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Civic Imagination

SkyNet: the danger of Artificial Intelligence

In the near future Americans create an advanced artificial intelligence for the purposes of superior national defense. This AI, named “SkyNet,” and later simply called “the Machines,” is originally located within the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, in Colorado Springs, CO. It was trusted with managing US military resources, including the nuclear arsenal, cyber infrastructure, and certain military hardware and production. In building what was hoped to be the ultimate protector of the US and her allies, the US instead inadvertently creates and empowers an enemy hell-bent on destroying humanity. Through the evolution of the Terminator franchise, particular details of the story change in different timelines created when both the human resistance and the machines attempt to preempt the other with time travel. In each iteration, however, certain things remain consistent. Namely, it is that in one way or another advanced artificial intelligence is created by well-intentioned humans, and a catastrophic “judgment day” is inflicted on humanity by the Machines. The hero of the story is John Connor, who grows up knowing details of an apocalyptic future, told to him by his mother who is foretold the future by a resistance fighter sent back in time to protect her from assassination by a time-travelling terminator. John Connor is called on to become the leader of the human resistance against the machines. Through following his character story to story one learns that the main message imparted by the creators of the franchise is a message of warning. That is, artificial intelligence is dangerous, and humanity’s belief in its position at the top of the food chain is arrogant and naïve.

I've seen the Terminator movies many times starting in my tween years. Wrapping my head of time-travel and its paradoxes fascinated me, as does the predictions of dystopian future.

I think this fiction and other pieces in the genre can be used as warning to people or groups in our society that wish to create and entrust artificial intelligence. That perhaps humanity is better without it, as an AI might decide that the best way to protect us or the planet might not be the policy we would choose...to drastically different outcomes.

Artificial Intelligence, AI, dystopian future, social commentary, time travel, apocalypse genre

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4. Sailor Moon Sailor Moon is a young teenage girl that learns that she has magical powers that allows her to fight against the evils of the extraterrestrial world. She finds the Sailor Scouts, Venus, Mercury, Mars, and Jupiter. Each of them have powers that relate to the symbolism of their planet and a specific superhero outfit that they wear. Based in Neo-futuristic Tokyo the story was released in the 1990’s as a manga and then a television anime came out. It became very popular among teens especially young Asian-American girls because of where it was based although the characters were many depicted as white skin tone.
5. Chef "Chef is a film released in 2014 that was written and directed by Jon Favreau who was inspired by his own career in film and love of the culinary arts to create a movie about a popular chef who needs to find his creative spark and fall in love with cooking once more. The film begins in California where Chef Carl Casper lives and works. After receiving a brutally negative review from a well regarded food critic, Carl reevaluates his job at a fancy restaurant in California. He realized that sticking to a strict menu has taken away a lot of joy from the profession he used to love. After he quits his job, Carl heads to Miami, Florida with his family because his ex-wife, Inez, needs him to watch their son, Percy, while she works.
6. The Lion King
7. The colonial city
12. Freedom Writers: Bridging Racial Divides Through Writing Freedom Writers (the movie) is based on a true story of a school in Long Beach, California. The main character, Erin Gruwell, is a new teacher at Woodrow Wilson Classical High School and placed with the students who are considered at-risk and unteachable. These students were almost entirely comprised of minorities, with the exception of one student. With such a diverse class and a group of students who had no apparent desire to learn, the film explores the real-world challenges that Gruwell faced trying to get her students to come to class wanting to learn, if they would even want to come to their classes at all. The class divides itself based on race, and fights and arguments breakout regularly. The class later finds common ground on their feelings and discussions around The Holocaust. Her students become inspired to break free from the things that originally divided them, most notably with one character speaking out against someone who she was being forced to lie for during a trial. She tasked her students with writing in a diary and then compiled those journals and writings into a collection of them all in “The Freedom Writers Diary.”
13. Sanjay's Super Team This is an animated short film from Pixar directed and written by Sanjay Patel who based it off his experiences as a child. The story revolves around a young boy, Sanjay, and his father, an Indian-American migrant. Sanjay is watching his favourite superheroes on TV while his father is praying by the shrine in the same room. His father urges him to join in the ritual but Sanjay refuses so he switches off the TV and takes his toy in order to force him into it.
17. The Infinite Forking Possibilities of the Future
21. Zootopia: Disney's Introduction to Reality for Children
23. SkyNet: the danger of Artificial Intelligence
25. Sandokan: A Post-Colonial Coldwar Hero The plot of the novel revolves around the adventures of Sandokan - a Bornean man who lost his status, home and family to British colonialists. Embittered by his experience, Sandokan sets up camp at the island of Mompracem. From there he leads a gang of pirates under the flag of the Tiger. Together they destabilize the colonialists’ authority through robbery and violence. Steeped in the colonial period in which it was written, Salgari’s novel pitted indigenous populations against the colonial powers in ways that highlighted the evils of imperialism and celebrated resistance. As Maria Bianca Gerlich (1998, 34) observes, “Sandokan, Mompracem, and the flag of the tiger are allegories in the fight for freedom.”
27. Be kind to yourself
28. Equilibrium Equilibrium is set in 2072 in Libria, a city state established by the survivors of World War III. “Equilibrium” is an action/thriller movie following John Preston (Bale), an enforcement officer in a futuristic world where a regime has decided to eliminate war by suppressing emotions using a certain type of drug. Books, art and music are strictly forbidden and "feeling" is a crime punishable by death.
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Contents of this tag:
2. SkyNet: the danger of Artificial Intelligence