Blog Post # 1

My topic for my research is about the false predicting of what future human like robots will be capable of in film compared to how far we have gotten with A.I today. I would like to use the film terminator to show how the portrayal of robots in film is not where we are now.

My first source written by James E. Gaskin titled What ever happened to artificial intelligence? This article was found on LexisNexis.The relevant information it provide is the promise of great technology from artificial intelligence. The argument is, has A.I lived up to our expectations. It gives the perspective that technology is not as advance as movies portray it. I chose this because it is a big part of what my paper is about. Gaskins says "If you define artificial intelligence as self-aware, self-learning, mobile systems, then artificial intelligence has been a huge disappointment" (Gaskins 55 ). He mentions the few robots that were created in movies and TV shows to give us an idea of what robots will be capable of and then asks the question what happened? Because these shows created expectations we failed to meet.

My second source is another article from LexisNexis titled Attack of killer robots? Not quite. This article was written by Brian Gaar. The relevant information in this article is similar to the first one in the notion that A.I is not as far as we expect it to be but more so about robots not being able to be as human like as much as we would like. The argument is we are slowly building upon robots and it can be dangerous if they are created more complex because they will begin to learn on their own and surpass us. It gives the perspective that A.I is coming along but humans are a little too complex to have a robot replace them as far as emotions and brain activity. Brian states "The history of A.I characterized by people being overly optimistic about what we’re able to achieve" (Gaar  F1). I believe he is speaking about what is portrayed compared to what is actually going on, we are far from having cyborg running around killing or protecting us.

My Research Topic

          The two topics that are at the top of my list to research is portraying robots in film and Science and technology promise or peril. My first topic is portraying robots in film caught my attention because I've seen I Robot and Terminator and I thought it would be cool to take the two movies from totally different times and see how right or wrong they were compared to what they think in this day in age. The more fascinating thing about the movies were terminator was made in the 80's portraying cyborgs in the year 2029 and I Robot is portraying the year 2035. Both are older movies but still giving their assumption about a time we are not that close to in our real world As far as my option for the second topic I have changed it at the last min, I initially had portraying human minds in film but I more interested in technology it is taking over everything and I think everyone should be in the loop. I know there are a lot of technological advances we do not know about and I'm extremely interested in knowing whether this is going to be good for our future or if we are doomed, I do have an opinion on it but I will save it for my paper.