Bad Precedent

Conditions: Uncanny.

Clowns, Jokers, Experts

So some eggheads have got together to have a debate about closing the door after the horses have already been killed, otherwise known as a discussion about not building killer robots. Yeah.

While advancements in robotics and artificial intelligence are progressing at an unprecedented pace, some people don't necessarily see this a good thing and even advancements in prosthetics - which traditionally have been seen as entirely positive - raise issues which need to be addressed.
[...]

Sharkey's Stop the Killer Robots campaign is seeking to end the ability of automated drones to 'decide' which targets should be fired upon, an ability which has removed the decision-making from human hands. While Sharkey conceded the ultimate responsibility lies with humans, automated drones had "muddied" the waters somewhat as to whether a death is ascribed to man or machine.
[...]

When the possibility of a Terminator-style apocalypse was muted by Snow, where machines would become self-aware and wipe humans from the face of the earth, Sharkey, who has been working in artificial intelligence for 30 years, dismissed the idea: "I don't think we will lose control of the robots. I don't think we'll get to the point of Terminators."

- ibtimes.co.uk/

I must say I find all the hand wringing to be more than amusing, it’s actually becoming offensive. The people in control do not give a damn about the ethics of using robots to kill people, they’re doing it all the time, and if someone were to figure out how to get the robots to do it more efficiently they would embrace it in a nanosecond. And what is the path to efficiency? Automation. So again we have the scientists and supposed learned people dismissing the actual point. Great.

Dyson died in vain after all.



Film Review: Star Trek Into Darkness

It’s Khan. The bad guy in the movie turns out to be Khan. There, I’ve said it. You’ve read it. You can’t un-read it. So all this stupid, pointless and frankly insulting secrecy that the movie has tried to wrap around its bad guy can be thankfully dismissed. I do not see the point in hiding your best asset away from the audience, especially when you then fumble the reveal anyway: When Khan finally tells Kirk and Spock his real name the two of them don’t even bat an eyelid, because of course in this timelime they don’t even know who the hell he is.

It’s been four years since the Star Trek reboot happened, and I think that’s a little too long. Again we have to re-orient ourselves to these new faces on the old characters, and where we are in the timeline. Now that the training wheels are off, I have to say it still feels wierd. There’s a line in this movie that I think sums it up very nicely, where Kirk says “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do, I only know what I can do”. That is this film in a nutshell, where in this new yet old universe with the new yet old characters it’s like it doesn’t know how to actually move forward. The plot is about terrorism, but there’s a lot to dig through before we get there. The film starts abruptly where apparently the Enterprise is supposed to be checking out a planet but instead is interfering, requiring an explosion and a hasty retreat. This causes Kirk to lose his captaincy briefly, all part of learning an important lesson about ...something. Which means we’ve actually regressed from where we were at the end of the last film, which is annoying. Anyway, before we can dwell on it Khan attacks.

It shouldn’t really be that much of a surprise that in this second movie of the rebooted Star Trek franchise Khan gets involved. What is surprising is how much effort they’ve gone to in order to obscure who Khan actually is. Half the film goes by before he reveals his name, and despite how angry he is with his backstory, it’s not like we ever get a proper glimpse into it. He’s just some angry guy called Khan, out for revenge against everyone. There’s some trickery involved, a noble sacrifice between Kirk and Spock, and a standoff between starships – you can see how carefully they’ve remixed the elements from the original Wrath of Khan. And that’s the biggest problem. They wanted to do a Khan movie, so they’ve very carefully tried to mix and remix the elements to give us something new, yet still old. And it really shows – because you spend most of the time comparing the two films rather than just watching this one. New Star Trek doesn’t seem to even want to escape its own shadow, assuming that it even could.

It’s not for lack of action, in fact the film seems to deliver some kind of action sequence every 20 minutes or so. But despite all the action, and the snazzy effects, and the eye candy, in the end the film is as empty a spectacle as most modern blockbusters have become, with a plot that also doesn't make a lot of sense. It’s almost as if in their rush to re-introduce all the characters, have something for them all to do, and rush about with the plot, they’ve run out of room to actually properly have the real Khan in it. And instead there’s just this guy called Khan who does some stuff. The actual interesting bad guy is Admiral Marcus, played by Peter Weller, but by the time we get to him the film is so filled with noise there’s simply not enough room to properly explore who he is, and what he’s doing.

It seems clear to me now that the primary reason that they’ve rebooted Star Trek is not to start over. Instead it’s so they can go back over the old plots, with a few twists and extra explosions thrown in. Either they can’t think of anything new, or they don’t think something new would sell enough to justify the giant budgets they’re spending to make things look so sparkly. We now live in a new age of Star Trek, built for the new generation, and so filled with explosions and bright shiny things. Which depresses me a great deal more than I thought it would. You can either be deep or fast, not both. One lens flare out of five.



- Peace out