Image Source
The New Machine Discussion Paper
A brooding computer scientist Dr Vincent McCarthy, who works in a shadowy research bunker for the Ministry of Defence. The west is locked in a second Cold War with China, and both sides are effortlessly racing to build ever more intelligent machines. “The most technologically advanced society always wins,” is how Vincent’s ruthless boss Thomas puts it.
At this unspecified point in the future, scientists have already figured out ways of giving wounded war veterans everything from fully-functioning prosthetic arms and legs to augmented brains the next step, for Vincent, is to build a robot that looks and acts like a human, but processes superior strength and agility. To this end, he creates the unique titular Machine, an artificial being modelled on the likeness and memories of a colleague, Ava. Vincent is stunned to see how quickly the Machine begins to learn and adapt like a human, yet Thomas is more interested in its prowess on the battlefield.
The Machine is something more than just another science fiction dystopia. Its bunker setting, guarded by ominously mute cybernetic soldiers with glowing eyes, is an eerie place, and the mixture of digital and prosthetic effects that bring them to life is sometimes seamless. There’s a moment where we see a robot ‘born’ for the first time, as metal and an oozing, viscous substance come together to make something resembling a human, and it’s mesmerising.
Apparently drawing its ideas from societal norms and potential implications based off cultural standards, The Machine uses these inspirations in thought-provoking and sometimes surprising ways there’s one quite striking, even cheeky reference to Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now, for example.
There are some points in The Machine where the lack of budget does start to tell, particularly in one or two action sequences, but these aren’t the main reason to delineate from the message of the film and how it can be tied to entrepreneurs today in any case. For all its flaws, The Machine manages to build a believable, quite claustrophobic computer world, and through its gentle, innocent title character, poses many thought-provoking questions. If science could create artificial beings indistinguishable from humans, wouldn’t they deserve to be treated with the same dignity as us? Second, and more disquietingly: if they were more intelligent than us, wouldn’t these beings also be more humane, compassionate, and ethical than we ultimately claim to be ?
As technology edges closer to our bodies, and the notion of cybernetic limbs and artificially intelligent drones begin to feel less outlandish, these age-old questions on the ethics and impact of science take on a more urgent dimension. The Machine explores them with intelligence and style. Cult gem status surely beckons. Computers start with many advantages. They have better memories, they can quickly gather information from numerous digital sources, they can work continuously without the need for sleep, they don't make mathematical errors, and they are better at multitasking and thinking several steps ahead than humans. This makes them superior to humans at achieving some goals, such as calculating complex mathematical problems or sorting through large amounts of data. However, most AI systems are specialized for very specific applications. From that perspective we can realize with our innovators today this could be stifling and ultimately shatter their chances to create value to consumers when artificial intelligence could be creating solutions with little effort.
Humans, i.e. innovators on the other hand, can use imagination and intuition when approaching new tasks in new situations. This makes humans more readily able to apply their intelligence to a variety of environments, such as walking along unfamiliar trails.
This is something machines often struggle with. Intelligence can also be defined in other ways, such as the possession of a group of traits, including the ability to reason, represent knowledge, learn, plan, and communicate. Many of these AI systems possess a portion of these traits, but no system has yet acquired them all. Scholars have designed tests to determine if an AI system has human-level intelligence. One example is the Turing Test, in which an interviewer exchanges messages with two players in different rooms. One player is a human, while the other is a machine. To pass the test, the machine must make the interviewer believe that it is the human player. Some AI systems can do this successfully but only over short periods of time. As AI systems grow more sophisticated, we must recognize that they may become better at translating capabilities to different situations the way humans can. This would mean the creation of artificial general intelligence or true artificial intelligence, a primary goal among some researchers. Theoretically, this could result in artificial intelligence that transcends human intelligence. The term “singularity” heard in the film is sometimes used to describe a situation in which an AI system develops agency and grows beyond human ability to control it. So far, experts continue to debate when and whether this is likely to occur.
When looking throughout the film we can see that artificial intelligence can benefit an entrepreneur in our today’s society because it is actually becoming much more prevalent and as stated earlier there are ways that it can stifle an entrepreneur, but I want to go in greater depth on how those interactions with artificial intelligence and the overall systems can be taken from it. AI’s impact on business and innovators there is great potential to replace humans, which is often a hot-button topic. Though in most cases, AI is evaluated as a technology that only takes over some tasks, primarily related to the backend for example, basic logistics operations such as accounting, planning. Therefore, artificial intelligence is used to help make human resources work better. Finally, Modern companies have many ways to interact with customers. It’s time to develop new methods to quickly solve customer problems with the rapid development of online communication channels. From a hindsight perspective we can predict in our innovators future that a quarter of customer service operations will use a custom virtual assistant or some type chatbot. Furthermore, when looking throughout the film we can succinctly see the positive and or negative effects it may have on entrepreneurs and how this can motivate and push them to add greater value for everyone.
