Why AI is almost always the bad guy in movies

DW (English)

For decades, AI has been cast as a threat in movies — often playing the bad guy who wants to take over the world. But why is its image so negative? And what does that say about our fears of technology?

Transcript

00:00Over the years, AI has appeared in many forms in movies and television series.

00:05As robots, computers and even figures that seem almost human.

00:12These characters that we love, hate or fear tell us a lot about our relationship with

00:17AI.

00:18Paula Murphy, a researcher in film and literature at Dublin City University, has written a book

00:24about this topic.

00:25For me, I think the first clear representation of artificial intelligence is in the 1950s

00:31and it's the character of Robbie the Robot, who appears first in Forbidden Planet in 1956.

00:38Robbie was a smart and kind robot with human characteristics, including humor.

00:43Still, it was portrayed as a threat.

00:46Paula Murphy says that AI is often portrayed as something evil wanting to take over the

00:50world.

00:51Why?

00:52I think AI film reflects human anxieties about artificial intelligence for sure.

00:59And that's why we see so many negative portrayals.

01:02Those anxieties are perhaps multiplied by the fact that more recent representations of artificial

01:08intelligence in a film show that our relationship with AI is really intertwined.

01:14AI that knows us, shapes us and influences our world is both thrilling and unsettling, especially

01:21when love is involved.

01:23Like in the movie Her, where the main character Theodore falls for an AI chatbot named Samantha,

01:29which makes us wonder…

01:30Are they like us or not like us?

01:32What does it mean for how we define ourselves as humans if artificial intelligences can exhibit

01:40similar emotions and feelings and understandings?

01:43Another common on-screen portrayal of AI is as a tool.

01:48The series Person of Interest explores the potential for digital surveillance via AI.

01:53Once dystopian, things like facial recognition or governments and companies spying on us through

01:58our phones are more realistic today.

02:01And there are ethical questions like can AI be fundamentally good or bad or does it depend

02:07on how we humans control it?

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