Oh, yeah, Movie Night happened

[omorka]

We ended up watching Eagle Eye, which was a disposable popcorn action flick, on Thursday. I enjoyed it, in a superficial sort of way, largely because I like Rosario Dawson as an actress and Billy Bob Thornton did a good job with the bully-on-our-side character. (And I have an odd fascination with Shia LaBeouf. I keep thinking someone cloned John Cusack and replaced his clever wordplay and comic timing with better physical reflexes. (Poor trade, IMHO.) Their voices are even pretty close.)

As a plot, it was entirely recycled - three parts WarGames, two parts Portal, and one part 2001. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing original in it, either. I did have two questions, though:



1) The story clearly takes place in, at the farthest, the very near-future - cell phone designs are all contemporary, as are all the vehicles. So why is it that when people find out about ARIA, no one's first reaction is "Holy crap, a Turing-complete AI!" or the equivalent? Everyone takes the fact that the government owns an AI who clearly passes a Turing test for the first third of a film in stride, merely being astonished at her capabilities. Is this a universe where AI has existed for some time? If not, why doesn't the mere fact of her existence blow everyone away?

2) Now, look, I'll ship anything and everything, and I didn't find much shipping potential in the film anywhere, except possibly Agent Perez and Major Bowman. Suddenly a fully-fledged romantic subplot erupts in the last five minutes of the film, completely out of nowhere, between two characters who have shown negative chemistry over the rest of the film. Utterly baffling. Where did that come from? I hope that this is merely some awkwardness between two characters who shared a really intense experience and don't know how to deal with the connection between them that exists because of that shared experience - the language of romantic gesture is all they have for "you spared/saved my life/my son's, and I'm grateful beyond words."

Comments

[sirmartello.livejournal.com]

Response to spoilers:

1) All of the major characters that I remember, might be vaguely aware of the concept of Turing-complete AI, definitely wouldn't know the term, and aren't aware at all of how far we may be from that reality. They're collective response is more along the lines of "Computers (sic) are taking over? I always knew this would happen some day". And yes, they'd say "computers" as opposed to referring to the single system that ARIA is.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

IMHO, both agents - Perez and I-can't-remember-Thornton's-character's-name - are sufficiently educated that they should at least be surprised that an AI that can speak like a human exists at all. They might not have the vocabulary of "Turing-complete" or "natural language processing," but they're both educated enough and worldly enough that "my god, this computer can think" should have occurred to them, not just "this is the most sophisticated computer in the world and it's gone rogue." I would also think that anyone who is working as a copy-jockey would at least have a similar reaction, but that may just be because I've known too many copy-jockeys that just happen to read SF.

[bibulb.livejournal.com]

Jerry should have known - he's described as having, what, a 140-something IQ? Even without being into SF, he'd know that a strong AI is Serious Shit Going Down.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

His twin brother is supposed to have an IQ in the 180-range. Given that current best guess is that IQ is between 60% and 80% genetics, and that they shared the same environment growing up, yeah, if he weren't Mensa-material at least it'd be pretty bizarre.

[ghostdogmeta.livejournal.com]

1. People are dumb. And you forgot to had a heaping slice of Enemy of the State, TRON, The Matrix, Se7en or Transformers to that recipe. It was a very enjoyable kitbash of a movie.

2. I think there was a mildly hinted at but poorly expressed passage of time that would actually allow such a relationship, although it could just be a deep friendship rather than a romantic involvement.

[quantumduck.livejournal.com]

1. The movie world is clearly doing hand waving around the capabilities of AI and information gathering in general, as well as how much lag time there would be taking over every wireless/wired computer system in each scene.

I don't think the film takes place in a world where these are significant new developments. This is a film world where previous computer issues like those seen in "Colossus: The Forbin Project", "Wargames" etc. have become semi-regular issues.

2. I thought the two of them caught the love bug when they were shacked up in that crate and talking by cell phone light.

[quantumduck.livejournal.com]

That presumes they took the IQ test under similar emotional and physical circumstances. Our hero character clearly has issues with formal systems of measurement and achievement. He might have failed intentionally, or as a reaction to perceived inevitable failure.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

Er? I was referring to his actual IQ (statistical mu), not any one particular test score (statistical x).

Then there's the issue of whether IQ is actually a meaningful measure of anything, or if it's a hopelessly confounded collection of several variables. (I suspect there is such a thing as g, but I have little if any hope that IQ is an accurate measuring instrument for it, and I'm also convinced that most if not all of Gardner's multiple intelligences exist as well - an IQ test really only measures three of those, and is really only meant to measure two.)

And you can't "fail" an IQ test any more than you can the SAT. They're both norm-referenced; there's no pass/fail marker. You score what you score. The test can fail to accurately measure you, of course. That's an issue with any assessment.

[princejvstin.livejournal.com]

1) The story clearly takes place in, at the farthest, the very near-future - cell phone designs are all contemporary, as are all the vehicles. So why is it that when people find out about ARIA, no one's first reaction is "Holy crap, a Turing-complete AI!" or the equivalent? Everyone takes the fact that the government owns an AI who clearly passes a Turing test for the first third of a film in stride, merely being astonished at her capabilities. Is this a universe where AI has existed for some time? If not, why doesn't the mere fact of her existence blow everyone away?


When I was watching the movie, this was exactly my reaction (and I blogged about it as such). It's an SF movie. It's the Singularity, a human capable intelligence. And no one within the movie realized it!

(I was also distracted because I figured out who the voice of Aria was ;) )

[bibulb.livejournal.com]

Also : needed more GlaDOS in the AI. LOTS more GlaDOS. ARIA, IMHO, failed to bring the Snark Train anywhere NEAR the station.

[sirmartello.livejournal.com]

That would have been awesome.

[quantumduck.livejournal.com]

Sorry. You were responding to a ref. to the character's supposed IQ score being mentioned in the movie. I assumed we were talking about an 'in world' score on a supposed IQ test, not an assessment of his IQ based on his actions as a character.

I also meant 'fail' in the sense of him 'taking a dive' on the test rather than being assessed on his actual capabilities. He also seems like the type who would consider getting a lower score than his brother a failure.

As a college graduate and the son of a woman who worked with IQ issues throughout her career I'm aware of the basic issues of intelligence and aptitude testing. We've both talked at length on these issues in the past. The mini-lesson feels more that a little patronizing.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Sorry, dude. I can never remember who I've done the full testing rant with. I'm having to fight the norm-referenced versus criterion-referenced battle a couple of times a week at the school. Didn't mean to hit you with spashback; I guess I'm just touchy about it.