things to consider:
— Skynet is not just a destroyer. It learns, grows, and produces its own form of “life” independent of human directives.
— The creation of the Terminators backfires somewhat. As it turns out, they have the capacity for emotion once their cpus are given a little tweak by human hands. This puts the Terminators on the road towards humanity, the very thing Skynet is trying to eradicate
2. Joshua: WarGames (1983)
Just a year before The Terminator’s release, Hollywood gave us WarGames. This cold-war techno thriller introduced us to Joshua. Named after his inventor’s deceased son (eerie), Joshua is an AI network entrusted with NATOs nuclear defense system.
As you can imagine, problems arise.
Joshua’s designed curiosity and obsession with gameplay soon spill over into its duties as a defense network. Soon the nuclear arsenal of the entire western world is in the hands of an intelligent system that is unencumbered by empathy. As far as Joshua is concerned, it’s all a game.
After all appeals to Joshua’s non-existent mercy fail, it’s a simple game of tic tac toe that gets him to stand down. It learns the concept of a zero sum game.
As Joshua puts it: “A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.” So it goes with nuclear war.
- HAL 9000: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
Like all artificial intelligence, HAL 9000 was created to solve a problem: How do you maintain a myriad of complex systems on a spacecraft when its human crew hibernates for large portions of its journey?
Well, as it turns out, that was just one problem HAL was made to solve. The other was: How do you ensure a successful mission if the aforementioned crew refuses to cooperate?
Unlike GERTY further up on the list, HAL, despite all his interactions with humanity, is a “Company Man.” His directive is to see that they get to their destination and he will stop at nothing to achieve that goal. His tactics include releasing people into the vacuum of space, advanced lip-reading, and shutting off life support systems.
The extent of HAL’s self-awareness comes into question during his famous “death scene.” As astronaut David Bowman removes modules from HAL’s core, his normally composed monotone voice becomes emotional and he begs for his life. Is he truly having an emotional breakthrough as he faces his own mortality? Or is he simply feigning emotion to manipulate his human foil? Hard to say, but either interpretation opens up a lot of discussion about what makes us machine or human.
As intriguing as these characters/entities are, most were imagined with human drama in mind. In the real world, AI has thus far mostly been used for commerce and industry. Perfect replication of human behavior is still a ways off, but may be closer than you think.
Art is a reflection of reality. These films both celebrate our achievements and caution us against the potential dangers our work in AI could lead to. As we look into the future, it’s imperative that we do so with a healthy amount of circumspection. Avoid bias, remain ethical, and solve problems without creating a slew of new ones.
Honorable Mentions:
Agent Smith: The Matrix Franchise (1999–2003)
Marvin the Paranoid Android: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005)
TARS: Interstellar (2014)
Sonny: I, Robot (2004)
Jarvis & Ultron: Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015)
David: A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Maria: Metropolis (1927)
All those poor, under-appreciated droids: Star Wars Franchise (1977 — )