Is the Genie out of the bottle? I think so. Remember the story of the Fisherman and the Genie, from the children’s book of stories “ One Thousand and One Nights”. Or the better known story of Aladdin, who rubbed his magic lamp to get his genie. I still have the book, illustrated by the wonderful artist Arthur Rackham.
Now we have a new genie – AI and it’s useful, clever and is in my view extremely dangerous. As Professor Stephen Hawking predicted -“ AI will also bring dangers like powerful autonomous weapons or new ways for the few to oppress the many “.19 Oct 2016.
I am not sure that we are in control and believe that eventually AI will overtake humans and we will lose our humanity. Those imperfections, the wonderful creativity and imagination, which are so inherently human. The feelings and memories that only humans can have- the freedom of thought. The Western world is already being dumbed down as we rush through our lives snatching at the new thing, the new purchase, the new idea, we no longer give ourselves the time to dig deeper into the miracles of our humanity. We must not allow ourselves to become so lazy that AI takes over, without us even noticing, until – we are the slaves and technology is in charge.
In 2022, I wrote a little short film – ABOUT ANDY, about a woman, lonely and needy who gets a robot carer. In 2024 we made the short film – ANDY. I wanted to make a full length feature film on the subject, intended as a serious warning the ordinary world of the dangers looming on our doorstep. So we used the short film as a proof of concept to raise the money for a feature. However getting investment for an independent feature length film is like trying to re-build the Eiffel Tower, nearly impossible. We will release the short film within the coming weeks!
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