iHuman: L'intelligence artificielle et nous

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...

Saw this documentary at Kosmorama firm festival in 2020.

Its a smack in the face to the many who refuse to look into what the future has to bring. The documentary brings out the various directions where AI might take us in the future to come. It tells where the latest great breakthroughs of the 2010s came from, how its become the source of many technology empires and speaks of how private and governmental groups is entering a political, economical and military arms race for the future. How certain big companies strive control the big military and governmental contracts and toss their morals aside.

It tells of the amazing future it might bring, the terror of autonomous weapons, how AI can bring further polarization of our societies.. to the bleakest darkest most terrifying dystopian futures and possible end of humanity.

For those who study the subject there is little new, the interviews with the pioneers in AI development, a view into their mindsets was worth it by itself.

For the novice, its an great a great introduction to what is going on in the higher tiers of Technology industries as it does not need any technical understanding to get the message.

The future is at the doorstep, we need to be prepared for what is to come.

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.

Tonje Hessen Schei clearly has an agenda with this film. It is not a neutral dissertation of AI, its potential and dangers. We are in the middle of a revolution in terms of AI, though true AI seems rather far away still. (Current ML, "deep learning" algorithms and synthetic neural networks are actually very primitive compared to the human intelligences that created them). Hessen Schei said in an introduction to the screening I attended that she thinks there is too little attention paid to and conversation about AI in terms of how it will change society, democracy and the way we live. Even though I use ML and "AI" in my work and know the tech fairly well, I still found the framing and the questions asked in the film to be engadging. Some of the talking heads come off as rather naive, despite all their apparent brilliance. I found it amusing that some of these highly intelligent people (probably inadvertently) support some level of pre-destination, i.e. that AI is inevitable. Also, it raises questions dating back at least Oppenheimer about the culpability of scientists. To quote Jeff Goldblums character in Jurassic Park "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should." which more or less summarizes the theme of iHuman and why we should stop and think.

I would have liked to hear inside opinions from the big players like Google and Amazon, but ominously they refused to be interviewed.

I think the documentary was expertly made with both incredible audio design (think Sci-fi in general, Blade Runner I+II in particular) and visuals. Talking head fatigue is mostly avoided. Like I said initially, the film clearly has an agenda and the director is using every trick in her impressive arsenal to influence us, the audience. Some of the shots are amazingly beautiful as well. The shot of Juergen Schmidhuber looking out upon creation from his vantage point on top of the Alps is both amusing and has serious historical connotations.

PS! About the Schmidhuber scene, a previous reviewer wrote: "it's just another example of how millenials like this doc maker play with history :-)". Actually it is not. Firstly, Hessen Schei is most definetely Genaration X (born 1971 according to Google). Secondly, this is something that has nothing to do with generations but rather much more with having a sense of wit and visual humour. There have been plenty of similarly thematically loaded images in docs by Boomers, Xers (my gen) and Millenials.

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.