Transcendence Review

[trickykitty]

I watched Transcendence finally. It's boring. That's my first reaction to it. On the flip side, I think they did a great job of providing tension between the pro-AI and anti-AI (or pro-fear, as I like to call it) groups. The audience is kept sandwiched between the two so that you're not exactly sure for which side you should be rooting. They are both simultaneously protagonist and antagonist, which is not an easy feat to pull off. It carries the undertone of the False Dilemma fallacy. The audience is given the characters of Max and Evelyn to be their conduits to the Will-AI and the anti-AI camps. We see the conflict through their eyes. In a way, THEY, Max and Evelyn, are the protagonists, and both the Will-AI and the anti-AI are the antagonists. It's like being in the middle of Mommy and Daddy fighting, and the kids in the middle just want them to kiss and make up.

I think what it ultimately points to is that fast emergence of AI is ridiculously scary, but reality will probably see the slower emergence of AI, like the frog in the pot of gradually increasing warm to hot water. It doesn't state this in the movie, but it's what I took away from it. The anti-AI group isn't targeting Google's search engines, and quite frankly it's focus on taking down PINN (an AI placeholder in the movie that seemed dumb even by WOPR standards) makes little sense to me. But in this the movie moves too quickly and comes off as fanatical confusion without good backing. It's Paul Bettany's character that bridges that gap for the audience, but the writing in the movie only barely pulls that off.

What is with that fucking Matrix-esque computer screen model that Hollywood keeps using to denote "too much info for your puny mind to follow"? At least Chappie had real programming screens that simply showed programming code compile requests and a compile % counter, followed by either an error message or a compile confirmation line. Unfortunately, that's about the limit of correct science in Chappie.

And since when would the FBI/government get involved in a potential world-wide-level threat yet still leave it up to the terrorists to handle it? As much as I love seeing those gorgeous blue eyes of Cillian Murphy on the screen, the point of his character is just completely lost and pointless. Oh wait, that's right, they needed someone not in the AI world to be the one to ask the questions about PINN in the beginning, and they needed a reason to get that person into the basement where the CPUs are and where apparently is the only location where a person can talk to PINN through the intercom and built-in microphones and where there are cameras with very, very poor lighting with which PINN can "see" the people in the room, because that presumably would be the optimum (and only) AI interface location for their highly prized AI. It's the fucking SERVER ROOM!!! *headdesk*

There was one very brief moment that had me giggling near the beginning of Transcendence, while they were in that server room. Paul Bettany's character states that we don't know what consciousness is, and Johnny Depp's character retorts something along the lines of, Speak for yourself. (highly paraphrased, because I can't remember the lines) That's exactly how I feel when I read articles about AI and neuroscience regarding what we do and don't know. I really should write out my ideas sooner rather than later.

In all, I think the movie is a good one to watch, but only because of that interesting tension. It is ultimately an anti-AI movie that somehow manages to make the anti-AI win but by that time you have sided with the pro-AI, and the walkaway feeling is of profound loss.

Also, the end (which is also shown as the opening scene) is more like a precursor to the TV show Revolution, which again screws with the science in a way that seriously hurts my brain.