We Need to Talk About A.I.

It was an amazing idea to slice and dice the thoughts of smart people into an insane salad, dress it with some insights from random quacks as deep as a tea spoon, then serve it as a "documentary".

How did Cameron deserve a right to have an opinion about the A.I.? By making a movie with a robot in it?

He also made a movie with a ship in it - well, now, let's ask his opinion on naval architecture and the problems of modern hydrodynamic engineering.

Instead of letting the smart people express their smart thoughts precisely and at length, the movie rips their words out of context and rearranges them to fit some weird alarmist narrative.

The four stars are specifically for Roman Yampolskiy, Sam Harris, Max Tegmark and Jurgen Schmidhuber.

This is a fascinating look at an important subject. As a fan of 2001: A Space Odyssey I thought using Kubrick's film to frame this conversation was both relevant and entertaining. He warned us what might happen 60 years ago and this documentary explains why everything he said is still relevant. We do need to talk about it.

I really liked this film. The people interviewed were nearly all insiders not just external commentators. And some really important people who know what they are talking about. That gives is real weight for me. And they were allowed to speak properly, not cut into little sound bites. Didn't agree with some of what was said but hey - that's the point of a discussion! Really good film. Well made and personally I loved the 2001 theme with the narrator. Clever!

Discusses the potential of AI with clear, thought provoking questions. The variety of opinions expressed by featured leading academics gives you a wide picture of the future in this field, making you do exactly as the title entails. Talk about AI.

I think the film is great! I've recommended to my friends and colleagues in IT to watch it as soon as they get a chance. I think currently in society the risks of AI (more specifically Artifical General Intelligence and Artificial Super Intelligence) are not understood by most people, even most IT and AI researchers, as the main focus (and main budgets) goes to ANI (narrow AI) that already makes is way into our society and has a lot of (potential) benefits in various fields including medicine (e.g. diagnosis of cancer, fighting pandemics), logistics, climate control, sustainability, etc.

It's brilliant that in this film Keir Dullea looks back on "2001" and his interactions with HAL. For most people outside the field of AI, HAL is still the most recognizable superintelligent AI computer. The documentary gives a very nice overview of the different stakeholders and views in the current AGI pro/con discussions (benefits of AI, robotics, warfare, existential risks for humanity, is it controllable or not?). Especially Bryan Johnson's quote ("What is our plan as a species? ... We don't have a plan and we don't realize it's necessary to have a plan.") keeps coming back to my mind. I think that's exactly the issue. Almost anyone in the field of AI (even more cautious people like Stuart Russell or Max Tegmark) assumes that AGI will soon be there (within the next 10 to 50 years). And many researches agree that there are very serious risks (including the existential risk) that come with this. However, when they talk about mitigation of these risks, the discussions become more unclear, e.g. Stuart Russell's suggestion of "Provable Benevolent AI", or Ben Goertzel's ideas on "decentralized AI". To me this doesn't make sense; we should first have a plan that proves the fundamental risks are mitigated before we move on. Or else put the AGI research on hold (if this is still possible...) like we did with genetic manipulation and cloning.