Saturday, May 06, 2023

The Day Robots Enslave the Earth

People are worried about AI robots taking over the Earth. This is not a new fear, as it was the plot of the 1951 movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still. It ends:
Klaatu tells Barnhardt's assembled scientists that an interplanetary organization has created a police force of invincible robots like Gort. "In matters of aggression, we have given them absolute power over us". Klaatu concludes, "Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer". Klaatu and Gort depart in the saucer.
So AI robots had enslaved the galaxy.

The intent of the movie was not to alarm the public about the possibility. Just the opposite. The movie presents the AI robots as being wiser than humans. We should all want to turn our fate over to scientists, who will then turn it over to AI robots.

1 comment:

CFT said...

I have watched the movie and several film reviews of "The Day The Earth Stood Still", and they also noted the film was very subversively collectivist for the time, strongly suggesting that having many different countries, cultures, languages, and governments was backwards and primitive, and how we should all submit to absolute tyranny of nanny super robots or be destroyed...because peace is more important than freedom. Lovely film.