This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

And now for something completely different. I was watching a documentary about the PBY Catalina aircraft from WW2. Ugly, ungainly and odd looking. Slow, hard to fly but amazingly effective. It would do almost anything. Search and rescue, long range surveillance and even drop bombs. It was designed by human brains without the aid of any computers.

You couldn’t build it today. The computers would tell that won’t work 1201 file not found. So, what AI becomes is a computer trying to imitate human thought only with computer rules. A perfect example is the cars of the 1960s versus the cars of today. Once the idea of owning a nice car was to be hot and sexy and make all the chicks dig you. “Ooh, a Prius!” But then, the computers took over with drag coefficients and slalom times. Anybody driven any slaloms lately? What was your best time?

Most cars today look like some variation on the jellybean. With touch screens, tire sensors, blind spot detectors, alarm bells and parking assistance. The car will tell when you’re low on gas and when your doors are open and when your seatbelt isn’t on. You don’t drive the car; the car drives you. It will even tell when you are sitting in the driver’s seat just in case you forget. But if you don’t have at least a twelfth-grade education and study the manual carefully, you can’t easily change the radio. And if you don’t do what the car wants you to do. The car will keep telling you to do it like a nagging spouse, until you do.  There is no “Shut up” button.

I hate to pick on Disney. No, I don’t really, but I want to try and sound compassionate. Disney has morphed from one of the most successful film studios in Hollywood. Today, it’s a modern turkey factory. Dropping bomb after bomb on the unsuspecting public. They don’t listen to or care what the public wants. They tell the public what they want. And if the public doesn’t like their $200 million master work of art, it’s because the public is just plain stupid. Those unwashed morons with their grubby money in their dirty little hands, don’t understand real genius when they stumble across it.

In the old naive days, it was the audience who decided on what was successful.

In my time, I’ve seen three different remakes of “Willy Wonka and Chocolate Factory.” Alice Through the Looking Glass, Cinderella, 101 Dalmatians and now Garfield. It seems creativity has taken a hiatus. Are there no new stories? No, we’ve improved them! It’s all new! All the characters can fly now and perform Kung Fu! Ninety minutes of pure CGI spectacle. Giant monsters! Dinosaurs! Sword fights! It’s “Old Yeller” like you’ve never seen it before!

How about this, “Spiderman! Huh, huh?” It’ll be great, and all we need is $300 million to get started. One Disney film spectacular came in overtime and over budget. Disney executives said the film was too long for today’s modern moron and demanded they cut it! Audiences watched the abbreviated version and wondered, “What the hell is going on here?” After cutting nearly forty minutes from the story, the plot was hamburger.

For God’s sake don’t try anything new or original! Technology and flash have overtaken plot and substance. If you don’t know how to end a scene, just throw in an explosion, or add a monster. Main characters die, but it’s okay, because they will be back in the next film through a prequel or a flashback. So why should we even care if they die when it’s not permanent. They’ll be right back!

In 1977, a little considered space epic first appeared on big screens. Starring a cast of nobodies in a galaxy far, far away. The audiences (not me) fell in love with the characters and the lore. The film became a blockbuster! A blockbuster that Disney would never ever dream of making today, if approached.

A Wookie? What the hell’s a Wookie? R2D2 what kind of name is that? Sounds like a code, let’s just call him Chuck. Instead of a Princess, she could be the Secretary of State. The legal department recommended that. And Luke could be dark and mysterious with caustic smart-ass wit with snappy dialogue. Nobody likes good guys anymore. Yoda?  The legal department says that one will never fly. It sounds too Asian, and we don’t want to offend anyone! Let’s just call him Bob.

Rather than Artificial Intelligence behaving more like human thought. Human thought is being morphed to behave more like Artificial intelligence. To be enthralled by bombs, explosions, and one-dimensional spectacles all with a dynamic Dolby sound bloodying your ears. All computer animation looks just alike to me. The artistry is in the machine making the artist nothing more than a machine operator. Looney Tunes looked different from Bullwinkle and Rocky. The Jetson’s were animated differently than the Flintstones. Today it’s only a computer program. What is art without an artist?

Story? Plot? It’s a story about a bunch of teenagers coming of age in the early 1960s sir. We call it American Graffiti. $140 million dollar profit and $800,000 to make. How about this? It’s a comedy with two dope smoking hippies, we call it Up in Smoke. ($104 million) I’m sure you’ll like this one. It’s a story about the worst Fraternity on campus. We call it Animal House! ($142 million)

No, no, no! Haven’t you got anything with superheroes or dinosaurs in it? You know, cars that can talk and turn into stuff! Superman flying across the sky! Something we can really sink our CGI into! You know, a remake of some classic film! With lots of rocket explosions and jet packs! I’ve got it! Ben Hur! We can remake Ben Hur. Only this time, Ben’s chariot is being pulled by two dinosaurs, and he knows Kung Fu. It’ll be great! Just wait until the space Aliens show up! What a plot twist! The audience will  never see that one coming.!

In the end, AI is a computer program. (GIGO) It might be faster and more accurate, but it can never be better than the human brain. It will never paint Van Gogh’s sunflowers or design a 1965 Mustang. It will always search for the best, most efficient design over the coolest. The human touch is lost, and it will always come out looking like a jelly bean because that is the shortest distance between two points. That is the most efficient way for a machine to make widgets.