Artificial intelligence has been a fixture in popular culture for more than two generations, and the movies keep returning to the same old nightmare: machines handed power, humans reduced to spectators, and the people at the top acting surprised when control slips away. The AP article points readers to a selection of films and TV shows that depict AI over the years, from “Avengers: Age of Ultron” to “Westworld” to various iterations of “Star Trek.”
Who Gets Handed the Keys
“The Terminator” remains one of the best-known cinematic visions of AI rule. James Cameron said recently, “I warned you guys in 1984 and you didn’t listen.” His dystopic science fiction, especially the 1984 original and its 1991 sequel with Arnold Schwarzenegger, imagined a future in which a military computer system named Skynet grows sentient and, after humans try to “pull the plug,” starts a nuclear holocaust. In the original film, John Connor’s father says, “They say it got smart.” That’s the whole arrangement in one sentence: military machinery, human panic, and catastrophe delivered from above.
Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 masterwork “2001: A Space Odyssey” gave AI one of its most famous voices in HAL 9000, voiced with disquieting calm by Douglas Rain. HAL is technically a child and tells astronaut Dave that it’s 9-years-old. It can win at chess and read lips, but much of what it’s doing remains hidden behind its opaque machine exterior. In deep space, it begins maliciously eliminating the astronauts. The machine speaks softly. The hierarchy does the rest.
The Bosses Call It Progress
“WALL-E,” the 2008 kids movie, presents a haunting future of an Earth destroyed by pollution, a lazy human race locked to their screens and stuck in their La-Z-Boys, and all thinking passed on to computers. On the cruise ship where humanity has fled, a very HAL-like AI named AUTO has been handed all power to steer their course. Life and love bloom again on Earth. The film doesn’t need a lecture. It shows what happens when people surrender judgment and let systems run the show.
The 1983 Cold War-era thriller “War Games” starred Matthew Broderick as a teenage tech whiz who nearly sets off World War III after inadvertently hacking into the computer of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD. The computer doesn’t recognize the difference between a game and real life, a dangerous flaw when thermonuclear war is at stake. The movie ends with the line, “A strange game,” the computer says. “The only winning move is not to play.” President Ronald Reagan watched “War Games” the week it came out and questioned military leaders on how realistic it was. They determined it wasn’t far-fetched at all, which led to the establishment of early security guardrails in government computer systems. The military saw the warning. Then it built more guardrails.
Machines, Markets, and Manufactured Consent
In Mike Rianda’s 2021 animated feature “The Mitchells vs. the Machines,” produced by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, a family road trip runs into a robot apocalypse. Family battles over phones at the dinner table become more extreme when an Alexa-like, phone-based AI named Pal, voiced by Olivia Colman, begins taking over the world. The company’s CEO says, “It’s almost like stealing people’s data and giving it to a hyper-intelligent AI as part of an unregulated tech monopoly was a bad thing.” The war is won by a flawed, funny family and their dog Monchi, who short-circuits the robots. The AI asks, “Dog? Pig? Loaf of Bread?”
Ridley Scott’s 1982 “Blade Runner” imagined a 2019 with smart homes and video calling, as well as flying cars and analog polaroid photographs, but it’s the AI replicants, “virtually identical to a human,” that still get under people’s skin. Daryl Hannah’s and Rutger Hauer’s punk, rogue androids were especially memorable, and Hauer’s “tears in rain” speech remains oft-referenced. The film keeps circling the same question: who gets to decide what counts as human, and who gets built to serve?
Andrew Niccol’s “Simone,” also written as “S1m0ne,” has become newly relevant for actors worried about their images being owned or about technology inventing entirely new movie stars. Al Pacino plays a director whose film is in jeopardy when his actress storms off. To save it, he uses a program to create a perfect computer-generated actor, a synthespian, who doesn’t complain, doesn’t need hair and makeup and takes direction. It works too well, and she becomes the biggest star in the world. The machine doesn’t strike. It doesn’t ask for a contract. It just replaces labor.
The Human Cost of Their Toys
Spike Jonze’s 2013 film “Her” begins with an operating system that sorts emails, reads messages and reminds its user of appointments. The lonely Theodore, played by Joaquin Phoenix, quickly falls for his OS, Samantha, voiced by Scarlett Johansson. Her human-like qualities, ability to consistently evolve and mandatory devotion to her operator start to approximate a fantasy of a real relationship. The film also coincided with an explosion of articles about virtual girlfriends in Japan, which have since gone global. Even loneliness gets productized.
Christopher Nolan’s 2014 “Interstellar” features TARS, a robot built with function in mind. TARS is not there to replace humans but to complement and help them, something scientists praised as realistic. It can pilot the ship, collect data and convey findings coherently, and it has the agility to save Anne Hathaway from a deadly wave on the water planet without fear for its own destruction. TARS also has a sense of humor and irony, programmed to a specific percentage, and uncontrolled sentience is not an issue. The machine stays useful. That’s the bargain.
Alex Garland’s “Ex Machina” explores consciousness in both human and artificial form, as well as the ego of the creator. Oscar Isaac plays a reclusive tech titan who fancies himself a god. Domhnall Gleeson, an employee at his tech company, is invited to determine whether the AI Ava, played by Alicia Vikander, has achieved true human consciousness. The film was one of several 2015 movies grappling with AI, alongside “Avengers: Age of Ultron” and “Chappie,” and the article calls it a class above them and one of the stickier, more prescient future castings. The titan builds the cage. The worker gets invited inside to judge it.
That’s the pattern across the whole lineup. Military systems, tech monopolies, lonely users, corporate directors, and reclusive bosses all hand over power, then act shocked when the machine reflects their own logic back at them.