Joni Parker's Blog - Posts Tagged "artificial-intelligence"

This was a really different, but interesting movie. It began with a flash series of scenes that didn’t seem to make any sense until there was a longer scene where an Army General was addressing the Congress about the nuclear attack on Los Angeles. Over a million people were killed in the blast with many more injured, and the culprit was Artificial Intelligence (AI). The general declares the eradication of AI in the U.S. but notes its growing strength in South Asia.

The scene changes to South Asia where Joshua, young American man, and his young wife, Maya, are in bed talking about her pregnancy. Unbeknownst to them, the U.S. has sent in Special Forces to find the local creator of AI and kill it. The raid blows the young American man’s cover and his operation as his wife is killed by a missile dropped by the latest U.S. weapon called Nomad. Five years later, Joshua is recruited for another mission to find the elusive creator of AI and the latest weapon, Alpha One.

The movie starts out with an anti-AI sentiment and a desire to wipe it out, but it switches during the movie to a less hostile attitude. In the end, it implies that AI is nothing to fear. Humans are the ones who are aggressive, not the machines. The AI in the movie hunted down and killed humans, not out of aggression, but to stop the aggression. Their only desire was peace, but they were deadly efficient in defending their territory, hunting down and killing human soldiers. So in the end, I was rooting for AI’s survival instead of the U.S. Army, which is what the movie wanted me to do. But was that right? Is AI as harmless as this movie wants me to believe?

The special effects in this film were amazing. There was a distinct difference between a real human and an AI because I could see through the AI’s head with a lot of gears inside. And the aircraft Nomad was fascinating. It looked like a UFO.

I’ve seen both good and bad reviews for this film, but I liked it.

Published in 2019. Thriller. Although this is a Jack Ryan novel, it doesn’t open with him. Instead, it opens with the sale of a new AI computer program called Calliope. The program was developed by a couple of American gamers who sell the program to the highest bidder, the Chinese. In turn, the Chinese want to ensure no one else has the program and kill the gamer selling the program, but not before he relays vital clues to a Catholic priest in Indonesia where the sale took place. The police come after the priest, but he prepares to send an emergency text message to his friend, President Jack Ryan. The priest is arrested and his phone confiscated, but as the local police sort through his phone, the text is sent. When President Jack Ryan finally reads the message, he relies on a covert team from Campus, a quasi-government organization like the CIA but without the strings attached, to recover the program, while he uses his position and influence to save the Catholic priest from the death penalty. Meanwhile, the Chinese have examined the program, and they realize its potential because it can adapt, change, and modify its situation to complete the mission, whatever mission that is. They promote it to the Chinese leadership, who authorize its use against the American interests.

This was a complicated story with a lot of different storylines going at the same time; in fact, I only presented about half of the plotlines. It took me longer than normal to get through the book. It also brings up an interesting point. Is there any way to limit the impact of AI, especially when it’s used as a weapon? Do we need more manual back-up systems that don’t rely on a computer?