[Screening moved to Friday, July 31, due to rain.] Speaking of the future, or lack thereof, fans of life on earth may want to read this item from Monday’s New York Times. It will give you all something to talk about while waiting for the sun to go down before Thursday’s Movies on the Block.
Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, along with hundreds of artificial intelligence researchers and experts, are calling for a worldwide ban on so-called autonomous weapons, warning that they could set off a revolution in weaponry comparable to gunpowder and nuclear arms.
In a letter unveiled as researchers gathered at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Buenos Aires on Monday, the signatories argued that the deployment of robots capable of killing while untethered to human operators is “feasible within years, not decades.” If development is not cut off, it is only a matter of time before the weapons end up in the hands of terrorists and warlords, they said.
(We know we know, replicants aren’t robots per se, but can be part of the broader discussion of what the hell are we doing?)
At any rate, this week’s Movie on the Block is Ridley Scott’s 1982 “muddled but mesmerizing” sci-fi thriller Blade Runner. Rated R. Running time 117 minutes.
Sundown, Thursday, July 30, MotB, Grant’s Block, Westminster at Union Street (directions)
Blade runner is a greta movie. i think it is partly inspired by the scientific study that asserts that Southern Califonia’s normal climate is rainy, subject to monsoons, with brief 500 year intervals of the weather we see now followed by the weather you see in Blade runner. Or it could just assume that all the air pollution start causing endless rain. I like that it questions the assumption that the future will be just like now.
Great point about tetherless killing robots. They could set off crossfires (along with tear gas) in red state theaters, legislatures, churches and other places where people, fully armed with automatics, gather. Then the people will start firing wildly, killing each other, while the robots laugh (I presume the terrorists will build in laugh tracks for an even better psy ops effect). of course the plirticians will then require that every registered voter carry even more lethal arms (with registration controlled to eliminate “them”). my advice, don’t be young today.