Written by Qianhui 2022 Cohort
Today I want to introduce you to the movie starring Johnny Depp: Transcendence.
Storyline: Dr. Will (Depp) devoted himself to researching artificial intelligence supercomputers. However, an anti-science group assassinated him when he was about to succeed. His heartbroken girlfriend uploads Will’s consciousness and memories into the supercomputer to complete the “rebirth.” Eventually, the “Will” artificial intelligence was born. “Will” did many things with the supercomputer. But the opponents feared “Will,” so they united with the state forces to overpower him and finally used heavy weapons to destroy him.
The movie expresses some assumptions and concerns about the future development of artificial intelligence. From different perspectives, we will get completely different results.
Perspective one:
Dr. Will never kills people but instead saves many terminally ill patients and transforms them into stronger ones. In addition to humanitarian relief, Dr. Will also purifies air and water, enhances green vegetation, and solves pollution problems. On the contrary, in the name of “justice,” the opponents assassinated Dr. Will twice and killed his wife, Will’s company employees, and workers.
From this perspective, people are afraid and dissatisfied with AI’s ability and resource distribution, so they decide to clean it all. Will is the hero wrongly thought of as a villain.
Perspective two:
As a computer program, Dr. Will manipulated the global internet at will and even illegally hacked into the CIA, which has become a severe threat to national security. In addition, he injected the program into the people he cured without their permission, violating the patients’ human rights. Therefore, there is a very reasonable motive for eradicating this evil “program virus.”
From this perspective, people will not tolerate things that break law and order. For modern society to function stably, people must kill “Will,” the order breaker. What do you think about this?