8 ms·
Before Skynet and The Matrix, there was Colossus: The Forbin Project
- graposaymaname 3y agoStrongly recommend watching ‘Metropolis (1927)’ if you’re into film history. It’s one of the oldest science fiction movies ever, and is still a good watch. It’s about a humanoid robot and an authoritarian government. I saw it this week and was baffled by the insight and the scale of it.
- a-dub 3y ago> It’s about a humanoid robot and an authoritarian government. you really think so? it's true that the government in the film was authoritarian, but the plight of the workers seemed far more salient than the structure of power that was keeping them in their place.
- Fissionary 3y agoSpoilers: I found the movie's portrayal of a social conflict quite disappointing. The movie goes as far as showing that oppressed workers will lash out in a violent protest, but then it deflects this anger towards the mad scientist, and the conflict kind of fizzles out? And I think it ends with the owner of the factory promising not to oppress them as much, and the owner's privileged son promising to upkeep this, basically reinforcing the existing social order. Doing anything else would stray dangerously towards socialism, though, so as a product of its time it's understandable.
- pram 3y agoI found the conclusion closer to the 'class collaboration' ideology of Fascism. Capital and labor are both dysfunctional in the movie, and this is portrayed in a typical socialist way: The upper classes are libertine, corrupt, inattentive, immoral. Labor is overworked, unrepresented, exploited. However when labor tries to emancipate themselves from the oppressive and rigid order imposed, chaos ensues. They can't manage themselves correctly! So the ultimate solution is a synthesis. The classes stay in their positions (because this is the natural order) but conditions will be improved and so on
- d0mine 3y ago"natural order" argument reminds me how Aristotle describes a natural slave as "anyone who, while being human, is by nature not his own but of someone else" and further states "he is of someone else when, while being human, he is a piece of property; and a piece of property is a tool for action separate from its owner." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_slavery https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_slavery "natural" does NOT mean good or that it is worth preserving.
- herodoturtle 3y ago+1 would recommend. Stumbled across this movie as a youngster, very much thanks to a certain iconic scene: “Burn’s wetware matches her software.”
- peoplefromibiza 3y agoMetropolis is actually about the fear of the mass industrialization and the class struggle. Fritz Lang was Austrian, but the movie was produced in Germany in a period were things were quite grim there. The protagonist of Metropolis is in the title: Metropolis, the city, from the greek μητρόπολις, meter = mother, polis = city (or state).
- msla 3y agoMetropolis is proof that big, unsubtle Special Effects Pictures go back to the silent era. The movie's Big Philosophical Statement is people should be nice to each other, but the visual effects were unmatched at the time and hold up well even now, assuming you find a good restoration. It's truly a marvel of its era, in every possible sense.
- somedude895 3y agoAlways blows my mind that the film is from 1927. The definition of avant-garde.
- MichaelMoser123 3y agothere was the play R.U.R by Karel Čapek. The play is from 1921, and it coined the word 'Robot'. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R. Now in the plot "the robots revolt and cause the extinction of the human race". Also there is his older brother, the Golem. He has his own movie from 1915. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golem_(1915_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golem_(1915_film)
- transfire 3y agoOne of my favorite movies, and the books are even better.
- Animats 3y ago> the books are even better. The first one, yes, but by "Colossus and the Crab" it's gone downhill.
- spiritplumber 3y agoEverything evolves to crab eventually.
- dang 3y agoRelated: Colossus: The Forbin Project (1970) [video] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35957944 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35957944 - May 2023 (78 comments)
- jmount 3y ago"There is another system." (worst demo ever)
- rootbear 3y agoI know someone who uses this phrase as his preferred "Hello world" string when doing some simple test.
- RagnarD 3y agoA movie that had a strong influence on me when I saw it as a kid, creating a deep interest in computers. I also made up a quip long ago from it: Don't let your AIs control nuclear weapons.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago>Don't let your AIs control nuclear weapons. But then a sufficiently sophisticated AI could just impersonate the president and tell the meat jarheads to fire the weapons. What then?
- WorldMaker 3y agoYou need to make sure some teenager somewhere is playing a lot of Tic-Tac-Toe with your AI.
- ArekDymalski 3y agoUnless the teenager's nickname is Ender.
- LoganDark 3y agoI should really check out Ender's Game one of these days.
- labster 3y agoDon’t let Marines have nuclear weapons either.
- RandomLensman 3y agoThen you put certain physical checks in place, not complicated (even a pass phrase only memorized works already).
- pixl97 3y ago>(even a pass phrase only memorized works already). That is so 2019... to make a quip We are already seeing what is tantamount to mind reading equipment https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-can-re-create-what-you-see-from-a-brain-scan/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ai-can-re-create-... At this point I pretty much imagine that some time in the future that you can be hooked to medical equipment and someone/something will state the following to you "Do not think of the nuclear weapon pass phrase" But you can't not think of it. The phrase clicks in your head and the electrical signals are picked up and decoded by the bedside computer. You've betrayed mankind. The nuclear war of the AI has begun.
- Barrin92 3y agoBefore the Matrix there was also Welt am Draht (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_on_a_Wire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_on_a_Wire), great Fassbinder two-part movie/miniseries that very few people have seen.
- WorldMaker 3y agoWelt am Draht also directly inspired the Matrix also-ran The Thirteenth Floor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirteenth_Floor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirteenth_Floor). The Thirteenth Floor is not better than The Matrix as a cross-media series with a lot to say in later chapters, but I still think The Thirteenth Floor is a better whole movie than the first film called The Matrix. (Though I'm also in a weird minority that I think Matrix 2/3/4 are all individually better than the first film.)
- ForOldHack 3y agoRead the book. It has a very twisted bend on the movie. I saw the 13th floor on opening day... the theatre was empty and the movie was fantastic. D'Onforo played both roles brilliantly. Also Colossus was filmed at Berkeley hall of science where I learned to program computers.
- WorldMaker 3y agoI didn't see eXistenZ until like a decade late, but that one also certainly has a twisted bend on the genre (for also being a contemporary of both 13th Floor and The Matrix). I still don't understand how Roland Emmerich as "super Producer" after Stargate and Independence Day somehow managed to fail to get people into theater seats for 13th Floor. Someone at Sony screwed up that marketing. I don't even remember it playing in theaters, I found out about it on word of mouth in video rentals.
- blincoln 3y ago> I still don't understand how Roland Emmerich [...] somehow managed to fail to get people into theater seats for 13th Floor. There were a lot of "are you living in a simulation?" film and television episodes that came out in 1998-2000. The Matrix was obviously the most successful, but Dark City (over a year earlier) had a similar theme. The X-Files episode "Field Trip" aired a few weeks after eXistenZ was in theatres, but a few weeks before The Thirteenth Floor was released. Etc. I'm a fan of the genre, and I like all of the examples I've seen from that period (eXistenZ in particular), but I remember feeling at the time like it was just too much similar material in too short a period of time. I doubt Sony could have done anything to significantly change the box office numbers other than releasing it well before The Matrix.
- crabmusket 3y agoWatched this recently and was pleasantly surprised. I found it pretty gripping, and the 70s tech actually plays right into that. The communication with the computer via text is really well handled to build tension.
- drewolbrich 3y agoI rewatched it recently and I had forgotten how fast everything goes wrong. One of my favorite films.
- UncleOxidant 3y agoIt was ok until they got to the point where Forbin tells the computer that he needs to sleep with the female engineer (who works for him) and that the computer can't listen in. That was very hokey and very 70s, I guess. Now it just sounds like sexual harassment. They planned the whole idea out in a grassy area near the parking lot... why couldn't they just keep meeting out there to conspire?
- rnk 3y agoThe book has much worse terrible treatment of women than the movie. If I recalled correctly there was some plot point about the computer trying to understand human behavior related to sex I guess, so it sets up some terrible scenario.
- SpikeDad 3y agoBecause that was the last meeting they could have before Colossus required Forbin to be under 24/7 surveillance. I think it makes perfect sense. How else could he send/get information unless he had a plan to convince Colossus to not observe him. My big issue with this whole thing is that they actually believed Colossus wouldn't listen in because it said so.
- UncleOxidant 3y ago> My big issue with this whole thing is that they actually believed Colossus wouldn't listen in because it said so. Yes, this was the other big plot hole.
- at_a_remove 3y agoI am a tremendous fan of this film and could never explain the frission I felt when Colossus and Guardian began their mutual acceleration. It's in that short list of cerebral, glacial science fiction of a particular era that somehow never lost your attention, like The Andromeda Strain and such. Demon Seed is also up there but in a different way.
- konstantinua00 3y ago"Wargames" is the more optimistic version of this movie, I suppose
- sneak 3y agoOne of my favorite movies of all time, and super underrated.
- koz1000 3y agoGuess we shouldn't spoil how William Gibson's Neuromancer ends, then.
- riffraff 3y agoI think TFA is about movies, literature has had a lot of evil machines outsmarting humans. Frederic Brown's "Answer" is from 1954 and maybe my favorite. [0] https://calumchace.com/favourite-relevant-sf-short-story/ https://calumchace.com/favourite-relevant-sf-short-story/
- beebeepka 3y agoMaybe it's time for me to read this. Need something to fill the void after I finish the second Hyperion book.
- ImHereToVote 3y agoI love the scene were both AGI systems compare their model of reality and then agree on the best course of action. Why can't we do that?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- madduci 3y agoI love this film. Pretty accurate, some realistic vibes, well done for being done in the 70s, especially the video calls. A must watch for all geeks
- vanderZwan 3y agoThe theme with so many of these movies is "once we created AI it is out of our control!", which I guess is a specific version of "humans and especially scientists shouldn't play God" angle. It always felt very… I dunno, ignorant of our own ability to maybe not do something? Like, fear of "the singularity" is narratively appealing maybe, but it's ignoring that in the real world problems like climate change or enshittification through [whatever buzzword tech] are actually the result of constantly passively choosing to stay on a destructive path. Is there any sci-fi in which all incoming disasters are perfectly or mostly preventable but the real problem is that people in power just choose to ignore it for their own short-sighted gain? Aside from "Don't Look Up", I mean.
- iainmerrick 3y agoThis is a theme in several John Wyndham stories -- I’m thinking Day of the Triffids and especially The Kraken Wakes. He often seems to get looked down on today for writing “cosy catastrophes” about plucky English survivors, but his books have a lot more going on than that.
- xyzzy123 3y agoAt first glance it looks like people have agency, but I think very often the root cause is "system traps". Enshittification happens because to a certain extent, the market demands that firms maximise returns. Companies that don't do this get weeded out. Climate change is a challenging co-ordination problem because nobody wants to tank their economy more than they have to, there's no real enforcement for "cheats" and even agreeing on an accounting basis is politically fraught. Politicians that don't grant concessions to powerful existing vested interests are less electable. AI safety is predictably going to be a secondary priority when competition gets tight.
- TheOtherHobbes 3y agoEnshittification happens because the people who own and run the "markets" have decades of practice using them as an excuse for their entirely self-serving choices. They're closely associated with the econo-political concept of There Is No Alternative. The choices which benefit them personallyare catastrophic for most of the population in the short term (see today's news about insulin prices for one tiny example) and will be catastrophic for absolutely everyone in the longer term. Climate change is enshittification on a planetary scale. If someone went around setting fire to rows of houses it wouldn't take long for them to be jailed. For some reason when corporations do the same to the planet it's "economics" and "market forces", and we're supposed to just accept it.
- spiritplumber 3y agoIf you want something pre-Matrix that has similar themes, I recommend "Nirvana" (1997) by Gabriele Salvatores.
- rwmj 3y agoUpvoted for Christopher Lambert, the B movie lover's action hero. If you haven't seen Fortress (1992) it's well worth your time https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_(1992_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortress_(1992_film) (but nothing to do with AI)
- peoplefromibiza 3y agoEven though I am Italian and Nirvana is probably the last good sci-fi movie we made, Nirvana itself owns a lot to 1995 Strange Days.
- rwmj 3y agoColossus was a bit of a bore. If you want an exciting and somewhat prophetic film about an AI assistant I'd recommend Demon Seed (1977) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_Seed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_Seed
- wiz21c 3y agoColossus at least isn't super dark :-) But yeah, Demon Seed, that was super scary :-)
- madaxe_again 3y agoIt’s an awful film, IMO, and I’ve watched it about six times as it’s just so terrible it’s great. It’s a cult classic so cultish and classic that it’s neither cultish nor classic. I mean, really, it’s the epitome of a 70’s psychosexual drama, draped in a sci-fi setting. I always like to imagine it’s a prequel to D.A.R.Y.L., which is to the 80s what Demon Seed is to the 70s.
- aspenmayer 3y ago“Open that door, and clean these lenses.” It’s comedy gold. I remember when Leo Laporte and Patrick Norton tried to riff on this on TechTV, I think it was a one-off special and not part of The Screen Savers, but not sure on that. It was somehow also awful, but in a good way. It’s a hard watch but not at all possible to take seriously cinematically, but thematically it’s horrific. The delivery in the film reminds me of The Room in parts, it’s that bad. And watching Leo and Patrick try to make it through (live?) was a layer cake of disgust and schadenfreude. I’m not sure that this was ever repeated on TechTV, but I think they reran the special that weekend. I watched it again and it was just as bad and yet good upon rewatch. The line I quoted above by an egg-covered AI was matched by the truly horrific anti-women ending, and that part definitely worked thematically, as we the audience were supposed to be horrified, but I did not expect it to be so truly vile and graphic, and that part really was tough to watch and wasn’t funny at all, which maybe was intentional juxtaposition, now that I think about it? Gonna check out D.A.R.Y.L. which is new to me. Check out Murdercycle, it somehow has the same vibe and I think is one of the only live action productions that David Hayter, English voice actor of Solid Snake of Metal Gear Solid starred in. It’s awful. You’ll love it maybe.
- tibbydudeza 3y agoOne can argue that humanity seems to be better off under the "benevolent" guidance of Colossus :).
- JKCalhoun 3y agoColossus, the film, was based on the first book in a trilogy. It seems that by the Act III mankind does indeed prefer the benevolent guidance of Colossus. Like the aliens that arrive in "Childhood's End", I sort of look forward to our AI overlords. (Looks over at war in Israel.) We seem incapable of managing ourselves.
- kibwen 3y agoThere is no future where AI manages us free of human control. Instead, humans will leverage AI to oppress their fellow man with heretofore unimaginable efficiency.
- pixl97 3y agoThere are plenty of futures where different factions of AI owners have fight AI against other AI leading to rapid evolution of said AI beyond our control.
- sebastiennight 3y agoIn your hypothetical future scenario, what use do the "AI overlords" have for keeping and managing humans?
- shiroiuma 3y agoYeah, I feel like it would be similar to me keeping a bunch of pet crabs. Why would I want to waste my time and energy on this?
- tibbydudeza 3y agoWorship obviously.
- tibbydudeza 3y agoLove the various recommendations. !!!!.
- gandalfian 3y agoThe Machine Stops, 1909 by E M Forster (room with a view/Howard's end) could almost be a sequel to this. Ideas are often older than we think. (Short story/novela length. Not a gripping read but a nice quick length and interesting for the age)
- varelse 3y ago[dead]
- ASalazarMX 3y agoPretty good short story, I didn't know it was more than a century old. If you haven't read it yet, don't read the plot on Wikipedia, it spoils everything.
- peoplefromibiza 3y agoFun fact. There's a scene shot on Tiber Island [1] in Rome where you can clearly read a writing on the wall saying "W LENIN". The writing was real, not a prop, and staid there for a long time. [1] https://cinesavant.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/5658a.jpg https://cinesavant.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/5658a.jpg
- euroderf 3y ago(minor spoiler alert) The language that the systems concoct - if only someone in the film's production crew had fleshed it out - so that we could see it now, and grok it, and (ofc) evaluate it critically.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- FuriouslyAdrift 3y agoObligatory... https://archive.org/details/colossus-the-forbin-project-1970 https://archive.org/details/colossus-the-forbin-project-1970
- LargoLasskhyfv 3y agoHrm. All the mentions of movies with a similar* theme before, and no mention of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphaville_(film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphaville_(film) and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollerball_(1975_film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rollerball_(1975_film) ? *As in AI/some supercomp ruling everything(maybe in a hidden way)
- bawana 3y agoi wonder what colossus would do in response to our current threat environment (Russia/Ukraine, Israel/Hamas).
- jhbadger 3y agoAnother older source for this sort of prediction is Samuel Butler's 1863 essay *Darwin among the Machines* in which Butler predicted that improvements in technology (which he compared to Darwin's then new idea of natural selection) would mean that machines would eventually surpass humanity. Butler later expanded this idea in his 1872 novel *Erewhon* in which a seemingly primitive culture is discovered by Westerners who later discover that the culture at one point had technology vastly superior to the West but abandoned it out of fear of where it was leading. Butler is the reason why Herbert named the "Butlerian Jihad" in Dune (although later an in-universe character was created)