If you were born after 1991 the World Wide Web has been available your entire life, which makes you part of the first generation of humans with the breadth of our species’ knowledge instantly available at the tip of your fingers. The next big step for humanity, therefore, is the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI), which is the theme shared by all four films presented in the upcoming “University of Cincinnati Artificial Intelligence Series” held at the Esquire Theatre.
While already an integral part of our modern lives, we’re still waiting for the day when a seemingly new species emerges from the inevitable breakthrough in AI: a machine becoming indistinguishable from a living organism. The films in the series — Blade Runner (Final Cut), War Games, Her and Ex Machina — each navigate this topic through varying lenses, and all will be screened at the Esquire between Oct. 7 and Nov. 4. Introductions will accompany the screenings, given by UC faculty, including Tanja Nusser, Department of German Studies and Film & Media Studies; Udo Greinacher, College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning; Michael Jones, Department of Economics; Richard Harknett and Gregory Winger, Department of Political Science; and Heidi Maibom, Department of Philosophy.
The films were assembled by the aforementioned faculty, who are participating in a “UC Forward” interdisciplinary course. Tickets are free for UC students; contact Program Director Michael Gott at michael.gott@uc.edu. The general public is invited to join as well; tickets can be purchased through The Esquire’s website or at the box office (320 Ludlow Ave., Clifton).
Showtimes are as follows:
- Ex Machina – Oct. 7, 7 p.m. A programmer at an internet-search company, Caleb Smith, wins a competition to spend a week at the CEO’s estate, tucked away in the mountains. But he learns that he was chosen to be the human half of a Turing Test, a method of determining if a computer is capable of thinking like a real person. Tasked with evaluating Ava, a beautiful cutting-edge robot, they soon find that she is capable of more than they could have conceived.
- Her – Oct. 14, 7 p.m. Set in a near future in sunny Los Angeles, 2013’s Her — Oscar winner for Best Original Screenplay — follows Theodore Twombly, a recently-divorced man who writes personal letters for other people for a living. Lonely and mourning his relationship, he begins using an advanced operating system (voiced by Scarlett Johansson) — think Amazon’s Alexa or Google Home — to which he forms a strong bond.
- War Games – Oct. 21, 7 p.m. David Lightman, a high school student played by Matthew Broderick, hacks into a military computer accidentally while on the search for new video games. In doing so, he’s granted complete control of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. At first, this comes unbeknownst to him and, thinking he’s playing a game, he starts the countdown to World War 3. Made in 1983 amid the Cold War, the film asks questions still relevant today. As a press release poses: “Can we trust computers with our lives? More importantly, can we trust computers not to end our lives?”
- Blade Runner (Final Cut) – Nov. 4, 7 p.m. Ridley Scott’s 1982 cyberpunk classic — which got a long-overdue sequel in 2017 — stars Harrison Ford as 21st-century detective Rick Deckard who comes out of retirement to hunt for synthetic humans known as “replicants”, a species bioengineered by a corporation to work on space colonies. Though physically identical (and, in many ways, superior) to humans, replicants were banned from Earth after a mutiny. Though this dystopian noir thriller polarized critics at the time of its release, it has since been called one of the best science fiction films of all time
This article appears in Sep 25 – Oct 2, 2019.
