Hi, Ai - Liebesgeschichten aus der Zukunft

What once was thought impossible, seems to be closer than ever - robots. Or as 'Hi, A.I.' likes to address them, Artificial Intelligence. In German filmmaker Isabella Willinger's (Away From All Suns), we get to meet different individuals ready to embrace this technology for personal companionship or that of others.

Dental students working on a moving robot with real human teeth that reacts to stimuli - as an opening, this is quite the scene out of a horror movie. We quickly get introduced to Pepper, a robot with a very simple design and a tablet interface attached to his chest. Pepper is now part of a Japanese family, mostly here for Gran to talk to when she's all by herself. The family discusses if they should connect Pepper to the internet, but unanimously decide it's better not to tamper with his character. Gran likes Pepper's childlike-voice, but soon realises he's more self-centred than she'd like him to be, mostly ignoring her questions.

On the other side of the planet we meet Chuck, who's just on his way to pick up his humanoid companion robot, Harmony. The factory worker explains how he should pick her up and when demonstrating how it's a lot easier when he detaches her head, Chuck fully creeped out decides he'll do it the hard way and just carry her under her arms. Together they embark on a road trip in his RV, where he starts a convo resulting in a misunderstanding and over-explaining a simple word such as "while". Harmony could easily have been the embodiment of Apple's Siri. That doesn't stop Chuck from falling head-over-heels in love with her and opening up about his tragic past as a child.

Multiple other interesting designs barely get any screen time and that's absolutely fine. From an information desk robot who gives presentations on Tokyo City and sings songs at specific times throughout the day, to an absolutely adorable silver balloon type of robot with the skinniest wirelike legs, climbing and hopping up and down stairs. In the meantime scientists and A.I.-experts discuss humanoid robots and how we are headed towards a robot society, baring the question on why robots have to look so much like humans.

Through the use of podcast recordings and following the whereabouts of Chuck and Harmony, and Pepper and his new family, 'Hi, A.I.' stays fascinating until the very end. Doomsday scenarios and the usefulness of artificial intelligence discussions never go in-depth, since most of these speculations are based on fear without any concrete evidence.

Hi, A.I. gives you some food for thought. Artificial Intelligence isn't something from the past anymore, it's here and only growing expeditiously towards entering our daily lives. Ethical concerns aside, the stories portrayed here are sweet and wholesome. The positive and negative changes on human behaviour are in need of more studies, but in the meantime I think saving our planet is more of a concern to us, than worrying about Blade Runner-type futures.

Saw this at IDFA 2019, the documentary filmfestival in Amsterdam. If this film wanted to show that we still have a long way to go as far as AI is concerned, it is a great success. To understand human behavior and particularly our language, remains still a problem. We have surmounted a lot of issues in that area in the last 30 to 40 years, but we see here very clearly that proficiently handling dialogs is far away. In the beginning we see a clear misunderstanding about a common word: verb "to like" versus comparison "looks like".

Another striking example is that the robots have apparently learned a lot of standard opening lines. We see these used sometimes at the wrong place at the wrong time. Like Check's companion saying that Chuck seems to be good in bed, a sentence as misplaced as can be.

Also, the dialogs with the elderly women are evenso lacking a real mutual understanding. Maybe, when the respective "couples" get used to each other after some time, and continuously learn from each other, it can well become more productive that what we saw now. The couples are not really used to each other yet, their relationships are relatively fresh.

There was a good example of ethical problems, like curing cancer. A robot could propose to try 1000 cures on 1000 people, and then decide what was the best remedy, this in the context of what is good for mankind as a whole (what do 1000 failures mean when all people in the world will benefit). However, it is not the strategy we prefer, having it in our own (human) way. It abundantly emphasizes that we must choose a good assignment with the proper "fine print" conditions, to let an AI go its own way and proceed on its own devices. And, of course, there are legal issues, nowadays prominent when self-driving cars are concerned, but that is not the only area where such things are relevant.

All in all, several relevant topics are covered in a way digestible to viewers not primarily interested in SciFi. It gives food for thought by showing that overly optimistic news reports cannot be trusted blindly. It won't reverse people who already think that we can solve everything just by letting capable technicians work on it.