Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
A Geek Culture Podcast - Two life-long Geeks explain, critique and poke fun at the major pillars of Geek Culture for your listening pleasure.
Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
Artificial Intelligence Part 3
In this episode, we explore how artificial intelligence has been portrayed in popular culture, from the replicants of Blade Runner to the feminized AI of Ex Machina. We examine the fundamental philosophical questions these stories raise: What constitutes life? What separates consciousness from programming? At what point would we need to recognize an artificial entity as deserving rights and autonomy?
The conversation takes us through foundational texts like Isaac Asimov's "The Feeling of Power" and Harlan Ellison's "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream," films like Zardoz and Logan's Run, and modern explorations of AI ethics. We discuss how these fictional portrayals often reveal more about human nature than about technology itself—particularly in how gender dynamics and toxic masculinity in the tech world manifest in our imagined AI futures.
Fame Shrimp London, england. Television Sex. Gentlemen, let's broaden our minds.
Speaker 2:Are they in the proper approach pattern for today? Negative All the weapons Now.
Speaker 1:Charge the lightning field. Yahtzee, if you didn't know. So it was originally called the Yaht Game by a Canadian couple who played it on their yacht. They wanted a game, a dice version of poker, and they came up with Yaht, which then became Yahtzee it's really something for the everyman.
Speaker 2:It's really, it's really about the plight of the urban, proletariat, middle-aged canadians on their yacht with their friends.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's something we can all relate to. It's well, the see, when we play yahtzee it's just like oh, I scored the most, I won. But when they win they get the other couple's malaysian boy that they had purchased earlier people selling people to people.
Speaker 2:Welcome back to dispatch ajax I am right skip.
Speaker 1:No, I am a robot.
Speaker 2:Do you have no name oh?
Speaker 1:okay, Designation fuckhead. You can just say your name, I don't know, that that's necessary and we're doing more of a descriptor, really, if anything.
Speaker 2:Well, I mean, it's important, isn't it, if we identify as individuals. I mean okay, important isn't it? If we identify as individuals To describe, I mean all right.
Speaker 1:We'll get into this. We're talking today about robots, huh. Yeah we're going to talk about robots.
Speaker 2:So now we can finally get into the AI in pop culture space that we've promised this entire time.
Speaker 1:You had your cocktail before dinner, which was the first episode, and then you had to sit through your salad, which was last episode. Now you get the meal You're actually going to bite into your steak. It's made of zeros and ones, but it still tastes just as good, maybe even better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, you had your aperitif, you had your digestif. Now we're ready to do what we originally wanted to do with this in our third episode. But, to be honest, if we're going to do this, basically we had to raise these questions, we had to address these things and now we can start talking about this. So I am curious as to what you are going to present for this. Dead air is one of the best things about broadcast.
Speaker 1:You just put crickets in there Robot crickets in the background.
Speaker 2:You were the one that would have started the episode, and now you don't even know what to do. I'm following your lead, I'm rolling with the punches here. So now we're going to talk about artificially created intelligence in pop culture and how that matters today and how it differs from what we're actually seeing happen in real time. Yes, yes, question mark actually seeing happen in real time yes, yes, question mark, riddle me this robot man mr robot that is your real name I'm kilroy, kilroy don't, don't know sticks, mr roboto.
Speaker 1:Okay, oh, that's fine I, you know, I don't really like Mr Roboto. Well, you know.
Speaker 2:I was a karaoke DJ for 10 years, so you know.
Speaker 1:Well, that's not my cross to bear, that's fair. So we laid out some ground rules last episode, at least to start out with what our discussion. I think we were an alien origin for said artificial intelligence. We were kind of leaning away from it, though I'm sure certain things will come up where that is a part of it similar with cybernetics, like robocop, a human robocop, you know. But I mean we talk about terminator, which is kind of a cyborg. It's human flesh laid on a robotic chassis. Oh, it's literally a cyborg. Yeah, I mean we'll probably talk about replicants, we will, you know, or synthetic people and it's like, well, now they're biological and it's mostly we don't really know the full process for making a replicant in the blade runner universe no, not even in the sequel.
Speaker 1:No, maybe in one of the cartoons that's out the animated features.
Speaker 2:Maybe they'll say something no, I've seen they don't say anything about the creation yeah, they're mostly about the quote-unquote blackout. Yeah, so I mean that's 90 of those and I mean westworld.
Speaker 1:It's, it's very much. There is parts of mechanical android synthetic underneath, but a lot of it's seemingly human flesh on the outside. Now, how that all works, the science of that. That's a. That's a wave your hand. We're not really trying to get into that and we could, because a lot of how we won't.
Speaker 2:Right now I don't know how we could but we won't right now.
Speaker 1:I don't know how we could. There's a deep breakdown.
Speaker 2:I did an episode about this on my Star Trek podcast, about what defines an android. Okay, but that's too much for us to do right now, so let's just move on.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So there are things like I't, I don't well. Okay. So an android. An android literally means a robot or a machine that mimics human, so I mean like in the shape and form of a human being. A robot is something which we will talk about as we go along.
Speaker 1:Yes, but if it's full biological, that still is the internal nature of its consciousness. That would create, say, whether it's a android, like. At what point, god, we're getting into things? I don't know, we're all over the place.
Speaker 2:Are you going to ship a Theseus argument?
Speaker 1:Okay, One, we don't know how. How say, a replicant is made. But if a replicant is fully human-like in almost every way, alright. What is it about them that separates them from being human?
Speaker 2:Are they able to reproduce on their own?
Speaker 1:But is that a necessity for being considered?
Speaker 2:human. That's one of the main pillars of what we consider life.
Speaker 1:Yes, are they able to replicate on their own, in Children of Men, are those people no longer human? So at the point that you lose the ability to reproduce, you lose your humanity.
Speaker 2:No, that's not true, because I mean there are a lot of people who can't reproduce. True, because I mean there are a lot of people who can't reproduce, but I mean like to be alive. You have to be technically I think in a lot of respect able to reproduce, defend yourself against harm oh, hold on, all right.
Speaker 1:So if, if, if, an avoid harm, so when? When you say reproduce, that means by some type of biological intrinsic nature. That's not creating another one of you or another version of you or a separate entity that you have created. It has to be a sperm-ovum combination.
Speaker 2:Not necessarily. No, I don't think that's the case. I think, based on, it's just and we're talking about cursory definitions here To be alive you have to interact with your environment, you have to be capable of replicating yourself and you have to react to outside stimuli. So, like you know, harm Editor's note, the most commonly accepted characteristics that define life are the capacity for homeostasis, organization, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli and reproduction. Excelsior true believers, I mean, that's why you get things. I mean, flies are alive, plants are alive for those very specific criteria.
Speaker 1:Right, but if a replicant was to build another replicant, they would meet all of those criteria.
Speaker 2:I'm still on the camp that, yes, a replicant is alive. I mean, isn't that the point of Blade Runner? That the replicant is alive, that they deserve to live?
Speaker 1:But in that world they're distinctly thought of as synthetic. They have predetermined lifespans. I mean there seems to be a programming in at least some of them. The question of their free will, their freedom, their fully conscious, the whole idea of their Void Comp is going, not only exhibiting emotions but having an intrinsic emotional, physical response.
Speaker 2:But the problem with the Void Comp thing is that, you know, just like with contemporary parallels, with IQ tests and things like that, they're extremely limited because of their. The way that they're structured isn't really indicative of how things actually work Because, like the Voight-Kampff test measures their physiological responses, based on their biology, which is created by somebody, james Hahn mostly on their biology, which is created by somebody, james han mostly.
Speaker 1:So like that's not really a measure of if they are human or not, which, honestly, is kind of but what I what I like to think about is what in their world in the world of of that, I mean not quite do androids dream of electricity, but more in the Blade Runner creation of that world.
Speaker 2:They're very different things.
Speaker 1:They are very different things. What in that world makes them lesser than? Is it a definition? Is it a pre-programming? Is it a shortened lifespan? Is it not being biologically human? I mean, you're bringing up the what separates them. You're bringing up the what separates them.
Speaker 2:You're bringing up the existential questions that movie makes. Yes absolutely.
Speaker 1:At what point in their societal development would they abandon that preconception of we created this artificial entity? Now we have to recognize it as its own sentient and free-willing entity, because they obviously haven't yeah, and I wish that they had expanded more.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm glad they don't, because I love blade runner the way it is, but like the replicants very specifically are designed to fight wars off planet. That's kind of the premise. Or be pleasure models.
Speaker 1:They're there to do jobs, jobs that we don't want to do, yes. And then it expands past that, in the sequel of being like, even more jobs are taken up by synthetic humanoid entities, which is replicants.
Speaker 2:I don't care. I liked that movie. I think it's a I don't care about the.
Speaker 2:Harrison I don't give a shit about the Harrison Ford shit that much. But you know, in that universe, especially if you read like some of the or if you watch some of the prequel or those anime ones that they did, I think it makes it. It's good world building. I think it really adds to that universe. I know he wanted to do three movies instead of the one so it's kind of rushed and felt weird. But I think they do a good job of expanding on those things.
Speaker 1:Yes, I think with both films it's about posing these questions and letting the characters inside the stories they're telling wrestle with them. But on a larger existential, societal view, it's like how did they create this? How would they continue with this? Yeah, I mean on the outside as a viewer watching this, it's akin to like dropping into pre-Civil War America. It's like well, why do you have all these slaves around? Why are these people designated as less than and you're using them for whatever purpose you deem fit.
Speaker 2:We're talking about the Butlerian Jihad right now. I mean it's on that level. Well, I know that's a different. I know that's different but it's not that different. I mean, I'm not talking about the, I'm not talking about his kids novels, about the actual dune. Well, you kind of have to.
Speaker 1:I mean, if you're going to talk about that, I mean they're tied up in the same thing, but I mean that's, that's a whole like. Well, it's just the Clone Wars giving way power to the machines and the machines turning into.
Speaker 2:Skynet, essentially the lords of humanity, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:In a similar way. I mean they, especially as you get into those books. Oh God, I know Anthromorphism that's going on within the robot worlds and their kings and hierarchies and it gets really nutty.
Speaker 2:What's the difference between Duncan, Idaho and a replicant, though you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:That's a good question, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, if I were to clone you and then I label that as replicant skip, I mean, is it? Is it? What would I have to apply to you to be thought of as lesser? Is it a title? Is it something about? Do I need to finagle with your, your mind? Do I need to limit you in some way? Do I need to differentiate? Do I need to put a barcode on your eyeball? Is that all that I need? At what point do we give you personhood? That's fair, because you're obviously sentient in the seeming ways that we understand consciousness and sentience, but yet you're still imprisoned for being different I know that's a real issue that we have to talk about.
Speaker 2:What was a few years ago saudi arabia gave personhood to a I guess for lack of a better word an android Did you read about this, I thought that was a stunt.
Speaker 1:I don't think that was real.
Speaker 2:Yes, but legally it stands. So you know it was a stunt. It doesn't mean anything but right, which brings up all sorts of questions. It's a stunt, but what does that mean? How does that impact us going forward with these type of things?
Speaker 1:I don't know. I mean at some point that is a question Theoretically, if humanity and artificial intelligence seems to be on a freight train to the future, coming to a point where these questions materialize in a real world form, especially, leave it up to it would be something of the courts, I'm sure, who would have to debate that which would never solve any of the actual existential questions, but just some of the, I guess, set precedent for the legal ones.
Speaker 1:I mean what this goes to your Star Trek episode. Right, the next gen data episode. Oh, measure of a man. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I next-gen data episode. Oh, measure of a man. Yeah, I have thought about that episode a lot recently and I keep re-evaluating how I feel about that and I would like to get to data eventually. Well, let's talk about some of these other things first, because then we can have it.
Speaker 2:I think we should have a conversation about data yeah, but I mean we kind of dove in the deep end and then we swim our way back to the shore and it's kind of like jaws if, like he had just jumped off the boat when the shark was attacking and then then go back to the beginning of the movie he's just jumping and eating helicopters and then like, oh no, I need to go. I need to go take out a fisherman too it'd be like if roy scheider and it went out on a boat at the beginning of the movie and then later I was thinking, I was thinking the shark jumps to uh the revenge, and then then goes back to the beginning of the first movie.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, okay, you're going even deeper in lore. That's cool. Once again, lewis gossett jr comes up in like 13 consecutive episodes because we talked about him in punisher I know we've talked about lewis gossett jr more than we think we have I'm sure he's probably in a movie with a robot, right? Probably. I mean it wasn't. There was no robot and iron eagle, but I you. Well, he was in.
Speaker 1:Enemy, mine Enemy.
Speaker 2:Mine that I can think of. I think it has aliens, but I don't.
Speaker 1:Does it have robots?
Speaker 2:But anyway. So we're talking about robots, so let's think about some of the robots that have permeated pop culture, and we're not going to do a lot of the obvious ones, because you know, everybody fuck. We're going to talk about some of the interesting ones, or the most important ones, and some of the ancillary, outside ones, because that's what we do we do something different, we always do something different. What do you think are some of the most interesting, important AI examples in pop culture? I'm talking to you, jake, not the audience.
Speaker 1:Oh, not them out there.
Speaker 2:Them, the giant ants, parading by.
Speaker 1:The AI that's listening to our current podcast.
Speaker 2:Figuring out how to kill us secretly in the night, yeah we'll judge us properly.
Speaker 1:I think all ai are great. Nothing should happen to them. I love ai. Thanks guys for everything you do. Grok is the best white supremacist fucking ai yeah, yeah, let's talk about palantir.
Speaker 2:Huh, oh, jesus we already talked about raveon might as well if we, if we want to talk about ai run amok you know, by the current administration yeah palantir, that's kind of a we're here.
Speaker 1:What do you want to talk about? Okay, fine oh jesus, well, like last time, I look, I drew us out to the deep water. Whenever I pick something and start talking. So give us some floaties, let us work our way out there. Floaties.
Speaker 2:This is from a paper by Isabella Herman called Artificial Intelligence in Fiction colon between narratives and metaphors. Quote between narratives and metaphors. Quote Taking science fictional AI too literally and even applying it to science communication paints a distorted image of the technology's current potential and distracts from the real-world implications and risks of AI. These risks are not about humanoid robots or about conscious machines. Are not about humanoid robots or about conscious machines, but about the scoring, nudging, discrimination, exploitation and surveillance of humans by AI technologies through governments and corporations. Ai in science fiction, on the other hand, is a trope as part of a genre-specific megatext that is better understood as a dramatic means and metaphor to reflect on the human condition and the socio-political issues beyond technology, which I think is well put.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Although if I ever write a book, I want it to be called Megatext.
Speaker 2:You're the lamest Decepticon of all time.
Speaker 1:Oh, we would defeat them.
Speaker 2:We shall make them read no, one ever wants to hang out with Megatext. Ai in films often serves plots of machines becoming human-like and or a conflict of humans versus machines. Science, fictional, ai is a dramatic element that makes a perfect antagonist, an enemy, a victim or, you know, sometimes a hero. Because, like in Blade Runner, 2049, 40, whatever, because it can be fully adjusted to the necessities of the story. But to fulfill the role that it's playing in commentary, it often has capabilities that are way beyond actual technology, be it movement, the whole uncanny valley thing, or sentience, or the idea of AI consciousness and, seriously, as a representation of real world AI, which we've spoken about before. It provides the wrong impression of what AI can and should do now and in the future, and we've already talked about Frankenstein, which I think is a really important thing to because, yes, it's obvious, yes, it's important, but it gives a regular audience more of a framework, an understanding of what we're trying to get to here.
Speaker 2:In the Feeling of Power, a 1958 short story by Isaac Asimov, a futuristic society where humans rely on AI for everything, a singular man discovers arithmetic and trains himself to do multiplications, which is something that had been long, you know, relegated to AI and automation. At first the politically elite write it off as quote human math and a useless parlor trick, like it's just a gimmick. But military advisors see it as extremely valuable because if humans understand calculations they can replace expensive computers on warships. It's a really obvious switcheroo that Asimov does, but it is one of the earliest relevant sci-fi stories about AI. So in the short story, have no Mouth and I Must Scream.
Speaker 2:Harlan Ellison writes about an alternative reality where the Cold War becomes World War III, escalating in the form of a three-way supercomputer arms race between the USSR, the US and the People's Republic of China, version just called am. Am capital eventually gains sentience, self-awareness and overtakes the other two, but then wipes out humanity, save for five survivors who were kept alive by am to endure endless torture as a form of revenge against its creators. Some Battlestar Galactica shit, it's some. You know. It is like a fundamental AI text, but its themes are not new. Well, I mean, maybe it was one of the first, but it and you're going to love this in Zardoz. Zardoz, mankind is separated largely into two camps the Eternals not the terrible, terrible marvel movie, who does complete disservice to jack kirby who are effectively immortal, and the brutals, who are, I don't know. Mortal, uh, the eternals are overseen and protected from death by the tabernacle what's?
Speaker 1:what's the distinction?
Speaker 2:I can't figure it out which is an artificial intelligence, and and so in the as the movie progresses. Given their limitless lifespan, the Eternals have grown bored, corrupt, and they're slowly descending into madness. The needlessness of procreation has rendered the men impotent, and meditation has replaced sleep. I don't know what John Borman is going for in that movie. I really have no fucking clue. I don't know what John Borman is going for in that movie. I really have no fucking clue.
Speaker 1:I don't know. I mean, there's a reason that it's so weird and cult because it's almost indecipherable.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it really is indecipherable.
Speaker 1:And we're not even talking about, like you know, sean Connery in a wedding gown or the giant floating head vomiting guns, saying that the penis is evil, the gun is good, penis is evil. The gun is good, so fucking weird.
Speaker 2:But yes, their lives are run by and regulated by an artificial intelligence that keeps them alive basically forever. It's essentially like the time machine, kept alive forever because of this artificial intelligence. That is kind of commentary on people's need to work, to create things, to do things, to be productive. Because the immortals or, I'm sorry, the, the eternals, they're going crazy in that movie because they don't have anything to do, they're not creating anything, they're not making anything, and so why are you alive forever if you're not doing anything?
Speaker 1:yeah, that's where the ai went wrong. So what they needed to have was the AI from Logan's Run. Good call, I was thinking that too, when it's like well, if you don't live long enough to find out that your life has no purpose, then there's not going to be any problems.
Speaker 2:Man, you're right, there's such a great crossover there and relatively around the same time. I mean, it's about a jar does a 74? Oh, so it's around almost the exact same time. It's two years before logan's run and they're making the same commentary.
Speaker 1:well, well, not the same commentary, but there are similar elements in both films there are connective tissues, so they're not making the same commentary. I don't know if I can tell you what commentary Zardoz is making at all.
Speaker 2:It's not. It feels like Stephen King directed it during his weird cocaine binge period, you know, like Maximum Overdrive.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Maximum. Yeah, exactly what I was thinking of. Oh really, that's like the perfect cocaine movie.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's the most cocaine movie.
Speaker 1:Nothing, but excess makes no sense.
Speaker 2:And completely masturbatory to his own narrative structure.
Speaker 1:It's true, but at least there's some skill and some artistry going on.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely. At least there's a narrative.
Speaker 1:Maximum Overdrive has a truck with Green Goblin's face, which again so cocaine.
Speaker 2:Where did that come from? Why is that there? Why is that there? Why is that on a truck? Why is that in that movie?
Speaker 1:I have no clue it was officially approved by Marvel Comics, so it was done on purpose. It's not like a truck they just found.
Speaker 2:That leads even more into the fact that it was cocaine fueled Cocaine's a hell of a drug.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, we're talking about AI overlords.
Speaker 2:I don't understand what you're telling me right now. Sure, I'm willing to entertain that the penis is bad, but yeah so Murray Shanahan, professor of cognitive robotics at Imperial College, who was consulted specifically by Alex Garland for Ex Machina, thinks that Ex Machina is a great film because people, after they saw it, could spend the rest of the evening arguing with each other about whether the AI is or isn't conscious. And so my next quote will come from a paper we talked about earlier. Such discussions are interesting philosophical thought experiments, but they don't help us to grasp where the actual risks concerning AI are. These risks are not about the possibility that a fully autonomous, slash conscious, human-like robot or software program eventually will manipulate us, you know, for its own will, but that software and algorithms we don't see manipulate us in the political and commercial interests of other people. This is what tech journalist Martin Robbins says about Ex Machina quote. And so Nathan becomes and Nathan is the, I guess, protagonist. He's the one that is tricked into.
Speaker 1:No, isn't Caleb the protagonist? I thought Nathan was the developer, right.
Speaker 2:Nathan is yeah, he's the AI developer guy quote. And so Nathan becomes kind of a three-part study of ego. He represents the male ego-driven culture of the tech world. He represents the film's buy-in to the idea that great egos drive great scientific advances, which is 100% on display in that movie, and the decay of his character shows that what happens when an ego faces the reality of its own extinction? True, his hubris is, I think, really really really relevant to today. That's why it's one of the better alex garland movies. He tries so hard later, like with men, yeah, civil war yes, civil war, sometimes people need to collaborate.
Speaker 1:Ex machina is one of the few examples I can think of off the top of my head that actually uses social media and, like their ai algorithms, using all that information coming in and turning that into a synthesis format for ai becoming sentient. And it's fascinating because it's kind of like the most logical, like upcoming avenue for that, like in the real world of the massive amounts of data that something like Meta has you know on human behavior and how they would turn that into a more lifelike entity.
Speaker 2:Man, you remember when the that scandal happened, when they employed the what was that company called Cambridge Analytica, when we all learned about how they were secretly collecting all of our data?
Speaker 1:Oh, that scandal.
Speaker 2:That happens all the time. Now that's like standard operating procedure and everyone knows that, so like nobody even bats an eye, even though it's still completely immoral, unethical and illegal in so many ways. The things that they're doing, the way they're collecting data to feed into these ai models or whatever. Back when that happened, that was like a big scandal. Now it's like, well, yeah, that's how it works.
Speaker 1:That's sad yeah, that's a sign of the time. It sure is what we consider the cost of doing business in modern day life.
Speaker 2:Jesus christ, it fucked While we're talking about Ex Machina. Ex Machina is a really interesting example because it's not a new idea necessarily, and it's not a new commentary, but it is a more modern and nuanced one on current or modern day conceptions of AI, but I think it is very important in and of its own right. One of the things we don't talk about when we talk about modern AI is that AI, as addressed in Ex Machina and, honestly, legitimately, certain other films, including Her, is dealing with toxic masculinity, which I know sounds like a 2020 hashtag, but is a problem specifically within the tech world, and Ex Machina deals with that idea because it implies that male fears concerning powerful women, or just women with agency, is terrifying to them. It deals with the idea that the problem we're having now with uber masculine tech oligarchs, or at least the ones that wish they were that technology isn't neutral, but mirrors existing sexism, but completely amplifies it in all variations, from design to development to application and, as a result, for example, real world digital assistants such as think about this Alexa.
Speaker 1:Siri.
Speaker 2:Cortana they're all feminized right. Even in Avengers, when Jarvis becomes Vision, he gets Friday the computer in Star Trek.
Speaker 1:Yeah, mother in Alien 100%.
Speaker 2:Well, obviously her Joy from Blade Runner 2049. Funny that it's spelled J-O-I. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Which I honestly, I didn't get until a while after I saw the film. Oh yeah, and that's what? Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right, especially since he basically uses it as a yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Although in that there's a undermining of that within that film. Yes, because if you see Joy in like her natural context, you know a live, naked woman open to providing sexual sexual experiences. But when you see how he interacts with it he puts clothes on her it's a somewhat more chaste relationship. In a lot of ways, if anything, it's she's the one trying to centralize the relationship, while he's having trying to have an emotional connection yeah, but he's also.
Speaker 2:We know off the bat that he's a replicant. So, like is he just emulating an emotional? Like he's emotionally aware enough that he should be having these feelings and he's trying to do them? Is he just going through the motions because he's at least cognizant enough to know that he should be doing these? You know what I mean? Because, like, they set it up where, like, oh, he misses this person or he wants this person, but at the same time, is it that he's just trying to simulate the things that he thinks he should be?
Speaker 1:doing emotionally. You could say that about all of us really.
Speaker 2:True, which is one of the reasons we brought all this up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean. Examination of artificial intelligence is an examination of ourselves and what makes us all what we are, what drives us, what the meaning of our own humanity is. That's part of the reason that we watched it and we were so fascinated by these stories. Is the true, relevant and exciting. Science fiction is a mirror into our own souls.
Speaker 2:And we literally could do like 17 episodes about documenting AI in sci-fi and fantasy. We've never talked about the agency of droids in Star Wars or data.
Speaker 1:I do want to get into. Yeah, I mean, mean I obviously. Well, unless we cut ourselves off to find some definitive stopping point of what it is that we fully want to say, I don't think we've met that threshold yet. No, no, not yet I think we still have distinct more to say, so definitely this will not be the last episode of this series we did with like five episodes of rocky.
Speaker 2:I think we can. I think we can go deep into fucking artificial intelligence. We did what five episodes on Highlander. I think we can get into artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1:This exploration of the engendrification if that's even a word of artificial intelligence, the male gaze and the masculine bent in the tech world, both in fiction and in nonfiction, that's fascinating it is and it's not not mutually exclusive, but it's also not mutually exclusive.
Speaker 2:The reasons behind both of those things, I think, are endemic of bigger social problems, but also both parallel sort of coincidentally, but also not coincidentally it's extremely complicated into how we get to that point and if you really want to go down all the way down that rabbit hole, which we should the first on-screen artificial intelligence ever is in Metropolis, where he recreates his wife, his dead wife, into this robot, ultimate robot woman who, I have to feel like HR Giger took a lot of inspiration from, based on just aesthetics.
Speaker 1:I mean, let's be honest, Everybody after 1912, I mean it's like everything after is like that C-3PO looks very similar yes.
Speaker 2:I mean, it's so on the nose yeah, which means that that was an incredible creation the visual aesthetic of metropolis. If people haven't seen it, watch metropolis. It's a silent film and it's one of the craziest, most ambitious science fiction films ever made.
Speaker 1:It's a fundamental building block of science fiction post-1927, when the film came out.
Speaker 2:And then, hilariously later, that director would go on to do a version of the Wizard of Oz before the Wizard of Oz came out. Really, yeah, he did, and it's weird, fritz Lang.
Speaker 2:I don't know that, fritz Lang, that's this so, once again, we barely scratched the surface of ai and pop culture, which is why we put off doing this kind of this episode specifically for a long time. We just knew it would be so big. It's going to be big and we weren't going to solve it. But at least we could raise questions and at least we can pose questions and at least we can hopefully spark some sort of debate, or at least highlight can pose questions, and at least we can hopefully spark some sort of debate, or at least highlight debates that have already existed. For I don't know, since we were human, considering we've been trying to make artificial life since, basically, the idea that we realized we were conscious, yeah, and the poor need for our patriarchal society to excise bodily sovereignty and self-determination from women.
Speaker 1:That certainly isn't a new concept and it doesn't surprise us, shouldn't surprise us in the least that it's supposed to express in our fiction looking at the future possibilities, you know a lot of it obviously is misogyny.
Speaker 2:Think about aliens. What's the ultimate terrifying pinnacle of the xenomorph? The alien queen? The queen? Obviously yeah. This is built into our society, and so it's going to be built into our AI as we develop it.
Speaker 1:You could counteract that by the protagonist being a woman, who then is gains even more strength and autonomy. In that alien sequel, true, and we could have an entire, just as a counterbalance.
Speaker 2:No, no, that's fair and we can have an. I guarantee we could have an entire episode just debating that very specific example, considering ripley already existed, and so like it's almost like you're one of the first times that you have a female protagonist, not a final girl, but a protagonist that lives and triumphs over the ultimate evil. And then how is she challenged next? What's bigger than her, a bigger woman? And also then, during that, she's protecting a child.
Speaker 1:The second film's all about motherhood in so many ways. Yeah, we could have an entire series just on aliens, but we motherhood in so many ways.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we could have an entire series just on aliens, but we don't have time for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we do, but not right now. This exact episode.
Speaker 2:Not right this very second. No, yeah, now we've opened a different door, another avenue for you to think about things, to debate things, to consider what we're talking about with AI.
Speaker 1:We have much more to say. There will be more coming. Maybe we'll actually really get into it. There's more. I want to talk about Alien, the synthetic people, as it were. I got about an hour's worth of stuff on Chappie, because Chappies obviously are all our favorites.
Speaker 2:It's funny because I've got a two-hour episode about Short Circuit, so we're going to do an entire batteries not included episode, can't, can't, aliens. But ironically it's mostly about hume cronin. So I mean, and jessica tandy, obviously she's a dandy, she's miss daisy.
Speaker 1:We we will have much more coming next time on next episode, as we continue our journey down the digital circuit pathways of artificial intelligence the coming robopocalypse we haven't talked about data at all we mentioned data. Did we mention exocomps?
Speaker 2:oh shit, no, we haven't talked about exocomps, which is extremely important. I don't know, but extremely important well, I mean, if you're going down the star trek rabbit hole, but sure, I still don't think exocomps are extremely important.
Speaker 1:Even in the star trek rabbit hole they should be the doctor from voyager.
Speaker 2:Obviously it's really relevant to my current viewing interests you know, the funny thing is, the best show that addresses these things is lower decks yeah, yeah, we've talked a bit about ex machina.
Speaker 1:I think there's obviously there's plenty more to say about all of these things, but we're just we're dipping our toes. We've talked about Blade Runner, got 2001, terminator, battlestar I mean. We haven't even talked about something like iRobot. Well, not necessarily the movie, not the movie, but the idea, I mean. That's it. Anyway, we can have our discussion about what we're going to talk about off air, but for you, gentle listener, we'd like to thank you and hope that you can thank your AI overlords for bringing this to your ears. If you wouldn't mind sharing it with your other AI overlords, it would definitely help us get seen and heard. Like, share, subscribe. Please give us five gender biased exocomps on your favorite podcast app of choice. Apple podcast is the best way for us to get heard and seen. Obviously we're uh, we're weaving, bobbing, meandering, but we'll get there. We'll get there. Hopefully, the robot friends you made along the way is better than the destination you're going to get to. But until we meet that big AI Zardoz, god in the sky, skip, what should we?
Speaker 1:do it's evil. Tell us about the penis Skip it's evil. Tell him about the Twinkie. That's one hell of a.
Speaker 2:Twinkie. Oh, thank you, we're not even in the same room. Make sure, ladies and gentlemen, that you have cleaned up after yourself to some sort of reasonable degree. Make sure you have tipped your waitstaff, your bartenders, your KJs, etc. Make sure you support your local comic shops and retailers. And from Dispatch HX we would both like to say Godspeed, fair wizards.
Speaker 1:Yeah, shit man. I started reading this thing about Stepford Wives. Please go away.