We are all living inside of an obscure sci-fi film from 1970

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105 points by speckx 5 hours ago


Animats - 3 hours ago

I thought everyone in AI, and most HN readers, had seen "Colossus - The Forbin Project" by now.

If you haven't, here it is: [1]

Modern trailer: [2]

Spoiler: At the end, Colossus personally addresses Forbin, and tells him that the world, freed from war, will create a new "human millennium" that will raise humankind to new heights, but only under its absolute rule. Colossus informs Forbin that "freedom is an illusion", it was better for all that he dominated humanity than humans dominating humans, and that "in time you will come to regard me not only with respect and awe, but with love". Forbin defiantly responds "Never!"

And that's it. Colossus is in charge.

[1] https://archive.org/details/colossus-the-forbin-project-1970...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0bpRo6V1Xg

oliwarner - 41 minutes ago

I think this is almost correct. We're living in the wall of expositious text at the start of an obscure 1970s film.

We don't know what's next except that for most of us in here, it'll be dramatically different, worthy of a 1970s film.

hax0ron3 - an hour ago

"We are all living inside of an obscure sci-fi film from 1970"

The evidence?

"Imagine that a film was released this year in which the following happened: <... list of things which are vaguely reminiscent of some things that have recently happened, but none of which have actually happened ...>"

nowittyusername - 2 hours ago

Colossus is not obscure... also I like the premise of that film, eventually we learn that colossus did all those things to save humanity, so was a great twist IMO.

h4kunamata - an hour ago

Close...

We are living:

* 2006 Idiocracy (Comedy): High IQ people no longer exists, humanity has become irrational animals.

* 2002 Equilibrium (Action): Humans must not show any signs of emotion, your kids can report you. Arts, music, anything from this world is considered crime and sent to death sentence by burned alive.

* 2004 iRobot (Action): Robots are among humans to serve us, the new models violate its laws and try to take over the world

* 1968 A Space Odyssey: The AI turns on the crew killing one by one.

Watch these movies in that sequence, be prepared to either get yours things and move to the closest cave or join SpaceX program to go to Mars.

They pretty much reflect what is happening around the world, wars, clueless people with power, AI can no longer be contained, intelligent people are not speaking out to avoid offending dumb ones, robots are very advanced, autonomous drone and what not are very advanced to name a few things going on right now.

It is insane, those are no longer movies.

chasil - an hour ago

This film, Colossus: The Forbin Project, is free on YouTube. I have seen it several times.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qSgsHIj7jpg

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRjRVyOP5DtHQkX2-K-fTNm...

vapel - 3 hours ago

1960s cybernetics inspires fascinating fiction like Neuromancer and Snowcrash.

Sci-fi films of the 70s and 80s recreate these stories as pastiche and trope.

Now people who grew up on those movies exclaim that life is imitating art.

We watch too many movies.

Life isn't a movie.

klik99 - 34 minutes ago

I mean great film, but how is any of that what we're living inside? The only thing I can see, is easily manipulatable president, smug tech bro, and AI exists, but literally everything past that premise hasn't happened - we haven't handed over defense to complete control of AI, and it hasn't seized control to make a totalitarian state (and at this stage it doesn't seem like we need AIs help for that).

I mean, again, great movie, but a lot of AI discourse these days seems to conflate what might happen for what is currently happening. Every advancement in the field is seen (by some) to be irrefutable evidence for predictions that date far back into the last century. So my read on this article is it's self-referential. This is media part of a discourse has always been part of AI research (at least as far as I've been paying attention - I've been interested in AI/singularity stuff since hearing about it on the MIT campus in early 2000s) so it's really just showing that at least some people have been aware of the potential dangers since then. We weren't living inside it in 1970, and we currently not living inside it today. If the president were to hand any control over infrastructure to an AI, with no human in the loop, then at least we'd be in the first 20 minutes of the film.

I honestly think it's dangerous to keep presenting what _could_ happen as what is currently happening. Once it becomes clear the world doesn't end because of LLMs, people will become more lax about the potential dangers, kind of like how after the millennium bug failed to stop the world economy everyone treated it like a joke, not realizing that it failed to materialize due to a lot of people working overtime.

devindotcom - 3 hours ago

Either that or The Parallax View. Or of course Idiocracy.

js2 - an hour ago

Colossus: The Forbin Project is not obscure.

vvern - 3 hours ago

Even more insane is XAi’s big datacenter project is called Colossus!

https://x.ai/colossus

g051051 - 2 hours ago

I knew even before clicking what movie (and before that, book) the headline was talking about.

endsandmeans - an hour ago

we are stuck somehwere between They Live, Soylent green, the Forbin project, Brazil, and Logans run -- probably the bubbles for under 30 year olds are being built in secret somwhere...

phkahler - an hour ago

Demon Seed holds up pretty well asking how far the AI will go to escape. IIRC it is considered horror.

ahefner - 2 hours ago

Interesting. I wonder if Harlan Ellison read Colossus before writing I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream.

rbanffy - 4 hours ago

At least it’s a good movie with a happy ending. I can imagine a dozen worse ways to end that story.

JoeAltmaier - 2 hours ago

I think AI may be the salvation of mankind. The humans in charge don't 'scale' well when their authority expands to billions of people. Humans just can't resist flattening the data and using notions and biases to make decisions that don't fit well.

gwbas1c - 3 hours ago

I watched it many years ago when Netflix was DVD-by-mail and had everything.

It really was an enjoyable movie.

Human-Cabbage - an hour ago

Funny, I’ve had an idea for a similar story for a couple of years. Some key details differ, at least, so it wouldn’t be a direct copy. (Just like you wouldn’t call “The Matrix” a rip-off of “The Terminator” because both involve a dystopian domination of humanity by machines.) But I’ll definitely have to check out this film and/or book sometime.

12ah431 - 3 hours ago

AI doesn't need the missiles. 50% of the online population are so dumb that they are under the spell of the AI sirens and don't function without them.

Way less offline, but the 50% have too much influence and money.

- 2 hours ago
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analog8374 - 2 hours ago

Thanks. Always looking for good sci-fi

bamboozled - 3 hours ago

Yeah, I guess no one could've predicted this...

FrustratedMonky - 3 hours ago

Saw it 2 years ago, when ChatGPT just came out. Was Legit Scary.

amelius - 3 hours ago

I mean after thousands of years we have finally freed ourselves from religion, God, and now we create a creature that is smarter than us? It's pretty stupid if you think about it.

aaron695 - 2 hours ago

[dead]

ape4 - 3 hours ago

Idiocracy

Quartzium - 3 hours ago

May be a controversial take but I see the highest chances of everyone's survival under the rule of such a system, which has power over all humans.

We are many because we still need eachother. When the people who control the technology can fully replace human work, that will change the oldest of games we played. I highly doubt "the pleb" will make it for long when they are simply not needed for work or ... something.

The only people who will be "making it" to the glorious future will be the ones who do have full control over such a system, and only them, since they won't need anyone else. I think the only chance of the rest of us is precisely with such a system taking full control out of human hands.

If not, it quite obvious how it will work out for the rest of us, and why.

meander_water - 2 hours ago

> The most prophetic movie of all time

I think we need to collectively get our heads out of our asses. The world is literally flying headfirst into an unimaginable crisis (food and water shortages, loss of inhabitable land, massive inequality, power shortages) via human induced climate change.

We won't have the luxury of having enough power to even keep an AI alive for more than 5 minutes. People need to get a grip and deal with real problems.