Should Men Write Advice Columns?

Movie: Artificial Intelligence

I saw a movie called Artificial Intelligence. We have been discussing machine intelligence in a series of posts, that lately included https://gordon-feil-practical-living.blogspot.ca/2017/01/machine-sentience.html. This movie explored some of the issues that might attend the development of a machine with personality. It is loosely based on the tale of Pinocchio. A machine is programmed to love unconditionally and to learn from its experience as a simulated boy. Not only does he love, but he also needs to BE loved. He needs security. He pleads for his life. He pleads for his human “mom” to love him. The movie explores this psychology.

It also explores machine rights, or rather, the lack of them. No matter how adaptive a machine is, no matter how intelligent and teachable, it is regarded as programming in action. The viewer observes that machines exist at manifold places on the continuum that ranges from single purpose appliance type machines to incredibly imitative and creative multi-functional units that definitely would pass any version of the Turing test.

One thing the movie missed, in my opinion, was the notion that when machines become that adaptive and sophisticated, it would lead to machines designing and building machines, and to move from one generation to the next would likely take hours, not months. Development would explode, and humans who have not merged with machines would become to the new machines as ants are to us.  A scary thought.

Lion (the movie)

Yesterday I saw the movie Lion. I had no idea why it is called Lion until that last minute.  What a story!  I wept like a baby.  I think the telling of this true account might have been better served if the lead role had been played by someone who looked something like the guy about whose experience the movie tells, but at least I could pretend Dev Patel looks like him….that is until the closing when pics of the real Saroo were shown. Dev Patel did a really fine job of learning an Aussie accent.  So what if no Aussies will agree with me?

Basically the story is of a 5 year old boy who wanders onto an empty train that then takes a long journey to Calcutta, well over a thousand kilometers away. He gets off the train into a strange place where people do not generally speak his language. They speak Bengali, not Hindi.  He eventually is sent to an orphanage and, being unable to name his mother as anything other than Mum, he is deemed to be fit for adoption and ends up with a very loving couple in Tasmania.  What special people they are! 

After the boy becomes a young man, he is haunted by the need to find his lost family. He is tortured by the thought that THEY have been tortured all these years by his absence.  He searches his childhood memories……and Google Earth.   Eventually he puts the pieces together and journeys back to India.  Sigh.   You can see the rest for yourself. 

I had recently seen Hidden Figures and was similarly moved, but not with the same intensity. Yet that is a fine movie also even if my cheeks weren’t dripping.

Stress Reduction

Exhale slowly.
Picture yourself near a stream.
Birds are softly chirping in the crisp cool mountain air.
Nothing can bother you here.
No one knows this secret place.
The soothing sound of a gentle waterfall fills the air with a
cascade of serenity.
The water is clear.
You breathe deeply.
You can easily make out the face of the person whose head you're
holding under the water.
Look.
It's the person who caused you all this stress in the first place.
What a pleasant surprise.
You let them up ... just for a quick breath ...  then ploop! ...
Back under they go.
You allow yourself to take as many deep breaths as you want.