Plot for Johnny Depp Movie About the Singularity Eerily Resembles Actual Reality Right Now

In theaters next month, Transcendance is a movie set in the San Francisco Bay Area about a computer genius played by Johnny Depp who uploads his consciousness into an AI-powered supercomputer after anti-tech extremists kill him, achieving the singularity in the process... so let’s take a look:

This story would have seemed like wild science fiction twenty or even ten years ago, but just about all of these plot points are actually taking place in some form in real life right now -- let’s take a look:

• Google recently acquired AI startup Deep Mind, which is developing artificial intelligence technology with such potentially dangerous applications, it hired an ethics board to oversee its progress

• Ray Kurzweil, who coined the term Singularity in the first place, is leading Google’s effort to create a powerful AI

• Meanwhile, anti-technology extremists in the San Francisco Bay Area are stalking a Google AI programmer, taking copious notes on his day to day activities, even outside his home 

And so on and so forth, and I'm sure you could name many more analogues than this. And somehow this movie, which is supposed to be scary and thrilling, seems comforting and even quaint, compared to some of the leaps in technology we are experiencing every day. And while I'm mostly enthusiastic about most of them most of the time, some of me wonders if one of them is about to slip us down a path of irreversible calamity, one which won't be fun at all, and won't star Johnny Depp.

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Comments

[Iggy]

I watched the trailer and see the usual (and not unfounded) fears of what real AI or a Singularity might bring. Might.

As for "actually taking place in some form in real life right now"? No, not Johnny Depp as a TED-talking ghost in a machine.

What's taking place now? It's more like Sherry Turkle's Alone-together addicts, pecking on tiny screens as they walk or drive, seeking an elusive connection through the ether rather than sitting with a loved one in the splendor of the quotidian world of matter, and, say, having a coffee or watching a sunset.

Or sitting alone with their own minds, that self erased by the constant "and now this!" moment of eternal connectedness.

That reality, not high-tech fantasies of virtual immortality, frightens me most. That future could lead us to M.T. Anderson's terrifying Feed where a Neural Internet defines our every waking moment.

[Adeon Writer]

Stereotypes aside this is sounds right up my alley.can't wait.