Undercurrents of the Terminator movies ripple through this meditative study of the burgeoning field of robotics and artificial intelligence, which also looks at leading proponents and one surprising detractor: Germany's Joseph Weizenbaum, a former MIT professor and engineer whose 1966 ELIZA language-recognition computer program was considered a breakthrough in artificial intelligence (media hype and misunderstanding, he grumbles). Weizenbaum, shown in his final years (he died in 2008), is one of several scientists, engineers, and other experts interviewed here. Although not religious in the traditional sense, Weizenbaum found something distasteful in the notion among cyberneticists that the human mind could be replicated in tiny circuits and nanotechnology. “Man is not computable,” he tells an audience; but he seems like a frail King Canute ordering back the sea compared with inventor Ray Kurzweil, who looks forward to the advent of cyborgs, or Japan's Hiroshi Ishiguro, who has crafted an uncanny robot duplicate of himself (Ishiguro explains that Japanese culture imputes souls to all objects and tools, thus the concept of synthetic life causes no great angst in his country). One source of Weizenbaum's discomfort is the military—mainly in America and Germany—with its heavy investment in robotics technology and a mission that envisions widespread combat automatons and drones deployable by 2030. Directed by Jens Schanze and Judith Malek-Mahdavi, this pensive narrative—more about ideas and philosophies than nuts-and-bolts technological history—is recommended. Aud: C, P. (C. Cassady)
Plug and Pray
(2010) 91 min. DVD: $295. The Cinema Guild. PPR. ISBN: 0-7815-1379-0. Volume 26, Issue 6
Plug and Pray
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