The Singularity Is Near

I saw this film quite legally (as I know it has yet to be released) in a pre final form at the Breckenridge Film Festival. Being a fan of the director I went not expecting it to be a deep and disturbing drama documentary that I have not stopped talking about. I was unaware of Raymond Kurzweil's work, but have now ordered two of his books. The whole drama of a robot played by Pauley Perrette (inspired casting) is something I guess if we do not have to consider our children will. This film should not be missed. Mr Kurzweil introduced the film explaining how we are almost there in many respects. Perrette was perfect, just quirky enough to be non human, but certainly convincing enough as one to make you be fully on her side. It just goes to show that if we make machines, like we make our children, there is a responsibility there too.

I've always been interested in computers and anything related to them. I've followed cyberpunk trends for how it relates to the near future and how it showed a visionary capacity in its theories. I've been particularly focused on the evolution of artificial intelligence, and its effects on reality.

All this said, this movie was a HUGE disappointment. The documentary is basically a host (a bad one, at that) exposing what the future might bring regarding the birth of A.I.s with capabilities surpassing human intellect. Through the movie, he interviews a number of individuals and so-called experts in this and other matters that, in one way or another, might be affected by the singularity. These interviews and opinions are connected by a parallel fictitious story telling us about the birth and evolution of a "female" A.I. So, how would I put it? This fiction is one of the worst attempts at storytelling I've ever watched. The acting is beyond poor. It's sad, pathetic. The special effects are worse than a children's version of scify channel, the make-up and atrezzo seem to have been taken from a clown paraphernalia shop. And the dialogues come straight from a low budget scifi B movie. It's extremely boring and totally unnecessary. I reckon this was made to help the public understand the possible reality of the singularity, although it seems more like a useless distraction for toddlers than anything else.

Apart from that, most of the comments that the host states as realities are almost edging pseudo-science (it reminds me a bit of What the Bleep - Down the rabbit hole, although I believe I found that interesting back in the day, contrary to this terrible documentary). The people being interviewed, except for 1 or 2, seem to have been taken directly from an "elite" of individuals who think that it's great to have thinking computers, and that software will have at some stage "human" rights (no matter how little rights humans still have at the moment). This is one of the arguments that bother me the most: they talk about A.I.s with "feelings" and "alive", which is all very good and sound, although it's clearly a problem how these same humans completely disregard the feelings and lives of actual living creatures. It's utterly absurd to be discussing how they can define a living A.I. wisely when they can't even respect what it's clearly alive at this moment in time. I'm pretty sure that, for these "geniuses", the fight for the rights of a computer program is worthy, even though they wouldn't even consider to give other animals any rights or happiness in their lives. Bizarre and extremely creepy. For Pete's sake, they even got in the interview a person whose living consists simply in gain as much money as possible, no matter where it comes from! The same person who says that he will do anything to be able to prolong his life or to be immortal... What kind of nightmare world is coming?

One of the few people (perhaps, the only one) who made sense to me was Bill McKibben, talking basically about how humanity is destroying nature and how we should actually take care of our home Earth rather than daydreaming about how fun will be to have a singularity.

Alas, this movie left me with a creepy feeling. It's scary to see people so enthusiastic about computers and other humans inventions with total disregard for the natural world, for the environment and for "real" life itself. And, bear in mind, that I DO find computers interesting! So you can imagine...

Our only hope is that the singularity occurs once and for all and decides to do the most logical thing with the human species. You think about it.

Having read Kurzweil's book I was really looking forward to seeing this film. Now that I have I feel really, really let down. The film is absolute rubbish.

The mishmash of documentary and drama just doesn't work. The 'drama' is cringe-worthy and the documentary inaudible due to A CONSTANT AND ANNOYING SOUNDTRACK ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE FILM. I'm really surprised that Kurzweil let his name be associated with this film.

To paraphrase Dorothy Parker, this is not a film to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.

Really, really bad. Read the book and avoid this film

A bit surprised to see some very negative reviews here. Sure, the documentary had some very poor acting at times (it resembled the intro scenes of adult movies, both in style and quality), and the backstory with Ramona was a bit cringe at times. Certainly when she declared her love for Ray. But this is still an important point; will a sentient AI love or at least be thankful to its creator? The answer to that may well determine whether our species makes it to the 22nd century.

But I felt they got the main science across at a level where the general audience can understand and appreciate, and it is a documentary after all. Who cares about how realistic Ramona is.

I know a fair bit about the topic. Never read Ray's book, but received his follow-up book the other day (singularity is nearer). I am not the target audience. But the movie still opened my eyes to some aspects of AI that I had not come across earlier (such as whether or not a conscious AI should have rights).

If you are interested in the topic of AI beyond what we read about in the paper (loss of jobs, chat GPT), this docu is definitely worth to watch.