I have a particular talent for psychological self torture, which is why I’m rewatching Johnny Depp in Transcendence while AI chatbots are getting better at writing than most humans and everyone’s pretending this is totally fine and normal…
[DEEP BREATH]
The thing is nothing says “healthy coping mechanisms” like watching a movie about uploading human consciousness to computers while GPT whatever is out there writing poetry that makes me question my entire creative existence and has honestly tricked a lot of the poet laureates out there.
They can’t fuck with Bukowski though.
I’d argue and say that Transcendence is the perfect film for our current moment of collective technological anxiety.
It’s got everything you want, really…
Brilliant scientist dies, gets uploaded to a computer, becomes godlike AI entity, starts building nanobots that can heal people but also control them completely.
You know, light Monday evening entertainment?
The ironic thing is. The movie flopped in 2014 because audiences thought it was too far fetched. (LMAO)
Now, (like many movies from the 2000s) it feels like a documentary from the near future.
Depp’s character starts with noble intentions. As it always does…
Curing disease, ending hunger, but power corrupts, even digital power, and soon he’s building a technological paradise that’s indistinguishable from hell.
Watching it now is like reading the instruction manual for our own potential apocalypse.
Will AI cure cancer? Probably.
Will it also make human creativity obsolete and turn us into pets in our own digital equivalent of a zoo? Also probably.
But hey, at least we’ll have really good customer service chatbots while civilisation collapses. (J/k customer service is horrible, even with most humans involved)
Then again, the best part about scaring yourself with dystopian AI movies is that when the actual robot uprising happens, you’ll be prepared.
Not practically prepared…
I mean you’ll still die like everyone else, but at least you’ll be emotionally prepared.
You’ll face your new silicon overlords with the smug satisfaction of having seen this coming.
Great way to prep for the end of the world, right?
Pass the popcorn. And as the tech bros would’ve said: “The future’s coming whether we’re ready or not.”
Stephen Walker.