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This movie portrays a future world where super-intelligent humanoid robots are our servants. The movie is scheduled for release on 16-July. If you'd like to have some fun, take a look at the trailer for the movie.
The movie takes place in 2035. The trailer shows scenes of robots walking dogs, hugging children, and performing other chores.
The plot thesis is that the robots have been developed with strict adherence to Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, which require robots to protect, and never harm, human beings. The laws appeared in a series of 1940s short stories that are now available in book form
In the movie, it suddenly turns out the guy who designed the robots has been murdered, and the perpetrator is apparently a robot. Is there a bug in the robot implementation? Did the robots evolve on their own? These are the "big questions" that the movie poses.
The trailer doesn't tell how the movie ends, of course, but we can assume that Will Smith will conquer the malevolent robots and get the girl, and the robots will be happily restored to the state of strictly obeying Asimov's laws, and that everyone will live happily ever after.
It's all poppycock, of course. The 2035 time frame for intelligent robots performing chores for humans is OK, though I'd estimate the mid-2020s. But Asimov's laws will never be implemented. Quite the opposite: The first wide-scale application of super-intelligent computers will be for warfare. How do I know this? I know it because every new technology is used first for war.
The fascinating question is: When will the issue of super-intelligent
computers reach the public's radar? By 2030 or so, super-intelligent
computers will be more intelligent than humans, and able to improve
themselves. By 2050, they'll be as much more intelligent than human
beings as humans are more intelligent than dogs and cats. Scientists
have been writing about this (called "the Singularity") since the
1980s, but the public has been blissfully unaware. What event will
finally trigger public interest? Perhaps this movie?
(21-Jun-04)
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