Colossus: The Forbin Project

Tangential: movies are not necessarily the best medium for cautionary tales about super-intelligence, with their penchant for hiding educated reasoning and their need for showy visual effects that always age poorly but get all the viewer's attention. Writing, on the other hand, can do the trick. The same way American schools have periodic rehearsals for "if a shooter comes," they should have a mandatory exercise to "write your own story that features super-intelligence." It might make the kids think[^1].

[^1]: Even if, or especially if, they let ChatGPT write it.

Definitely see this. The 1970s hardware is archaic, but the concept is still relevant.

So is the scale. For the 1980s and 1990s, the huge Colossus system seemed obsolete. The age of the personal desktop computer had arrived.

Now Colossus looks small compared to Amazon's AI training system from 2025.

Back when I worked as a civil engineer I had a coworker named Joe. He was... I think 78. Poor guy didn't save up enough for retirement so he worked a bit part time. He knew the ins and outs of the field better than anyone, but had no idea how to use a computer (he marked up drawings and I put them into CAD). He mentioned this movie to me as AI (gpt) had just become a thing saying "it'll scare the hell out of you", and he recommended I watched it - I'm glad I did! Great guy, always told funny stories - "I was not a great dad but I was a damn wonderful grandpa!"

Great film, I thought. The ending is quite dark—and then Colossus tells Forbin that he will come to love him…

Turns out it is prescient. The film was based on the first book of a trilogy. You can look up the plot of the following two novels if you want spoilers, but indeed, Forbin does have a reconsideration of Colossus.

I would love to see the whole trilogy filmed.

I've been joking at work that the 70's was filled with cautionary tales about AI that we should be listening to.

(Except for Demon Seed. That one jumped the shark - but I did love their rendition of what an AI data center looks like)

Back in the late 90s the Michigan Tech CS labs had 2 preferred machines for students to remote into, Colossus and Guardian.

I always enjoyed the reference as well as this movie’s a kid!

Yeah, agent guardrails has been an issue for a long time now :)

This movie is not available as video-on-demand where I live. I could rent it on DVD though. And buy a DVD player.

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This movie is a terrible bore, but the concept and set is awesome.

The GOAT.