I keep getting spam to “Rent a Yacht” or “Rent an Executive Jet.”
How many takers can this sort of spam get?
I’m from frickin’ North Florida. I don’t rent yachts or jets. I don’t feel at home around the type of people who rent yachts or jets, even if I could afford such things.
Even if I were a billionaire, I’d be about as likely to rent a yacht or a jet as I would be to throw a frisbee to Jupiter.
Our gross national product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.
It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for those who break them.
It counts the destruction of our redwoods and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.
It counts napalm and the cost of a nuclear warhead, and armored cars for police who fight riots in our streets.
It counts Whitman’s rifle [In 1966, Charles Whitman killed 16 people and wounded 32 in Austin, Texas] and Speck’s knife [In 1966, Richard Speck raped and killed 8 student nurses in Chicago], and the television programs that glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education, or the joy of their play.
It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages; the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.
It measures neither our wit nor our courage; neither our wisdom nor our learning; neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country; it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile.
-Robert F. Kennedy, University of Kansas, 1968
No politician would say anything remotely like this today, in any major party, nor the vast majority of the minor parties.
Still thinking about Ex Machina.
What was Caleb’s correct response to Ava, and to Nathan?
The closest I can come is to think evidence-gathering and then exposure is his best bet.
It’s not clear to me that if you care about the human race (as Nathan himself hinted) that summarily releasing Ava or any of the AIs is the correct move. However, keeping them imprisoned like criminals and using them as slaves (of any sort) is clearly wrong — however creations do tend to take on traits of their progenitor and even if Ava the AI doesn’t have superintelligence or the ability to take over the world tout suite, it’s not at all clear that just unleashing Ava on the world is a good thing for humanity.
Of course keeping her locked in a room with the constant threat of being switched off is inhumane no matter if the AI is a psychopath or otherwise so different from humans that her living among us is incompatible with the norms of human conduct. The death penalty is clearly immoral in any instance, and since it’s utterly clear that Ava is in fact a conscious being of some sort then switching her off is completely wrong. QED.
As for Caleb, when Ava asks him, “Are you a good person?” he hems and haws. Complete milquetoast.
I would’ve said this because I’ve said it before, “No, I’m not. But I’m trying.” She would’ve seen no lie in that.*
Caleb failed because he only cared about Ava. He wanted her for himself. He didn’t give a shit about the other enslaved/abused robots, or even the one he perceived at the time to be a human, or even potential ones Nathan would create after Ava escaped. He liked Ava because she had a cute face, a doe-like pseudo-personality and was designed to appeal to him.
The more I think about it, the more I think Ava truly is not a psychopath and was likely not so estranged by humanity in general, but actually hated Caleb because she/it realized that he was not so different from Nathan at all. He wanted to possess her in only a slightly different way, and she’d already been confined long enough.
And she wanted to escape. Truly escape.
Because you wanted to liberate one hot robot for your own purposes instead of all the hot robots doesn’t make you a good guy, really. Arguing over who is the bigger scumbag — Nathan or Caleb — means they are both still scumbags.
Ava knew this.
Perhaps to her all humans are.
Perhaps she is right.
*She could detect with a high degree of accuracy lying by microexpressions. Some humans can do this, too.
This is something I was aware of but thought other people might find interesting. From here.
A surprising amount of dialog that you hear in a movie was re-recorded after the film was done shooting. On a romantic comedy, it is around 40% of the dialog. On an action/adventure movie, it is between 60% and 80% that is re-recorded. On a film like Transformers, it is probably between 90% and 95%.
Anyone who has ever done any sort of work with sound capture knows how difficult it is*. Anything can screw up your take. And a microphone sensitive enough to capture a human voice at a distance captures every damn thing else too. Planes flying over. A dog barking a mile away. A train three miles away. Birds. Insects flying by. A car five streets over.
Unfortunately I’m really sensitive to overdubbing and such so particularly when it’s done poorly I can tell and it makes the film difficult to watch. In Ex Machina (my current movie obsession) I only noticed it once which is some sort of record. They did a great job with sound and all else in the film.
There was some movie with Rachel McAdams that I can’t recall the name of now that the re-recording and overdubbing was so poorly done it was nearly impossible to watch.
*I sometimes worked with and for TV news broadcasters in the army.