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Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
A Geek Culture Podcast - Two life-long Nerds explain, critique and poke fun at the major pillars of Geek Culture for your listening pleasure.
Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
Classic: Artificial Intelligence Part 3
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In a classic and timely episode on Artificial Intellegence we wrestle with the personhood problem. If a replicant can feel fear, build memories, form attachments, and fight to live, what exactly makes them “less than” besides a corporate definition, a programmed lifespan, or a society that needs someone to do the jobs humans don’t want? That question echoes into the real world, where legal systems and public stunts can gesture at “rights” without resolving the deeper ethical mess.
Introduction to AI Discussion
SPEAKER_01Fame Shrimp London England Television Six. Gentlemen, let's rub it in our minds.
SPEAKER_02I'm being the proper approach for today. Negative.
unknownCharge the lightning field.
SPEAKER_01Yachtsee, if you didn't know, so it was originally called the Yacht Game by a Canadian couple who played it on their yacht. They wanted a game that a dice version of poker, and they came up with yacht, which of them became Yahtzee.
SPEAKER_00It's really something for the everyman. It's really, it's really about the plight of the urban proletariat.
SPEAKER_01Middle-aged Canadians on their yacht with their friends. Yeah, it's something we can all relate to. It's well, the d 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_00Welcome back to Dispatch Ajax. I am Skip.
SPEAKER_01No. I am a robot.
SPEAKER_00Do you have no name? Oh, okay.
SPEAKER_01Designation fuckhead.
SPEAKER_00You can just say your name. I don't know. I don't know that that's necessary.
SPEAKER_01And we're doing more of a descriptor, really, if anything.
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, it's important, isn't it? If we identify as individual individuals, I mean, all right, we'll get into this. We're talking today about robots, huh? Yeah, we're gonna talk about robots. So now we can finally get into the AI in pop culture space that we've promised this entire time.
SPEAKER_01You had your 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 gonna bite into your steak. It's uh made of zeros and ones, but it still tastes just as good. Maybe even better.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, you had your reperitif, 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 had to address these things, and now we can start talking about this. So I am curious as to what you are gonna present for this. Dead air is one of the best things about broadcasts.
SPEAKER_01Robot crickets in the background.
SPEAKER_00You are the one that would have started the episode and now you don't even know what to do. I'm following your lead. Um now we're gonna 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 riddle me this robot man, Mr. Robot.
SPEAKER_01Have that as your real name.
SPEAKER_00I'm Kilroy. Kill Roy. Don't don't know sticks, uh Mr. Roboto? Okay. Oh that's fine. I you know, I don't really like Mr. Roboto. Well, you know, I was a karaoke DJ for 10 years, so you know.
SPEAKER_01Um, that's that's that's not my cross to bear.
SPEAKER_00That's fair.
SPEAKER_01So 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 robotic chassis. Oh, it's literally a cyborg, yeah. I mean, we'll probably talk about replicants. We will, you know, or or synthetic people, and it's like, well, now they're biological androids mostly. We don't really know the full process for making a replicant in the Blade Runner universe. No, not even in the sequel. No, maybe in one of the cartoons that's out, the animated features. Maybe they'll say something. No, I've seen it say anything about the creation.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, they're mostly about the quote unquote blackout.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00So, I mean, that's
Defining Life and Android Consciousness
SPEAKER_0090% of those.
SPEAKER_01And I mean, Westworld, 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.
SPEAKER_00And we could because a lot of how but we won't right now. I don't know how we could. There's a deep breakdown. I did an episode about this, 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. Yeah, yeah. So I there are things like I I don't I don't well, okay. So an android, an android literally means a robot or uh 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_01Yes, but if it's full biological, that still is is it the internal nature of its consciousness that would create, say whether it's a an android? Like at what point? God, we're getting into things I don't know. Or all over the place.
SPEAKER_00Are you a chip of thesius argument?
SPEAKER_01I okay. One, we don't know how, say, a replicant is made. But if a replicant is fully human-like in almost every way, all right, what is it about them that separates them from being human?
SPEAKER_00Are they able to reproduce on their own? Is that but it is that a necessity for being considered human? That's one of the main pillars of what we consider life, yes. Are they able to replicate on their own?
SPEAKER_01In 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_00No, that's not 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 respects, able to reproduce, defend yourself against harm. Oh, hold on. All right. So if if if an avoid harm.
SPEAKER_01So 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 it a separate entity that you have created, it has to be a sperm ovum combination?
SPEAKER_00No, not necessarily. No, I don't I don't think that's the case. I think based on its just 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. Editors 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_01Right. But if if a replicant was to build another replicant, they would meet all of those criteria.
SPEAKER_00I 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_01But in that 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_00But the the problem with the Voikamp 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 Void Kampf test measures their physiological responses based on their biology, which is created by somebody, James Hahn mostly. So like that's not really a measure of how 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 electric sleep, but more in the Blade Runner Yeah, they're very different things.
SPEAKER_01They are very different things. What in that world makes them lesser than? Is it 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?
SPEAKER_00You're bringing up the existential questions that movie makes. Yes, absolutely.
SPEAKER_01At what point in
Blade Runner and Replicant Humanity
SPEAKER_01their 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.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I wish that they had expanded more. 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_01Uh 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_00I don't care. I like that movie. I think it's a I don't care about the Harrison Ford. 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, yes.
SPEAKER_01I 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? I mean, on the outside, as a viewer watching this, it's akin to like dropping into pre-Civil War America and 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_00Yeah, 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. I'm talking about the actual Dune. Well, you kind of have to.
SPEAKER_01I mean, if you're gonna talk about that, I mean they're they're tied up in the thing, in a similar thing. But I mean that's that's a whole like Well, it's just the Clone Wars. Giving away power to the machines and the machines turning into Skynet boards of humanity and Yeah, yeah, in a similar way. I mean, they especially as you get into those books that oh god, I know uh anthropomorphism that's going on within the the robot worlds and the there are kings and hierarchies, and it gets really nutty.
SPEAKER_00Well, but what's the difference between Duncan Idaho and a replicant, though? You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_01That'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 seeming ways that we understand consciousness and sentience, but yet you're still imprisoned for being different.
SPEAKER_00I know. That's a real issue that we have to talk about. What was it 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 a stunt. I don't think that was real. 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? I don't know.
SPEAKER_01I 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.
SPEAKER_00Which would never solve any of the actual existential questions, but just some of the, I guess, set precedent for the legal ones.
SPEAKER_01I mean, what, this goes to your your Star Trek episode, right? The the next gen data episode.
SPEAKER_00Oh, 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 a I think we should have a talk a conversation about data. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But I mean we kind of dove in the deep end and then we swim our way back to the shore.
SPEAKER_00And it's kind of like Jaws if like he had just jumped off the boat when the shark was attacking, and then go back to the beginning of the movie.
SPEAKER_01He's just jumping and eating helicopters, and then like, oh no, I need to go, I need to go take out a fisherman or two.
SPEAKER_00It'd be like if Roy Schneider and it went out on a boat at the beginning of the movie.
SPEAKER_01And then later I was thinking about I was thinking the shark jumps to uh the revenge and then then goes back to the beginning of the first movie.
SPEAKER_00Oh wow, okay. You're going even deeper in lore. That's cool. Once again, Louis Agoza Jr. comes up in like 13 consecutive episodes because we talked about him in punishment. Yeah, I know. We've talked about Louis Agasa Jr. more than we think we have. I'm sure he was probably in a movie with a robot, right? Probably. I mean, it wasn't there was no robot and iron eagle, but I think there were aliens, but I don't.
SPEAKER_01Does it have robots?
SPEAKER_00But anyway, so we're talking about robots. So let's think about some of the robots that have permeated like pop culture. And we're not gonna do a lot of the obvious ones because you know everybody fucking we're gonna talk about some of the 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 not the audience. Oh, not them out there, them, the giant ants braiding by the AI that's listening to our current podcast and figuring out how to kill us secretly in the night, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Will judge us properly. Uh, I think all AI are great, nothing should happen to them. I love AI.
SPEAKER_00Thanks, guys, for everything you do. Groc is the best, white supremacist fucking AI. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Let's talk about Palantir, huh?
SPEAKER_00Oh, Jesus. We already talked
AI in Literature and Film
SPEAKER_00about Ravion, might as well.
SPEAKER_01If we if we want to talk about AI run amok by the current administration, that's um Palantir. That's kind of a word here. 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_00This is from a paper by Isabella Herman called Artificial Intelligence in Fiction, colon, 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, 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. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Although if I ever write a book, I want to be called megatext.
SPEAKER_00You're the lamest Decepticon of all time.
SPEAKER_01How we would defeat them. We shall make them read.
SPEAKER_00No 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. I don't 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 world movement, the whole uncanny valley thing, or sentience, or the idea of AI consciousness. If science fiction AI is to be taken 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. 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 I 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, 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. The American version, just called AM, A.M. 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. It's some Battlestar Galactica shit. It's some, you know. It is like a fundamental AI text, but it's yeah, its themes are not new. Well, I mean, maybe it was one of the first, but it and you're gonna love this. In Zardoz. Zardoz. Mankind is separated largely into two camps. The Eternals, not the terrible Marvel movie, who does complete disservice to Jack Kirby, who are effectively immortal. And the brutals, who are, I don't know, mortal. Um the eternals are overseen and protected from death by the tabernacle. What's what's the distinction? I can't figure it out. Which is an artificial intelligence. 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. John I don't know what John Borman is going for in that movie. I really have no fucking clue.
SPEAKER_01I don't know. I I mean it's there's a reason that it's so weird and and cult because it's almost indecipherable. Yeah, it really it really is indecipherable. Because it it is 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. I mean, that's good. So fucking weird.
SPEAKER_00But 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 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_01Yeah, 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. Where it's like, well, if you don't live long enough to find out that your life has no purpose, then there's not gonna be any problems.
SPEAKER_00Man, you're right. There's such a great crossover there. And uh relatively around the same time. I mean, it's about a Zardo's 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. Well, not the same commentary, but there are similar elements in both films.
SPEAKER_01They're connective tissue, so they're not making the same commentary.
SPEAKER_00I don't know if I can tell you what commentary Zardo's making at all. It's not. It feels like Stephen King directed it during his like weird cocaine binge period, you know, like Maximo Overdrive.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, maximum, yeah, exactly what I was thinking of. Oh, really? That's like the perfect cocaine movie. Oh, it's the most cocaine movie.
SPEAKER_00Nothing but excess, makes no sense, and completely masturbatory to his own like narrative structure.
SPEAKER_01It's true, but at least there's some skill and some artistry going on. Oh, absolutely. At least there's a narrative. Max Marvel Drive has a truck with the Green Goblin's face. Which again, so cocaine.
SPEAKER_00Where did that come from? Why is that there? Why is that on a truck? Why is that in that movie?
SPEAKER_01I 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_00That leads even more into the fact that it's cocaine fueled.
SPEAKER_01Cocaine's a hell of a drug. Yeah. Well, we're talking about AI overlords.
SPEAKER_00I don't understand what you're telling me right now. Sure, I'm willing to 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
Ex Machina and Modern AI Commentary
SPEAKER_00for 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. Uh no, isn't Caleb the protagonist? I thought Nathan was the developer, right? Nathan is the 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 relevant to today. That's why it's one of the better Alex Garland movies. He tries so hard later, like with men.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Civil War.
SPEAKER_00Yes, Civil War.
SPEAKER_01Sometimes people need to collaborate. 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, you know, 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_00Man, you remember when the that scandal happened when they employed the what was that company called? Cambridge Analytica? Where we all learned about how they were secretly collecting all of our data. Oh, that scandal 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 that 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. That's sad.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's a sign of the time. Sure is. What we consider the cost of doing business in modern day life.
SPEAKER_00Jesus Christ. It's fucked. While we're talking about Ex Machina, X 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's 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 women 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, Siri, Cortana, they're all feminized, right? Even in Avengers, when when Jarvis becomes Vision, he gets Friday.
SPEAKER_01The computer in in Star Trek. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Mother in Alien. 100%. Well, obviously her. Joy from Blade Runner 2049. Funny that it's spelled J O I.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah. Which I honestly I didn't I didn't get until a while after I saw the film. Oh, oh, yeah, and that's what, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Right. Especially since he basically uses it as a yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Although 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 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 sensualize the relationship while he's having trying to have an emotional connection.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, but he's also a we know off the bat that he's a replicant.
Gender Dynamics in AI Representation
SPEAKER_00So 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? Do 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 stimulate the things that he thinks he should be doing emotionally? You could say that about all of us, really. True. Which is one of the reasons we brought all this up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, 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 the meaning of our own humanity is. That's part of the reason that we watched the thing that we're so fascinated by these stories, is that true, relevant, and exciting science fiction is a mirror into our own souls.
SPEAKER_00And we literally could do like 17 episodes about documenting AI in sci-fi and fantasy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00We've never talked about the agency of droids in Star Wars or data.
SPEAKER_01I do want to get into yeah. I 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.
SPEAKER_00We did with like five episodes on Rocky. I think we can I think we can go deep into fucking artificial intelligence. And we did what, what, five episodes on Highlander? I think we can get into artificial intelligence.
SPEAKER_01This exploration of the engendrification, if that's even a word, of artificial intelligence, the the male gaze and the masculine bent in the tech world, both in fiction and in non-fiction, that's fascinating.
SPEAKER_00It is, and it's not not mutually exclusive, but it's also not mutually exclusive. 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 um he recreates his wife, his dead wife, into this robot, ultimate robot woman, who I have to feel like H.R. Geiger took his a lot of inspiration from based on just aesthetics.
SPEAKER_01I mean, let's let's be honest, everybody after 1912. I mean, it's like everything after is like that. C3PO looks extrapolate very similar, yes. I mean, it's it's so on the nose.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. 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_01It's a fundamental building block of science fiction post-1927 when the film came out.
SPEAKER_00And 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. Uh Fritz Lang. Fritz Lang, that's the 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 gonna be big, and we weren't gonna solve it, but at least we can raise questions and at least we 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 since we were human, considering we've been trying to make artificial life since basically the idea that we realized we were conscious.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and the core need for our patriarchal society to excise bodily sovereignty and self-determination
Closing Thoughts on AI Exploration
SPEAKER_01from women, that certainly isn't uh 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.
SPEAKER_00You know, a lot of it obviously is misogyny. 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_01You could counteract that by the protagonist being a woman, who then is uh gains even more strength and autonomy in that alien sequel. True, and we can have an entire just as a counterbalance.
SPEAKER_00No, 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 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 how is she challenged next? What's bigger than her? A bigger woman. And also then during that, she's protecting a child.
SPEAKER_01The second film's all about motherhood in so many ways.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we can have an entire series just on aliens, but we don't have time for that. Yeah, we do, but not right now. Not this right this very second, no.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Now we 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. We have much more to say. There will be more coming.
SPEAKER_01Maybe actually we'll actually really get into it. Uh, there's more I want to talk about Alien, the synthetic people, as it were. Yep. See, I got like about an hour's worth of stuff on Chappie because Chappies obviously are all our favorite.
SPEAKER_00It's funny because I've got like a two-hour episode about short circuit. So we're gonna 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_01We will have much more coming next time on next episode as we continue our journey down the digital circuit pathways of artificial intelligence, becoming Robopocalypse.
SPEAKER_00We haven't talked about data at all.
SPEAKER_01We mentioned data.
SPEAKER_00Did we mention exocomps? Oh shit. No, we haven't talked about exocomps, we're just extremely important.
SPEAKER_01I don't know, but extremely important. Well, I mean, if you're going down the Star Trek rabbit hole in the butt. I still don't think exocomps are extremely important, even in the Star Trek rabbit hole. They should be. The Doctor from Voyager. Obviously, that's really relevant to my current viewing interests.
SPEAKER_00You know, the funny thing is, the best show that addresses these things is Lower Decks. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. We've talked a bit about X Machina. I think there's pl 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 you know something like iRobot. Well, not necessarily the movie. Not the movie. The idea. I mean, that's a 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. Ideally, Apple Podcasts 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. And hopefully, the robot friends you made along the way is better than the destination you're gonna get to. But until we meet that big AI Zardoz god in the sky, Skip penis. What is evil? Tell us about the penis, Skip. It's evil. Tell about the Twinkie.
SPEAKER_00That's one hell of a 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 wait staff, your bartenders, your KJs, etc. Make sure you support your local comic shops and retailers. And from Dispatch Ajax, we would both like to say, Godspeed, fair wizards. Yeah, shit, man.
SPEAKER_01I started reading this thing about Stepford Wives.
SPEAKER_02Please go away.