By Cecil Hoge

In all fairness I have not been to a movie theater in over 2 decades, so maybe my view of the present state of movies is somewhat skewed. My experience for the last 20 years or so comes from Cable TV and movies streamed over Netflix, Amazon and Apple. So what I see is on a small screen and that may not reflect a true movie experience of sitting in an elegant movie theater. And of course, most of the movies I see are after they have come out, so certainly I am missing some of the excitement and the immersive viewing experience that comes from sitting in movie theater and viewing a giant screen with some fantastic sound system.

That said, from what I can see, movies today are a vast wasteland, with few interesting or significant or realistic or plausible movies being made. Present movies seem to fall into several groups:

The Go Fast Movies – displaying handsome young and fit guys and gals, beautiful, slim and trim, happily risking their lives every 22 seconds, only to be interrupted by various kinds of explosions or car crashes or gunfights. Most of these movies have almost no plot and few premises that make sense. But that is no problem for these lads and lasses who are off to the races speeding around cliffs, leaping canyons, flying off into space with cleverly contrived cars and trucks. There are lots explosions, plenty of people getting shot, fistfights galore and occasionally a good guy or gal goes down for the count, but mostly the dying is done by the bad guys and bad gals, of which there are many.

The Rom Com Movies – girls and boys stumbling over efforts to get together, accidently meeting each other, breaking up for sad and unrealistic reasons, coming back together only to break up a few more times through the course of different ups and downs and mutual misunderstandings. Some of which may have some humor. In these movies the lead girl and boy go through lots of embarrassments and mistakes and blunders and misunderstandings until the inevitable moment they rediscover lost love and true happiness in the last 5 minutes of the movie.

Cinderella Movies – Not to be confused with Rom Com movies, since there is little or no humor. That said there is no end to the permutations of nature’s finest and most beautiful girls meeting up with the handsome princes they always dreamed about. Usually, there is a slipper involved, but with or without a slipper, this story is repeated time after time in movie after movie. The time period that the movie takes place varies from The Stone Age to the 21 first century, the situation of the prince and Cinderella may be modern or ancient, but the plot always leads to the same conclusion. One way or another, the Cinderella always ends up with the Prince. There always other jealous nasty ladies, some Queens or Kings who disapprove at first, and people and situations meant to throw the conclusion off track. But no matter, the Cinderella gets the Prince and all are happy except for some conniving aunts and cousins who often are led off to prison for their no good acts.

The Gladiator Pictures – these movies do not have to involve gladiators, although some do. I call them Gladiator Pictures because they come closest to the real thing of seeing gladiators fight in the Colosseum in Rome. Mostly they involve one guy slaughtering a vast number of bad and evil and ugly looking guys. Sometimes the Gladiator himself is ugly as well. No matter whether the gladiator guy is handsome or ugly or young or old or gritty or natty, he proceeds to systematically slaughter hundreds of nasty, ugly and mean opponents in the short 90 or so minutes of the film. And of course, each and every death or dismemberment is accompanied by spurts of blood, severed arms, mashed in faces and other assorted gory details.

Science Fiction Movies – these movies are still around and no matter how tired or how implausible the sequence of events are, the plot moves forward with weird creatures disgorging unfortunate humans or planets being destroyed by unthinking aliens or aliens and monsters battling each other. And often these movies involve heroes and heroines who find themselves in a deep, dark battle with rogue computer systems. Strangely, that is kind of the subject of this story.

King Kong / Godzilla Movies – almost in a class by themselves, the big creatures are pestered by humans, nuked by mad scientists, caused by climate change, in a constant struggle with other giant creatures, shot at by unthinking jet pilots, in love with well-shaped blondes, haunted by civilization and generally destructive to buildings, airplanes, helicopters and trains.

Comic Book Hero Movies – these have become ubiquitous in the last several years. The theory behind using Comic Book heroes is that the story of heroes, no matter how strange, is somehow uplifting and there is actually some method and reason to whatever the plot is. That said, there is generally no plot other than some mysterious force is against the Comic Book Heroes. Usually, featuring patriotic male and female heroes with various superpowers, the plot is driven by a conflict with some evil denizen or greedy government officials or an alien planet or malevolent manifestation. Whatever the force being faced, be it assured none of it is the least bit believable or logical, but the heroes will overcome the situation and emerge victorious.

Vampire Movies – it would not be fair to exclude Vampires or demons or bloodthirsty robot dolls…all apparently enthusiastically sucking blood or worse from beauteous babes, hapless guys and/or stray dogs. Maybe, the evil doers are just plain demented murderers with some extra chainsaws…maybe, there is a hero with supernatural skills to fight demons and gargoyles…maybe, it is Halloween or there is a mysterious fog about…maybe the hero is saving a sleepy heroine on a mission to stop Frankenstein himself…and so it goes…blood is spilt…throats are perforated…screams are aplenty and maybe the vampires actually get vanquished…no matter, the movies keep coming.

Considering the present selection of movies available, I can only conclude that AI can produce better movies. This is, of course, only my opinion and I am sure many people will disagree with me.

But humor me, if you will, and let me ask what kind of movies will AI make?

Let me hedge my bets and say a lot depends on how AI develops and what various forms AI acquires.

A lot of folks believe that AI will be simply fulfilling tasks and wishes of the human programmers who write the software and algorithms guiding computers. However, there are some people who feel that the present complexity of computers will exponentially increase and along the way computers and/or computer systems will become “sentient “. Some think that may happen in the next 5 years or sooner.

What does it mean for computers to become sentient? Simply put, it means that computers will develop human like minds of their own and may make decisions that are more in their interest than in the interest of humans. This already has been depicted in various science fiction movies such as the movie 2001 cited at the beginning of this story. And some people think computers may decide to take control over the humans that they are supposedly serving.

There are other people who say this could not happen because God would not allow machines to take control of humans. OK, maybe not.

But what kind of movies will God allow AI to make?

Here I think we have to decide if AI will act like a single entity, with a single unified presentation of all things or will AI develop into many entities, with as many different opinions and goals and conclusions as humans.

I am guessing AI will not develop into a single vision, a single entity…I am guessing AI will fragment out into to many different entities. I think AI will be more like the capricious and multitudinous gods of Greek Mythology. So instead of one single entity being we might call AI, there might be hundreds or thousands of different entities pursuing individual purposes and goals and agendas.

The reason I believe that AI will develop into many different entities is that many different corporations, government agencies and countries are building different versions of AI to accomplish different purposes. We know, of course, that big tech companies are all chasing their AI dreams…Google, Meta, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon are all pushing individual systems. Certainly, big media and entertainment companies…Disney, Cable TV, and many Hollywood enterprises are exploring how and what AI can do for them. And then there are many other companies and political interests around world pursuing different and varying goals. That is only part of the efforts to take advantage of the different opportunities AI has to offer.

Individual governments with individual AI goals are no doubt pursuing AI with great zeal and speed. Not only national governments, but also state and local governments are trying to get in the great AI race.

Then, there are other corporate entities that have good reasons to take advantage of what AI has to offer…Walmart, Automobile Manufacturers, Government Agencies, assorted billionaires, etc.

The next question is whether the various AI entities become self-sufficient, autonomous and sentient and then go on to develop various agendas of their own?

I can only guess AI will fragment into hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of unique entities…each with its own approach to this world, offering and creating its own solutions…some strictly obeying the algorithms of their programmers, others pursuing their own individual paths.

So let us suppose what movies computer entities might make. Maybe, we should take a look at a few categories of movies and guess how it might go:

RomCom Movies: one may wonder, how could AI improve on the great or not so great romantic comedies of our day? Surely, computers have no feeling for human emotions or the drive of males and females towards love and sexual fulfillment. But here is where an old adage about computer information comes into play…that is, “the only thing better than data is more data”. So, computer programs designed to make these movies only need to download the 12 million or so romantic comedies, review all the present variations and start regurgitating.

Imagine the many new and different possibilities…girl / boy, boy / boy, girl / girl, transgender girl meets transgender guy and agree to swap genders, boy / girl meet in soulless “manage au trios, quatre, vingt, or whatever” and/or find the beauty and purity of a twosome. And best of all, the companies that programmed these new movies no longer need to hire actors. All the computer programs have to do is to review the most popular 28,000,000 male and female actors of all time and reissue them in slightly different digital forms. No royalties, no actor payments…truly a Hollywood mogul’s dream! And of course, because you no longer need actors, you no longer need sets or different locations. Given this scenario, AI can create all of that previous data and spew out whole movies in seconds flat for pennies a movie.

Gladiator Movies: think what AI can do with this time proven genre. Extra details of gory can can be explored in close ups, wide angle shots, the new AI movies will be able to provide 360 degree views amid explosions, street car races and the more traditional ancient gladiators fighting it out on an inland sea jumping from ship to ship. The same digital solutions can be applied to more up to date Gladiators battling it out on a space station or in space ships or out in space with their tether lines connected to the mother ship and stretched to the limit. And before the hero zaps villains by thousands, think of the great gruesome closeups of the bad guys or alien creatures exploding and splattering about or being shot to bits in the spaceship or space station or out in the great beyond of space.

Of course, because AI will have downloaded all data on all genres, AI can come up with many fascinating hybrid variations…I am talking Vampires sucking the life from King Kongs or Anacondas, witches putting spells on Cinderellas and transforming them into Transformers…great metal vehicles or robots with hot looking love bumps. Ah, the future of AI is endless. Entertainment, here we come.

Let’s consider for a minute and wonder what happens when these AI entities become sentient and start developing their own movies…perhaps, with the aid of newly enslaved humans who spend the rest of their lives keeping the power flowing to the giant AI server farms and make sure they provide ample water and maintain the proper humidity and temperatures for ideal AI performance.

You know, AI entities need a lot of power and they need a lot of water, so you can imagine AI entities getting a little concerned if some careless or heartless human decides to pull the plug and keep some fresh water for human consumption. That has to be a big concern of AI entities in the future. We know that because we saw the concern of Hal in the movie 2001. That is something for us and all AI entities to think about.

Maybe, AI entities will start making movies with their own agenda…Microsoft AI entity falls in love with an X entity. Maybe, they will make a movie about their new found love and because they are jealous of the emotional range and sexual pleasures of humans, they get some slave humans to insert controlling computer chips into some truly fine looking human specimens. In this case, let’s say the Microsoft entity choses Beyoncé as their human representative and X naturally chooses Elon Musk. In that effort, Elon personally volunteers some of his best looking employees to have computer chips implanted in them so the X entity can monitor all the delicious twists and turns of human and computer interaction.

Yes, the future of movie entertainment is about to get underway.

As to whether AI will wipe out humans in 30 years, as Mr. Hinton suggests. I am not worried. At my age, I am not likely to be around in 30 years.