Artificial Intelligence Movie

Cutting contest

Talking about the money side of the arts is always tricky. While there are exceptions, the vast majority of artists I know do their work for its own sake, not for the achievement of fame or riches. However, in order to spend the countless hours in the practice room, in the studio, in the van and on the stage, money must be made. The question of whether or not it’s ok to download media illegally is about much more than money, however. This is a question about human relationships.

Downloading media illegally is wrong for a very simple reason: Technically, it’s stealing. If artists wanted their audience to have any or all of their work for free, they would make it free. If an artist ascribes a certain value to his or her work, the audience can either acquiesce to that level of value or not. If we value someone’s work and want reap the benefits that artist’s continued ability to create, we must invest in it. With all the talk of sustainability in regards to our natural resources, we should obviously strive for sustainability in our creative resources. In music, for example, albums don’t just appear out of thin air. Booking studio time, hiring musicians, hiring a recording engineer, mastering, and printing up physical albums to sell all cost money. Many musicians that I know don’t go into the album-creation process thinking that they will make their money back, but every little bit helps.

We cannot view the relationship between artist and audience as strictly producer/consumer, however. This relationship is a sacred one. As in any relationship, if both parties don’t agree on its inherent value, it can no longer exist. Much of the great art we love was and is made by professional artists. They are professionals just like lawyers, doctors, janitors, bartenders or anyone else with a full-time job. Could they keep working if their services and products were free? The question we have to ask ourselves about any behavior is: if everyone acted like this, what would happen? Is the next step a justification for sneaking into performances for free? Sooner or later, full-time artists would cease to exist. In the end, art is connected to the human beings that make it and that connection must be honored on personal and financial levels.

In the interest of full disclosure, I don’t think any of us who love music can claim to be total saints in this department. Personally, while I’ve never sought out an album for illegal download on my own computer, I have accepted, as gifts for study from fellow musicians, data discs and portable hard-drives full of classic recordings. This is a fine line, I know. One could make the case that, as a student of music, there is no way to afford everything we need to listen to. However, one could also make the case that sacrifice, financially or otherwise, is a huge part of a life in the arts.

History of the Digital Age » Robots and Artificial Intelligence

Robots and Artificial Intelligence

It is true that many people are scared of robots and artificial intelligence. I believe that people are uncomfortable with the topic because they are scared of the unknown and they only see what is portrayed in the media. In my opinion robots and artificial intelligence have been portrayed in very similar ways in books, movies and TV from the past to today. In the past and today robots have been portrayed in movies as powerful, unbeatable, evil machines. For example the movie I, Robot released in 2004 was a movie about how robots were created to help people out and be useful but than they turn evil and start to hurt people and take over the world. In my opinion this is a good movie to showcase peoples fears about robots and artificial intelligence because no one really knows if this could happen or not. The unsureness and the unknown that people have about robots and AI I believe comes from the fact that people don’t know how they are made or what they are fully capable of doing so they are not sure if it can be trusted.  Also many people believe what they see in movies and the media so a lot of people have the idea that robots and AI are bad, making them scared of the idea of them. There have also been many movies that have showed robots and AI being a good thing and beneficial but many people over look these things because they are concerned with the negatives of what could happen.

I also believe that people are threatened by the existence of robots and artificial intelligence. People are scared because we have already seen jobs lost because machines can do it themselves. For example at the grocery store with self checkouts and in assembly lines, many jobs have been lost because the machinery can do it itself. We are threatened by AI and robots because we are also very dependent on it to do things for us and I believe that people are scared to see how things will change in the future because of this dependency.

I see your point of view in that if the public perceive robots and artificial intelligence by what is portrayed in movies, they might be frightened; however, I feel that education and a gradual introduction to such technology would make a world of difference. Indeed, technological advancements have greatly depleted the available number of jobs in differing areas. On the other hand, new jobs have been created in the burgeoning computer and technology industry. The public have already assimilated advanced technology and utilize it daily to make their lives easier through cell phones, devices that monitor body functions, providing navigational directions, and even cards that allow them into secured areas (Kurzweil, Ch.9). The leap to artificial intelligence is not so great when viewed in that perspective. By educating the public on the positive nature of artificial intelligence, they may come to realize that computers will be “…able to enhance and rewrite their own cognitive and affective coding in seconds, science will no longer be restricted to the slow, limited aperture granted by limited human senses…” (Broderick, 278). Rather than focusing on the media-enhanced view of robots and artificial intelligence, society may come to view them as the medical biological and ecological answers humans have not yet found.

Artificial intelligence today, recent trends and developments

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Advances in artificial intelligence, 21st Conference of the Canadian Society for Computational Studies of Intelligence, Canadian AI 2008, Windsor, Canada, May 28-30, 2008 : proceedings