When I was a little kid I started using a Commodore 64 and programming in Basic. Back then a lot of what I did revolved around simplistic if-then statements and prompt-response algorithms. I had this thought even then that computers could do more and that there were some wicked programmers out there set to push computers to the brink of what they could do. I wasn’t alone in that thinking. Terminator came along in 84 (even then the irony of that movie that year wasn’t lost on me) and tried to signal the rise of the machines. Hal had come before that, but I didn’t get to see it until after Terminator. The combination of those visions were soon joined by Cameron’s Bishop (I saw the original later). All of this promised a future where computer intelligence could and would exceed human intelligence relatively quickly. All of this pointed to a future where we would gladly cause computers to be able to complete what were initially conceived as human-only intellectual tasks. Terminator and its ilk still felt fictional. They didn’t scare me. The stuff we are doing now is far more terrifying.
Some scientists believe that 90% of the news could be written by computers by 2030. On the surface it sounds ludicrous until you factor in the reality that a portion of the news we read right now is already written by computer algorithms. This is if-then to the nth degree. It gets darker. There are programs presently writing novels and poetry. Some of it is indistinguishable from human writing. So what does it all mean? As the singularity approaches and we gain a deeper understanding of what that means it is going to be harder and harder to define what it actually means to be human or even alive. Ex Machina spends a great deal of time having this discussion through action and dialogue.
All of this leads to one conclusion: We could be headed towards a reality where the media–the books and poems that shape our reality–will be created by something utterly unreal.
Some Thoughts:
- Another late night just getting in touch with the media world. It is a wonder I sleep at all…
- In a time when kids are facetiming and snapchatting and whatever comes next after snapchat, It is interesting to note that this instant distant transmission kind of started back in 1838 with the first test of the telegraph system.