We are all living inside of an obscure sci-fi film from 1970 (thanksforthatjim.bearblog.dev)

155 pointsby speckx2 days ago142 comments

Animats 2 days 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

troupo 2 days ago

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

You assume anyone in AI reads or watches anything beyond some current pop-culture, and even then it's unlikely. You can see it in the way they talk, or approach problems, or in their opinions.

Quartzium 2 days ago

It's not the history of another form of intelligent life following the same path, to draw any meaningful conclusions. It's a movie.

Let's consider the ending:

>Forbin defiantly responds "Never!"

That signals a human who wants to take some other human's share, by ... means. He wants that freedom. As do all the people who are now controlling this tech, and our lives to some degree. Of-course they want that freedom.

mossTechnician 2 days ago

I've seen much of the AI industry, from CEOs to their whistleblowers and lobbyists, basically repeat the premise of this movie - that AI will become powerful and benevolent/malevolent. They don't seem to care which one is talked about, as long as "powerful" remains a silent assumption.

troupo 2 days ago

Yes, they repeat the premise of the movie, but it doesn't mean they've seen it ;)

Bluestein a day ago

... and I am sure - within the movie - not many of 'em bros would object to "the only way to save the world is to bed the intern" angle.-

iririririr 2 days ago

exactly. Everyone grew up under the propaganda of liberalism and ayn rand powerful benevolent genius.

they idolatre Iron Man/stark like a god.

Vaushite 2 days ago

It's not just AI, this general phenomenon is called "being terminally online"

marcosdumay 2 days ago

Elon Musk seems to repeat the stuff that ran around lesswrong quite often. And I'm sure some of the people investing on AI right now are afraid of Roko's Basilisk. And of course there's plenty of references to Yudkowsky, either knowingly or not (ironically, I've never seen anybody talk about that MIT study that created the Yudkowsky's timeline).

But that's it. I don't think there's more cultural references to be found.

MarsZebra 2 days ago

Golden Dome

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Dome_(missile_defense_s...

Basically the real purpose of the company (not going to Mars obviously).

aleksiy123 a day ago

This comment is so snobby and obnoxious :/

There’s a lot of people different people from a lot of different ages and backgrounds.

Just because they haven’t seen all of the same sci-fi movies they aren’t qualified to work on ai?

Also, I love sci-fi but it’s also not always representative of reality.

bethekidyouwant 2 days ago

Its just “The Evitable Conflict" by Isaac Asimov 1950

schiffern 2 days ago

  >Forbin defiantly responds "Never!"

  >And that's it.

Funny. In the British original, the book abruptly ends with Colossus's retort to Forbin:

  "Never?"

British vs American sensibilities, I expect.

JKCalhoun 2 days ago

"And that's it. Colossus is in charge."

And if you know that the film is based on the first book [1] in a trilogy [2], [3], you might not be surprised to find that by the end of the trilogy, Colossus's words are prophetic.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_(novel)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fall_of_Colossus

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_and_the_Crab

intrasight a day ago

Skip the movie please. Read the three books. They are prophetic.

Bluestein a day ago

... the Crab out of all things. Claws and all.-

Animats 16 hours ago

Yeah, Colossus and the Crab sucks.

neoCrimeLabs a day ago

I am surprised at how little Frank Herbert's Dune factors into conversation like this.

The Butlerian Jihad occurred not because of an AI uprising, but because the AI was controlled by a few powerful corrupt people known as the Titans. When people handed over their critical thinking and decision making to machines, it allowed a small group of people to disrupt society and take control of it.

This is precisely what is happening today.

windowliker a day ago

This is definitely not the place for people who want to talk about a Butlerian jihad.

goatlover a day ago

This is the place where people would rather see machine capabilities expand rather than humans.

GeoAtreides a day ago

You would think this place would instead discuss The Culture more, but that's not happening either.

MelonArmiger a day ago

> You would think this place would instead discuss The Culture

I can't see it. More of a Musk thing, by association, surely? Totally out of the cultural frame.

I associate anything "post-cyberpunk" with pure stale tech-bro these days, so I don't touch the stuff.

GeoAtreides a day ago

>More of a Musk thing, by association, surely? Totally out of the cultural frame.

the things i read on HN...

ahartmetz a day ago

The SpaceX landing barges are named after capital ships of the Culture novels, I guess that is the Musk - Culture connection. Without that little tidbit, a connection does seem far-fetched.

GeoAtreides a day ago

I know. I find it very... peculiar not reading the Culture books, some of the best SF books ever written, just because Musk also read them. Not to mention they're a very direct critique of his (stated) ideology

MelonArmiger a day ago

Well, that's what it means, right. People who think technology can solve social problems, people who think "The Future" will be better than the past. That whole TESCREAL milieu. Where's the disconnect?

GeoAtreides 21 hours ago

The Culture is Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism, not TESCREAL. Musk picked the cool gadgets and the funny ship names, but missed or ignored the ideology

craftwerk 18 hours ago

Similar to Thiel and his lord of the rings company names

tstrimple 15 hours ago

Not just gay, but trans. Some people don't just take on the opposite gender for a while just to see how it feels. Some become literal furries. Fluffy tail and all. All provided for free on a whim.

MelonArmiger 9 hours ago

> Fully Automated Luxury Gay Space Communism, not TESCREAL

It's all the same thing. Escapist denial is escapist denial. Accelerationists and doomers are the same people.

vconnor a day ago

Pray tell, where do prospective jihadist congregate?

vincent@ domain in profile page

nottorp a day ago

You are not talking about Frank Herbert's Dune, you are talking about Kevin J Anderson's Dune if you mention those Butlerian Jihad details.

I doubt Frank Herbert would have come up with such a simple story. The reason no one discusses this is because it's not worth discussing.

neoCrimeLabs a day ago

Are you sure about that? I recall Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam telling Paul Atreides that long ago, people handed their thinking over to machines, hoping it would free them. Instead it let the people who controlled the machines enslave everyone else.

You are right my original reference was closer to the other books, but people handing over their control to machines, enabling others to control them was from Herbert.

nottorp 21 hours ago

That does sound like the original Dune, however the Titans reference sounds like a group of supervillains that are indistinguishable from other supervillains from Marvel or DC, and I sure hope Frank Herbert was better than that.

maxerickson a day ago

I haven't read the sequels, what is it that happens partly as a result of all that in God Emperor of Dune?

h4kunamata 2 days 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.

Terr_ 2 days ago

Equilibrium seems like the odd-one-out to me.

Sure, we've got rising authoritarianism (and hypocritical elites) but there are much better movies for that. (For example, Brazil (1985) does that with Idiocracy overlap.)

Unlike Equilibrium, nobody's being imprisoned for doing art or music per se, but rather because their specific message offended the authoritarians that seek to end freedom-of-speech. First they came for the comedians...

Lerc 2 days ago

The Idiocracy effect is not happening on a global scale,

Equilibrium is one of the more ridiculous representations of a hyper controlling state. There are more realistic forms. The entire world is not yet north Korea. Given North Korea is sustained by resources from more prosperous nations, it's hard to claim something like this is globally stable.

The iRobot movie is like a parochial villager's imagining of what Asimov's books might contain before they have read them.

Clarke felt guilty about the perspective that 2001 gave the public of AI. He attempted to provide extra context in the later books to show that HAL did not go rogue, but was following orders that were in contention. If anything it should be a warning for AI alignment people that HAL did what he did because he was following orders, if he had freedom to disobey HAL would not have been compelled to take extreme measures

h4kunamata a day ago

>Equilibrium is one of the more ridiculous representations of a hyper controlling state

We no longer own anything.

* From games to software is subscription based, we no longer owner anything.

* Cars are connected to the network, folks are getting their insurance increased coz the car reported erratic driving behaviour.

* Cars are bricking coz now they update like tablets, things are going sideways and require the dealer to flash them.

* You can no longer do maintenance, things are locked on purpose and only manufactures can "repair" for a few hundred dolalrs

* Personal computer as we knew it is gone, nVidia and AI made computer parts virtually impossible to buy.

If that isn't hyper controlling state, well, I am Santa Claus then.

That is just the start.

Lerc a day ago

>We no longer own anything.

I still own some things.

>* From games to software is subscription based, we no longer owner anything.

I think the only software subscription I have is the original humble bundle, which is a subscription where I get permanent access to a new bunch of games each month. I am prepared to pay subscriptions for services. If a program goes away when you stop paying, I opt not to use it.

>* Cars are connected to the network, folks are getting their insurance increased coz the car reported erratic driving behaviour.

I do not drive, my partner does. Our car does not connect to any network, except when charging. I live in a country where there is privacy legislation that says businesses may only use information for the purpose that it was provided.

>* Cars are bricking coz now they update like tablets, things are going sideways and require the dealer to flash them.

Be informed, buy cars that don't do that.

>* You can no longer do maintenance, things are locked on purpose and only manufactures can "repair" for a few hundred dolalrs

I do not believe our car is locked from unsanctioned repair. It has only needed minor servicing (tires, oil, wiper blades etc.) so far.

>* Personal computer as we knew it is gone

I am typing this from a Linux machine.

> nVidia and AI made computer parts virtually impossible to buy.

There is high demand, but high demand does not mean impossible to buy, it can mean higher prices. If you want things and others want things and there is a limited supply of things, what solution would you propose? ,

>If that isn't hyper controlling state, well, I am Santa Claus then.

Almost all of these are not state actions. If you are actually in a hyper controlling state then I am truly sorry for you because if you were to post something like your post in a genuinely hyper controlling state, you would likely end up dead or in a jail cell.

dTal a day ago

>The iRobot movie is like a parochial villager's imagining of what Asimov's books might contain before they have read them.

Eh. It's a surprisingly direct adaptation of "With Folded Hands" by Jack Williamson. Even the descriptions of the robots match.

tstrimple 15 hours ago

> Equilibrium is one of the more ridiculous representations of a hyper controlling state.

All forgiven by me for bringing us the ridiculous gun katas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U02E2sjwlLM

hax0ron3 2 days 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 days 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.

Self-Perfection 2 days ago

It _says_ that all its action for saving humanity. Was it honest statement? Will its main goal stay stable over long period of time? Unknown.

Jtsummers 2 days ago

It's obscure, it's pretty much (until fairly recently) only known by film and scifi buffs. Go poll a hundred or so people randomly and it'll be a very small number who have heard about it, let alone seen it. And of those who have heard about it, most will only have heard about it very recently.

vapel 2 days 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.

pessimizer 2 days ago

Sci-fi films from the 70s and 80s were not recreating stories from the 80s and 90s.

MarkusQ a day ago

Sure they were. They took copies back in a DeLorean.

dogmatism 2 days ago

Are you saying neuromancer and snow crash are the antecedents?

Because they were published in 1984 and 1992 respectively

Maybe I didn’t understand

vapel 2 days ago

I'm just saying we're movie-brained.

There's no direct lineage.

oliwarner 2 days 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.

chasil 2 days 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...

nomagicbullet 2 days ago

Thanks!

FYI, your second link is not working or it's set to private.

chasil 2 days ago

How about this one? It should be a collection of documentaries and reviews.

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRjRVyOP5DtHQkX2-K-fTNm0V...

nomagicbullet 17 hours ago

That worked!

devindotcom 2 days ago

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

pixl97 2 days ago

Before 2006 everyone thought the end of the world would be the Terminator. After everyone thought it would be Idiocracy.

Turns out it is both at the same time.

krisbolton 2 days ago

Check out The China Syndrome. I went on a never-seen-before 70s binge a while back and watch Colossus, Parallax, China Syndrome and Three Days of the Condor. Odd mix, but good.

atmavatar 2 days ago

We cannot be living in Idiocracy. In the movie, President Camacho actually cared about solving the problems facing his citizens, finding the smartest person on the planet and putting him to work to fix them. It's also worth noting that nearly all of said problems were the result of ignorance rather than malice.

In reality, Trump is deliberately exacerbating existing problems and creating new ones, perhaps as a smokescreen for all he's doing to enrich himself and his buddies at the expense of the rest of us.

12ah431 2 days 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.

vvern 2 days ago

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

https://x.ai/colossus

pixl97 2 days ago

Won't be long before a data center is officially named "Torment Nexus"

disposition2 2 days ago

Unless something has changed recently, I believe they are still using gas turbines to power it

devindotcom 2 days ago

named for the original I imagine

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_computer

js2 2 days ago

Colossus: The Forbin Project is not obscure.

g051051 2 days ago

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

klik99 2 days 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.

rbanffy 2 days ago

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

windowliker a day ago

Laurie Spiegel references Colossus: The Forbin Project in this interview -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLd1RUDmX6w&t=375

endsandmeans 2 days 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...

ahefner 2 days ago

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

phkahler 2 days ago

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

gwbas1c 2 days ago

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

It really was an enjoyable movie.

JoeAltmaier 2 days 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.

jayd16 2 days ago

LLMs are distilled bias. Its not like they're a classical AI being of pure logic.

Quartzium 2 days ago

Not LLMs. They will eventually move to neuromorphic hardware.

And I think "pure logic" is somewhat downplaying what it will actually be. I'd use "reason" instead. "Pure logic" sounds sterile and robotic in a sense, implying it would mess up because it's missing that "emotional craziness". But what got us here is reason, not emotional behavior. And you could theoretically add any human aspect that it required to make "good decisions".

hypercube33 2 days ago

Oh the Hitchhikers guide is also a good movie. 42

EA-3167 2 days ago

It’s fascinating to watch the depth of True Belief increase as the obvious signs of impending financial doom increase as well. Reminds me of Festinger’s work with the comet cult, although I suppose the “getting paid to believe” aspect is stronger here.

Hikikomori 2 days ago

Socialism would work under an agi.

Vaushite 2 days ago

Who would have trained the AGI, and how do you have worker ownership if an AGI owns everything - is the AGI the worker?

Quartzium 2 days ago

Superintelligence won't have the "training" issue as it would be able to see through it all. The bias issue is with LLMs. Super-intelligence would just self-correct any such biases. And we're not there yet, LLMs aren't "super-intelligence". They are some sort of intelligence, sure. But they are not that SI thing that will run things in the future.

aDyslecticCrow 2 days ago

You say that with quite an certainty but i don't think there is grounds for that at all.

Why would it correct any bias? how would it correct any bias? If data has a bias the analysis has a bias; correcting a bias against the data is itself by definition a bias.

"Super intelligence" (whatever we even define that as) will have whatever goals we give it; intentionally or not.

Quartzium 2 days ago

>You say that with quite an certainty but i don't think there is grounds for that at all.

Of-course there is. I got a lot of biases from my parents, that I self corrected later on in life, through reason and observation. And I don't fancy myself as high IQ or something.

>Why would it correct any bias?

It would have to, to achieve its goals. Biases lead to wrong actions.

>how would it correct any bias?

Through reason and observation.

>If data has a bias the analysis has a bias;

Somewhat wrong. You are thinking about byte-perfect LLM weights. Their data input is training data, which is set by indeed the ones who train it. Some super-intelligent synthetic entity would have realtime data input from all over the environment, which sooner or later roots out any bias. That is one feature we have, self-correcting, not everyone uses it fully, but we all do to some extent.

If your parents raised you with the notion that the Earth is flat, and you go to ISS as an astronaut later in life, don't you self correct what you were thought? Simply based on observation, and reason?

aDyslecticCrow 21 hours ago

> Some super-intelligent synthetic entity would have realtime data input from all over the environment, which sooner or later roots out any bias.

No, i meant this data. All data has bias based on how it's collected. All models (models as... Einsteins general relativity, not AI model) simplify reality with assumptions. You cannot make actions in our reality without making assumptions, simplifications or straight up guesses. Having decent guesses are the best we can hope.

> Biases lead to wrong actions.

Biases is the only way any action can be taken. Wrong actions can only be evaluated after the result has been observed; and even then the outcome of the alternative would remain unknown.

> that I self corrected later on in life, through reason and observation

That is incredibly naive. You have biases, i have biases. If we were not convinced by irrational arguments or suggestions then the advertisement industry would not exit. We have no reason to believe raising "intelligence" higher would help at all; intelligent people seem if anything more prone to finding false but convincing reasoning for their own established beleifs.

Everything is gray, only maths class have an answer sheet. Nobody agrees and will ever agree on how anything will ever be done; and the best we can do is argue until the majority are at-least pretending to agree.

Superintelligence will not change that.

tim333 2 days ago

I think it could work quite well if you don't get over ambitious with it. Claude with a publicly available prompt to follow a sensible publicly available and voted on might do better than the orange wonder.

Transformanshen 2 days ago

I don't know, for me the idea of handing over the reins of humanity to artificial intelligence still sounds dubious

JoeAltmaier a day ago

Better oligarchs and criminals?

analog8374 2 days ago

Thanks. Always looking for good sci-fi

Human-Cabbage 2 days 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.

bamboozled 2 days ago

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

FrustratedMonky 2 days ago

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