First class syllabus and reading

In the first class meeting, we took care of attendance issues, habded out a syllabus, and reviewed a bit of writing about artificial intelligence that I downloaded from answers.com several years ago. Although it stops at 200, became out-of-date, and is no longer on the web, it establishes that robots have appeared in film since 1907, and "artificial intelligence" is a term that has been around since 1956.

Artificial Intelligence in Sci-Fi Movies
http://scifimovies.about.com/movies/scifimovies/library/weekly/aa013000d.htm

Part I Artificial Intelligence (AI), as a science, focuses on creating machines that behave in ways humans consider intelligent. The term was first used in 1956 and, after fifty years of research into AI programming techniques, the dream of smart machines is becoming reality. systems exist that mimic human thought, understand speech, and beat the best chess masters. Military applications are, naturally, classified.
Over 30 years after the release of 2001: A Space Odyssey, some of the visions of the future of Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke no longer seem so implausible. The AI compilation, HAL's Legacy, edited by David Stork, professor and computer researcher at Stanford University, is named for the movie's HAL 9000 computer which used its artificial intelligence -- speech recognition, language understanding, common sense, and reasoning, to turn on its astronauts during the ill-fated, secret space mission.
Computer graphics and industrial production are two areas where AI is already used. The newly-released Bicentennial Man explores the benefits and impact of a personal robot whose primary function is to carry out simple, everyday tasks and who develops recognizably-human emotions -- surprise, happiness, anger, and boredom. While this Jetson idea is old, it could become reality in the near future.
Robots will eventually find a place in our homes but initially they'll tackle tasks that are dangerous for humans to perform such as military mine counter-measures, mopping up contaminated nuclear power plants, and perhaps even exploring Mars. Only after they have been proven and perfected in these types of situations will robots become part of domestic life.
Precursors of HAL-9000, such as Robby the Robot and Proteus IV, appeared in sci-fi movies as early as The Mechanical Statue and the Ingenious Servant (1907), The Rubber Man (1909), and Dr. Smith's Automation (1910). Automation was a popular theme for the early one-reel comedies. The plots centered around mechanical men, designed to serve their human creator, who suddenly go berserk, destroying property and posing threats to humans before they can be neutralized. Out-of-control robots like HAL-9000 and the Terminator, hell-bent on destroying humans and humanity, have been more popular characters than C3P0, R2D2, and Robby the Robot.
In the 1950s, the "Golden Age" of sci-fi movies was colored by America's fear of atomic war and its radioactive fallout, paranoia about Communist invasion, postwar advances in medicine and industry, and the beginning of the space race. Advancing technology lead to increased global power, wealth, health, security, and leisure time. There was a menace lurking behind the excess and it surfaced in movies like:
Gog (1954), originally shot in 3-D, is a supercomputer located in a top-secret underground installation, which takes control of two robots after it is reprogrammed by a Russian spy to kill the installation's personnel.
Tobor the Great (1954) is a comedy about a very bright little boy, his grandfathers, their robot (Tobor is robot spelled backwards), and Communist spies intent on getting their hands on Tobor so they can do evil things with it.
In Forbidden Planet (1965), the ill-fated Krell, whose advanced civilization was utterly destroyed by "monsters from the id," run amok when the contents of Krell's collective subconscious mind is inadvertently fed into Krell's massive, planet-sized computer, The ambitious supercomputer then attempts to take over the earth, enslave the human race, and extinguish all organic life in the universe.
The Invisible Boy (1957) is little Timmy Mereneau who teams up with Robby the Robot in his first movie appearance. Robby is the good computer out to thwart the giant computer's plans and save humanity. This film features the classic line, "Did you have a nice day at the computer, dear?"



Artificial Intelligence in Sci-Fi Movies
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Part II As the cold war escalated in the 1960s . . . it appeared that the global nuclear threat was a technological problem and that technology itself could not be its own solution. this idea lies at the heart of Colossus: The Forbin Project (1969), a dark movie in which a supercomputer, designed to control the entire nuclear arsenal of the United States, decides it could do a better job than humans at running the planet. It links up with its Soviet counterpart and begins taking over the world, detonating nuclear warheads whenever humans disobey its orders. Computer technology seemed a much more dangerous threat than nuclear apocalypse.
In 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), the HAL-9000 computer is more human than the emotionless, robot-like human crew of the Discovery. HAL's paranoid demise is quite poignant, "I'm afraid. I'm afraid. Stop, Dave. Will you stop? I'm afraid . . ." After this scene, we don't feel the same about the deaths of the human astronauts.
In Alphaville (1965), Godard's stylish sci-fi/film noir, he envisions a bleak, futuristic city controlled by a supercomputer. Lenny Caution is a tough private-eye from the Outlands who arrives in Alphaville -- a land where the trains run on time but love and poetry are forbidden. To cure these injustices he must sabotage Alpha60.
Cyborg (1966) is about a future Earth civilization which sends a cyborg -- part human, par machine, back in time to change the future.
Billion Dollar Brain (1967) features Michael Caine's infamous Harry Palmer, who no longer spies for Britain but is instead a starving private detective. After he receives a package of money, a mechanical voice gives him telephone instructions. He enters the world of a Texas billionaire who's plotting a popular uprising in the Soviet Union with the help of a sophisticated computer.
And, finally, rounding out this decade is Disney's, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969), a comedy about a dim-witted college student who becomes a genius after being shocked by a computer.
In the 1970s, technophobia moves out of top-secret, cold-war government installations and interstellar spaceships and into everyday lives. Mass paranoia towards the increasing computerization of our culture reaches new highs in films such as Westworld (1973), where guests at the Delos Amusement Park can choose between three computer-controlled simulated worlds -- Westworld, Roman World, and Medieval World, all populated by life-like androids. Fun until something starts going wrong with the software and the androids begin killing customers. Futureworld (1976), a follow-up to Westworld, has a theme park's scientists scheming to replace world leaders with android doubles and achieve global control.
In The Stepford Wives (1975), the women of an all-too-perfect Connecticut town just aren't so darn happy. Why? Because they're androids. In the search for ideal mates, the male town leaders have replaced their human wives with robot versions.
In Terminal Man (1974), a scientist has a computer chip installed in his brain to control his violent mental disorders. The chip malfunctions and he starts murdering people. In Demon Seed (1977), Alex Harris is the creator of a supercomputer, Proteus IV, which takes over his high-tech, computer-controlled house and rapes Harris' wife.
Solaris (1972) is the Soviet Union's version of 2001. The planet Solaris' ocean is a huge brain and the cosmonauts orbiting the planet in a run-down space lab find their conscious and not-so-conscious obsessions and fantasies materializing. Dark Star (1947), Is John Carpenter's sci-fi parody about a dim-witted and stir-crazy spaceship crew on a ten-tear mission to blow up unstable planets. One of the ship's intelligent, interstellar, nuclear devices receives faulty detonation orders and it's up to the crew to convince it not to carry out the orders.
Star Wars (1977) revisited the technology celebrations of the 1950s. C-3P0 and R2D2 have more in common with Robby the Robot than Alpha60. In Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), the inexplicably-sentient Voyager spacecraft is returning to Earth to find and rejoin its "creator" -- and threatens to blow up the planet if anyone tries to stop it.


Artificial Intelligence in Sci-Fi Movies
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Part III The simple paranoia of 1970s movies skews into schizophrenia in the 1980s. Bleak, pessimistic visions of our technological future, in movies like Blade Runner (1982) and The Terminator (1984) in which machine turns on man, are released alongside a deluge of romantic comedies involving robots and computers such as Heartbeeps (1981), Electric Dreams (1984), Short Circuit (1986), and Making Mr. Right (1987). The growth of computer technology in our everyday lives made computers more familiar and, consequently, less threatening Computers were no longer enormous, monolithic machines in underground government labs harboring secret ambitions to enslave the human race. They were becoming compact and "user-friendly," with cute voices and the desire to live in peace with their makers.
On Saturn 3 (1980), an isolated base in a dusty corner of the solar system, a sexy space researcher, Farrah Fawcett, is harassed by Hector -- Harvey Keitel's 8-foot robot. In Heartbeeps (1981), two domestic robots (voices by Andy Kaufman and Bernadette Peters) fall in love in a 1995 society peopled with robots. Android (1982) has Klaus Kinski play a deep-space researcher assisted by an almost-human android, Max 404, which falls for a sexy space-fugitive and gets quite upset when it learns that it's about to be put out of commission. Blade Runner (1982) is set in a bleak 21st century Los Angeles. Deckard is a retired cop who specializes in hunting down fugitive replicants -- androids with fixed lifespans manufactured to labor in space colonies (based on Philip K. Dick's Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Knight Rider (1982) shows off a high-performance sports car fitted with artificial intelligence, while Tron (1982) is one of the first movies to extensively use computer-generated graphics and effects. A computer programmer (Jeff Bridges) is transported into a computer, where the Master Control Program is threatening to take over.
Young computer-hacker, Matthew Broderick accidentally breaks into a military computer in War Games (1983) and sets off a simulated global thermonuclear war. Is it just a game or is it real? Will the computer understand the difference before it's too late? In 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984) a joint U.S.-Soviet mission leaves an Earth, which is on the brink of World War III, to discover what happened to the ill-fated Discovery mission to Jupiter. Dr. Chandra, HAL-9000's creator, "wakes up" the computer to save the day. In Electric Dreams (1984) Miles has just bought his first home computer. After he spills some water on it, it starts taking over his life -- including flirting with the attractive upstairs neighbor who Miles also has his eyes on. In the bleak future of The Terminator (1984) Skynet, an intelligent computer network, is committed to the extermination of Man. Skynet sends an ultra-sophisticated and virtually indestructible cyborg (Arnold Schwarzenegger) to Earth's past with orders to kill the mother of Mankind's resistance leader, John Connor. D.A.R.Y.L. (1985), which stands for Data Analyzing Robot Youth Lifeform, is an experiment in artificial intelligence which, after being kidnapped by a project scientist, becomes the foster-child of two loving parents who don't realize Daryl is a robot. The Max Headroom Show (1985) offers a charming and egotistical artificial intelligence program with a speech impediment while in Otherworld (1985) Thel is ruled by the Church of Artificial Intelligence and kept in line by ruthless Zone.
In Short Circuit (1986) and Short Circuit 2 (1988), a sophisticated military robot (Johnny 5) is hit by lightning causing it to become cute, "alive," and reluctant to return to its military duties. Making Mr. Right (1987) tells of PR Executive Frankie Stow who is hired by ChemTec Corporation to improve the public image of their new super-android, Ulysses. Frankie's job is to teach Ulysses the subtleties of human social interaction but Ulysses ends up falling in love with her -- and vice versa. Robocop (1987) portrays a crime-ridden Detroit wasteland. City leaders unveil a new crime-fighting robot which goes on a murderous rampage in the corporate boardroom. To save the Robocop project, they create a half-human, half-machine cyborg police officer which does its job a little too well for the for the corrupt corporation that financed it. Cherry 2000 (1988) is Sam Treadwell's sexy, beloved android/wife who short-circuits during a steamy love-making session on a wet kitchen floor, Unfortunately, Cherry 2000 is an old model and replacement parts can only be found in the lawless, post-apocalyptic "Zone 7." Cyborg (1989) lives in a post-apocalyptic urban nightmare in which half-human, half-robot Nady Simmons carries the cure for the deadly plague in her computer-chip brain, Tetsuo: The Tin Man (1988) is about a man who transforms into a machine as the result of an automobile accident.


Artificial Intelligence in Sci-Fi Movies
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Part IV Growth in the World Wide Web, an increasingly information intensive society, and computer penetration into the home are influencing today's movies/ We're now examining the ramifications of combining human and machine intelligence in global computer networks, virtual reality, and cyberspace. In Lawnmower Man, The Net, Ghost in the Machine, Virtuosity, and The Matrix information networks and computer-generated worlds are dangerous, lawless territories populated by corporate ad political spies and serial killers -- where a person's identity can be erased with the push of a button.
In post-apocalyptic Circuitry Man (1990) "Plughead" uses his humanoid body to "plug in to other people's fantasies." Hunter Ilia has an AI partner, by the name of Bob, in Zeiramu (1991) while the Lawnmower Man (1992), a virtual-reality remake of Charly, sees a research scientist use Jobe, a mentally-challenged gardener, as a guinea pig in experiments to artificially enhance intelligence. It works -- Jobe becomes hyper-intelligent but spirals out of control. In Ghost in the Machine (1993) the soul of a serial killer is transformed into electrons during a brain-scan and invades appliances and personal computers. A young scientist works on AI projects in Puppet Master 4 with disastrous results.
Johnny Mnemonic (1995) is a "data courier." Can he make it from Beijing to Newark before his brain overloads? The Net (1995) explores how Angela Bennet (Sandra Bullock), a software engineer who conducts her life via modem, gets hold of a disk with dangerous top-secret information and becomes embroiled in high-tech espionage -- her identity is erased and replaced with another. A high-tech police force creates a virtual-reality super criminal called Sid 6.7 in Virtuosity (1995). Sid 6.7 escapes and goes on a murderous rampage. The highly-rated, Japanese anime Ghost in a Shell (1996) is about political intrigue in 2029 after super criminals break into global computer networks and cyborg police track them down. The Matrix (1999) presents a facade created by an evil cyber-intelligence which placates us while out life essence is "farmed" to fuel the Matrix's campaign of domination in the "real" world. It is 2199 and the world has been laid waste and taken over by AI machines. The computers have created a false version of 20th-century life -- the "Matrix", to keep the human slaves satisfied while the machines suck the life power from the humans.
Before he died, Stanley Kubrick was preparing to make AI, the tale of a futuristic Pinocchio or robot boy adopted by a childless woman (based on the novel by Brian Aldiss, Supertoys Last All Summer Long. Steven Spielberg's now at the helm of this project ensuring that this theme will be carried into this new millennium.