iHuman

Saw this documentary at IDFA 2019, the documentary festival in Amsterdam. This movie did not bring much news for me. This is not to be construed as a complaint. Rather the contrary, as I'll explain later. Much of this was already a topic of growing concern in IT-related journals. Also, lectures held at congresses and seminars presented ample eye-openers in this field, once I became aware of it and began following relevant specialists in the field. In other words, I was not taken by surprise when watching the very many relevant issues passing by. However, that is me, and it is more relevant to make the general public aware, and policy makers in particular.

I know it is not easy to find the right packaging for IT-related contents. I especially know how difficult it is to find the right visuals to support the message on screen. Of course, we now (again) saw the obligatory amount of screen gibberish (mainly program source text), network cabling, flashing lights on appliances, the insides of a server farm, and other boring images seemingly unevitable in this context. Talking heads cannot be avoided either. Nevertheless, I know of no better alternative to present the alarming message. The filmmakers used sort of an all-knowing narrator who guided us throught subsequent stories. I'm not sure that is the best solution, but it may work very well with an uninformed viewer who will intuitively build some trust in this man because of his reputation.

I asked my companion, not working in IT, rather one of the power-user type, about the eye-opening effects for her. She confirmed that this movie worked indeed and could very well serve its purpose to show interested people the many dangers ahead. Of course, those who are not interested at all, cannot be convinced with either talkshow, movie, book or article, so are beyond hope on all counts.

All in all, I suspect that this movie can do a good job of educating people on these very relevant topics, pertinent for everyone and certainly not confined to the world of IT. We cannot leave the decisions to the technicians who work there. We should particularly distrust their management, only interested in short-term profit, and damn the consequences. Politicians do not know yet how important it is for them to step in very soon, rather than wait until the problems become too big to unravel in hindsight. A few high-profile incidents in recent years (Facebook and Cambridge Analytics, among others), may be considered later as a blessing in disguise, by showing the average man/woman how these matters affect their lives. It remained under the hood for too long a time.

Not all the time, but sometimes we Norwegians can become over moralizing. For example in a TV debate recently about the now famous corona virus, a health administrative painted such a grim scenario, that the debate leader had to apologize for her afterwards because the TV channel got overthrown by thousands of phones calls complaining for the apocalyptic scenario that was presented. It is not easy to be puritan and it is even more difficult to be led by one. iHuman has many qualities indeed, but in the long run it just falls short because humans are driven not only by intelligence. Intelligence is just one of the many attributes that we have. Perhaps in the future some company will develop AP Artificial Psychology, or AC Artificial Consciousness, or AR Artificial Religion, etc. for whatever purpose they may have, if any. Undoubtedly for Tonje Hessen Schei, here is a lot of stuff for even more films! My point is that what this film fails to see is that at the end it is humans that have the absolute power. Both as creators of the so called "Artificial Intelligence" and of all the robots, drones, machines, weapons, software that is supposed to lead us into termination or subjugation (in this point the film is quite unclear). And also in the end is up to each person to create her or his own future according to his own personal intelligence, psychology, consciousness or religion, among other attributes of the human mind. The negative message of the film underestimates human beings. The film takes for granted that humans are completely able to be manipulated by anything that is presented in front of them. While in reality, when I am with Facebook or other media, I am completely aware that is full of not very reliable sources, which is completely normal, like when you are having a conversation with a friend, you cannot rely on everything he or she says because it is not an academic lecture, it is a very informal way of communicating, it is relaxing and supposed to be part of the entertainment that the media can offer. We can perhaps blame the faults of this film to "exacerbating academism", what I mean is that when you are talking to a friend, you don't have a dictionary or the Encyclopedia Britannica or yet easier Wikipedia beside you to check that everything your friend says is completely accurate! That could be awkward and worse, it could end the friendship! Speaking about manipulation, this film uses itself a quite manipulative, attractive and suggestively interface that if we are not attentive and awake will lead some people to believe that AI is dangerous!

Personally I've seen nothing new on AI although some given insights by people connected to the industry were quite interesting... The presentation of a Swiss as a 'father of AI' on a mountain hill was pretty amusing as it's just another example how millenials like this doc maker play with history :) AI was found as a discipline in the 50s of the last century and thoughts about raised way earlier.. The part on robotics was also limited to the work of the Swiss 'AI father' and a sight on the Sophia 'humanoid' with just some shots on the better examples available in Japan as well as more interesting visions about implementation of those devices in that country. For some the use of graphics to boost the perception that something fearsome is about to happen might have been helpful :) I wonder what viewers at the IDFA screening picked up when they left the theater as many of them grabbed their phones and most likely used AI driven tools to let their digital friends know what they just have seen...

Slow movie with a lot of presumably competent people offering their predictions of the future life with AI. Nicely done and with a lot of ambience. But its all been told before, and there's nothing new or revealing. Becomes repetitive and kind of boring.

All in all the movie was ok, but there were a few things that could have been avoided. On the good side, it was interesting to see some smart people like Michal Kosinski, Jurgen Shmidhuber or Ilya Sutskever talk about the future of AI. I also have to give credit to some of the scenes, structure and visual effects of the documentary. But that's as far as the positive feedback on my side goes. As of 2020, most of the things I heard, however, were a bit outdated. To make matters worse, I couldn't help but feel that the author resorted to fear to create yet another dystopian vision of the future. The viewer is most of the time threatened with ominous music and spooky animations that are meant to evoke fear. It's too bad because it could have been a decent documentary.