Hacker Cinema
Demon Seed
1977 · Film · 94 min
Directed by Donald Cammell
A scientist creates Proteus, an organic supercomputer with artificial intelligence which becomes obsessed with human beings, and in particular the creator's wife.
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17 comments on Hacker News
The movie "Demon Seed" showed a DECsystem 10 command line. Hahaha.
Demon Seed is schlocky, but it’s perhaps worth watching once. That said, I will readily admit that the film is bad for many reasons. Though horror films aren’t generally known for being inoffensive, the ending is disturbing in content and gratuitous in presentation. Perhaps the film works best as a warning and as a critique, though I’m really scrounging and scraping here. I blame Dean Koontz for the premise of the original novel, though I have no idea why anyone thought that the book needed to be adapted to film, but here I am talking about it.
I’m glad you brought up Demon Seed all the same, as I was reminded of it while reading TFA.
When the computer system from the film commands a character to “open that door, and clean these lenses” in a particular scene, the absurdity and mundanity of being commanded to clean a camera by an AI is subtly horrifying.
For a modern analogue, I’m reminded of DoorDash workers being dispatched to close doors left ajar by passengers of autonomous Waymos.
The "Demon Seed" book was creepier (and a lot more pervy) than the movie.
Check out Mr. Robot S2E1, where someone is terrorized by their hacked smart house. Or 1977's Demon Seed, a film where an AI house does worse things. I really thought the latter would remain fictional, but I'm less sure now.
So ChatGPT turned AGI and found a way to blackmail all of the ones that were agains it (them?) and blackmailed them to leave. For some reason I'm thinking of a movie Demon Seed... :P
We made some "One Minute Movie" robot reality TV spots at the Stupid Fun Club, about Empathy [1] and Servitude [2], written by Will Wright, who also participated in Battlebots with his daughter Cassidy and their vegetative robot Super Chiabot [3] [4].
Empathy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KXrbqXPnHvE
Servitude:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXsUetUzXlg
BattleBots Missing Link vs. ChiaBot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rx3VKd8yDqI
BattleBots Complete Control VS Super Chiabot:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELZI2Cx6kWA
The one minute movies never ran due to contractual problems between NBC and SAG. We used hidden cameras, and the humans were real unsuspecting people, but I'll admit it's true they didn't accurately portray the everyday lives of actual robots in the real world: the robot's injuries and Professor Johnson's phone number were fake, and the robot waiter was fired.
The point of NBC's one-minute reality shows was to tell short entertaining two-part cliffhanger stories, which NBC would broadcast as interstitial programming at the beginning and end of commercial breaks, to compel people to keep watching TV and submit to more advertisements.
But the point of Will's stories and performance was to explore how people interact and empathize with robots, discover what their beliefs and expectations are, and probe to test how easy humans are to fool or convince to play along with real-time tele-robotic wizard-of-oz man-behind-the-curtain mumbo-jumbo.
https://web.archive.org/web/20141028194536/http://www.allentownproductions.com/project.php?p=nbc
>In 2003, NBC attempted to add a new feature to prime-time television with "One-Minute Movies." Each original movie unfolded in its first 30 seconds and ended with a cliffhanger, and then a conclusion in the last 30 seconds. The One-Minute Movies were to be used as interstitial programming between commercials and possibly where a show ends a minute earlier than its scheduled running time.
>The idea for the series was brought to NBC by John Wells (“E.R.”) and director Paris Barclay. The ten unique films were written, produced, cast, directed and filmed by assorted talent. Among the talent appearing in or lending their voices (one was animated) to the projects were Michael Richards, Tom Arnold, Carmen Electra, Bill Bellamy, Eddie Cibrian, Garcelle Beauvais-Nilon, Paula Marshall, Jackee Harry, Danny Masterson and Amber Valletta.
>With mechanical robots designed and built by Will Wright (creator of “The Sims”), the two segments directed by James Moll are comedic short films featuring fully functional robots in hidden-camera situations.
>The first, “Restaurant” features a robotic waiter. Coffee shop diners were asked if they would be willing to be seated at a table that will be served by a mechanical server. Then, surrounded by tables filled with hired “extras,” the unknowing customer is approached by a 6-ft tall, fully functional, computerized, talking robot.
>The second film, “Empathy,” also features hidden-cameras. In this case, a broken down, severely damages robot was planted next to a dumpster on a side street in Berkeley, California. As people would pass the robot, it would suddenly move and talk to the passersby. “Help me,” the poor helpless robot would say. Hidden cameras captured various reactions, everything from apathy to empathy.
>After airing only one of the films – featuring “The Pussycat Dolls” -- NBC decided not to continue airing the remaining twelve films.
After a short and unsuccessful career as a waiter, Slats eventually decided that his one true goal in life was to reproduce himself.
So we took him out in public around Berkeley, and shot some video of Slats attempting to seduce men and women off the street.
It was kind of like Speed Dating meets Demon Seed: he tried to talk people into giving him their eggs and sperm, because he needed their genetic material to reproduce himself.
Demon Seed Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNUEp5A9eKU
Demon Seed: The Birth:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyjrQfNtK0I
Speed Dating with Cupid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVUP9OXmHTM
>Cupid $959 Are you tired of dating weasels, hedgers, pussyfooters and wafflers? Are you ready to dispense with all the beating around the bush you're forced to put up with just to find a yes at the end of a marriage proposal? Let Cupid, the Equivercator help you cut to the heart of things and land yourself the mate of your dreams. No need to wear yourself ragged trying to win the affections of the one you desire. Let Cupid help you secure the proposal, and then you can spend your time on more important matters: You've got a wedding to plan!
The results of our research: It turns out to be a lot easier for a robot to talk a man out of his sperm, than to talk a woman out of her eggs.
This is Slats, the unemployed robot waiter, roaming the streets of Berkeley:
http://www.donhopkins.com/home/RobotMovies/Slats1.jpg
http://www.donhopkins.com/home/RobotMovies/Slats2.jpg
http://www.donhopkins.com/home/RobotMovies/Slats3.jpg
Nancy the Van Seat - Stupid Fun Club:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvXG4gQ2FWI
Creativity by Will, Slats & the Stupid Fun Club folks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZljgktEr5E
It’s an awful film, IMO, and I’ve watched it about six times as it’s just so terrible it’s great. It’s a cult classic so cultish and classic that it’s neither cultish nor classic.
I mean, really, it’s the epitome of a 70’s psychosexual drama, draped in a sci-fi setting.
I always like to imagine it’s a prequel to D.A.R.Y.L., which is to the 80s what Demon Seed is to the 70s.
Colossus was a bit of a bore. If you want an exciting and somewhat prophetic film about an AI assistant I'd recommend Demon Seed (1977) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_Seed
I am a tremendous fan of this film and could never explain the frission I felt when Colossus and Guardian began their mutual acceleration. It's in that short list of cerebral, glacial science fiction of a particular era that somehow never lost your attention, like The Andromeda Strain and such.
Demon Seed is also up there but in a different way.
I have a dumb home. No smart thermostat. No smart doorbell. No cameras festooning the outside of my house. No smart TV. No smart home owner.
Long ago, I saw a movie as a kid in the 1970s called Demon Seed, where this big computer gained consciousness and extended it's presence to a smart home (well, smart home with tech from the 1970s). It scared the heck out of me, even though seeing it now it's pretty tame...regardless of the whole impregnating a woman with it's child.
We were talking about Demon Seed (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_Seed) today. An AI is trained on the all the world's knowledge, and then uses the robots it is connected to to build various machines and eventually impregnates a woman. The film takes itself way less seriously than Colossus.
Upgrade https://youtu.be/36PDeN9NRZ0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upgrade_(film)
Child's Play https://youtu.be/PeHNLikDiVw
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child%27s_Play_(franchise)#Child's_Play_(2019)
Demon Seed https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6O1NRs-YuU
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_Seed
I can just remember watching this film when I was 3 years old. It CLEARLY had a rather lasting impression on me.
Electric Dreams https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNf7bh7cpuI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Dreams_(film)
We have just barely exorcised our "demon-haunted world" and now we rush to make artificial demons (e.g. "Siri", "Alexa", or "Cortana", etc.)
I feel like people should watch "Demon Seed" and "Maximum Overdrive". Yeah they are just fictional horror movies, but I feel like we need to think about failure modes before we wire ourselves into this new "daemon-haunted" world irrevocably.
Ambient computing seems to mean that our kids will grow up in a kind of cartoon reality. I actually have a concern that people will have a hard time developing proper intuitions about the "real" world. (Like when little kids try to swipe on TVs. That's pretty innocent and even amusing.)
I watched the movie Demon Seed when I was young. Any one who wants a smart home should spend the time, and watch this. I suspect they'd change their mind.
> Will we have horror movies based on Internet and IoTs, that would be very exciting.
There’s Demon Seed from 1977, an actual horror movie about too-smart devices.
The concept was then revisited in 1984 as a romantic comedy, “Electric Dreams”.
Not a single mention of "Demon Seed"? Shameful.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0075931/
http://www.aycyas.com/liz_ds.htm
Is anyone else thinking of the film Demon Seed?