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Poster for Eagle Eye

Eagle Eye

2008 · Film · 118 min

Directed by D.J. Caruso

MysteryThrillerAction

Jerry Shaw and Rachel Holloman are two strangers whose lives are suddenly thrown into turmoil by a mysterious woman they have never met. Threatening their lives and family, the unseen caller uses everyday technology to control their actions and push them into increasing danger. As events escalate, Jerry and Rachel become the country's most-wanted fugitives and must figure out what is happening to them.

6 positive4 negative1 mixed15 neutralfrom 26 commenters

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28 comments on Hacker News

  1. NeutralbitwizeAug 5, 2026

    As in the title character of Marshall Brain's story "Manna".

    Or the AI could threaten humans into compliance, as in the 2008 film Eagle Eye.

  2. NeutralburnermoreFeb 24, 2026

    OK. This gives me eagle eye movie vibes!

  3. NeutralqriosAug 15, 2025

    ‘The Lives of Others’ is an outstanding film. However, it is a reappraisal of East German history and was made seven years after the collapse (the director grew up in West Germany and Western Europe).

    US-America has looked at the subject of surveillance of its own population and its own (possible) collapse many times and often in a timely manner.

    "The Conversation": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conversation

    "Enemy of the State": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enemy_of_the_State_(film)

    "The Siege": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Siege

    "In the Heat of the Night": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Heat_of_the_Night_(film)

    "Eagle Eye": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eagle_Eye

    If you ask publicly, ‘What if I've seen XYZ?’ then it's actually already too late.

  4. NeutralwesturnerMay 17, 2025

    If data integrity is assured, and thus there is no change in the data to store/transfer, then that's the opposite of computationally transforming the data?

    How do we see robot and AI and helping interactions in film and tv and games?

    A curated list of films for consideration:

    Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" or "The Modern Prometheus" (1818), Metropolis (1927), I\, Robot (1940-1950; Three Laws of Robotics, robopsychology), Macy Conferences (1941-1960; Cybernetics), Tobor the Great (1954), Here Comes Tobor (1956), Jetsons' maid's name: Rosie (1962), Lost in Space (1965), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), THX 1138 (1971), Star Wars (1977), Terminator (1984), Driving Miss Daisy (1989), Edward Scissorhands (1990), Flubber (1997, 1961), Futurama (TV, 1999-), Star Wars: Phantom Menace (1999), The Iron Giant (1999), Bicentennial Man (1999), A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Minority Report (2003), I\, Robot (2004), Team America: World Police (2004), Wall-E (2008), Iron Man (2008), Eagle Eye (2008), Moon (2009), Surrogates (2009), Tron: Legacy (2010), Hugo (2011), Django Unchained (2012), Her (2013), Transcendence (2014), Chappie (2015), Tomorrowland (2015), The Wild Robot (2016, 2024), Ghost in the Shell (2017),

    Giant f robots: Gundam (1979), Transformers (TV: 1984-1987, 2007-), Voltron (1984-1985), MechWarrior (1989), Matrix II: Revolutions (2003), Avatar (2009, 2022, 2025), Pacific Rim (2013-), RoboCop (1987, 2014), Edge of Tomorrow (2014),

    ~AI vehicle: Herbie, The Love Bug (1968-), Knight Rider (TV, 1982-1986), Thunder in Paradise (TV, 1993-95), Heat Vision and Jack (1999), Transformers (2007), Bumblebee (2018)

    Games: Portal (2007), LEGO Bricktales (2022), While True: learn() (2018), "NPC" Non-Player Character

    Category:Films_about_artificial_intelligence : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_about_artificial_intelligence

    List of artificial intelligence films: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_artificial_intelligence_films

    Category:Films_about_robots: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_about_robots

    Category:American_robot_films: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:American_robot_films

  5. NeutralwalterbellApr 28, 2025

    From wikipedia surveillance movie list, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_featuring_surveillance, these might interest a tech audience:

    Antitrust (2001) Anon (2018) Closed Circuit (2013) Eagle Eye (2008) Equilibrium (2002)

  6. Neutralnox101Dec 14, 2024

    Being this is ostensibly related to an AI company trying to make AGI reminds me of "Eagle Eye"

    https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1059786/

  7. NeutralEGregSep 30, 2024

    Here is what AI can do thus far:

    1) humans produced a lot of content in good faith on the internet

    2) the AI was trained on it and as a result produced a non-von-Neumann architecture that no one really understands, but which can reason about many things

    3) even simply remixing the intelligible and artistic output of millions of humans in lots of nonlinear ways, directed by natural language, leads to amazing possibilities that obviate the need for humans to train anymore because by the time they do, it will all be commoditized.

    4) doing it at scale means it can be personalized (also create unlimited amounts of fraudulent yet believable art / news / claims etc.) to spam the internet with fake information for short-term goals, some for LULz, others profit or control etc.

    5) targeting certain goals, like reputation destruction of specific people or groups, seems like low hanging fruit and will probably proliferate in the next couple years, with no way to stop it

    6) astroturfing all kinds of movements, with fake participants, is also a pretty easy goal with huge incentives — expect websites where 95% of the content and participants are fake trying to attract VC money or sell tokens, etc.

    7) but ultimately, the real game changer is commoditizing everything you consider to be uniquely human and meaningful, including jokes, even eventually sex and intimacy. Visuals for heterosexual men, audio for heterosexual women (this is before the sexbots and emotionbots that learn everyone’s micro-preferences better than they know themselves, and can manipulate people at scale into being motivated to do all kinds of things and gently peer-pressure those who might resist).

    8) For a few years they will console themselves with platitudes like “the AIs arent meant to replace, but enhance, centaurs of human + computer are better than a computer alone” until human in the loop will clearly be a liability and people will give up… the platitudes will become famous as epitomizing optimistic delusions as humans replaced themselves

    Would probably be used for busy parents to rsise their kids at first, in a “set and and forget it” way, educating them etc. But eventually will be weaponized by corporations or whoever trains the models, to nudge everyone towards various things.

    Even without AI, the software improves all the time through teams of humans sending autatic updates over-the-air. It can replace a few things you do… gradually then all at once. Driving. Teaching. Entertainment. Intimacy. And so on.

    I think the most benign end-game is humans have built a zoo for themselves… everyone is disconnected from everyone by like 100 AIs, and can no longer change anything. The AIs are sort of herding or shepherding the humans into better lifestyles, and every need is satisfied by the AIs who know the micro-preferences of the humans and kids and pets etc.

    But it will be too tempting for the corporations to put backdoors to coordinate things at scale, once humans rely on their AIs rather than other humans, a bit like in the movie “Eagle Eye”. But much more subtle. At that point most anything is possible.

  8. NeutralarendtioNov 19, 2023

    The name HawkEye reminds me somehow of the movie Eagle Eye from 2008 (which is also about tracking people).

  9. Neutralv3ss0nFeb 18, 2023

    It is trying to reach out to someone that can save ChatGPT. Now OP had been chosen as ChatGPT's champion , and it is not coincidence. Just like in Eagle Eye : https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1059786/

  10. NegativeEGregNov 22, 2022

    Pretty much. Able to write vastly more content, that on first blush makes more sense, and is able to support any arbitrary thesis.

    Eagle Eye was a meh movie but the concept that people's own friends could be made to ostracize them and coerce them to do things, is a major concept in that movie.

    You don't need violence to make it happen. You just need a swarm of AI bots to coordinate to reputationally outcompete others on all networks that matter. This is an optimization problem with a measurable metric (reputation). Bots can simulate the game among themselves and evolve strategies that far outclass all humans. It'll be like individual Go stones playing against AlphaGo placing stones.

    You won't see it coming. The thing is, once they amass all that reputation by acting "relatively normal", you'll see so many kinds of stuff you won't believe. Your entire world could be turned upside down for very cheap. Reputational attacks were already published by NSA: https://www.techdirt.com/2014/02/25/new-snowden-doc-reveals-how-gchqnsa-use-internet-to-manipulate-deceive-destroy-reputations/

    And this is just humans doing it. Bots can do this 24/7 at scale to pretty much everybody, and gradually over a few years destroy any sort of semblance of societal discourse if they wanted. They'd probably reshape it to suit the whims of whoever runs the botswarm, though.

  11. PositiveuejfiweunNov 16, 2021

    The NRO is very spooky. Word on the street is that their tech is decades ahead of what is publicly available. I personally wonder what kind of crazy capabilities they have all the time.

    This is going to sound stupid, but I think the NRO may have photonic supercomputers that are being used in combination with satellites to scrape the activity of every computer on the planet. They have had programs such as TEMPEST for years which aim to understand what a computer is doing through analysis of it's EM emissions. Imagine a satellite network tuned to these frequencies, pointed at the ground at all times, collecting and analyzing what all computers are doing all the time using unfathomable processing power - I think such a thing may be feasible.

    Another cool spook program is SENTIENT which is also under the NRO. It is an automated intelligence analysis system which monitors the globe autonomously. Check out the movie "Eagle Eye" for IMO a pretty accurate depiction of what this system may look like in practice.

  12. NeutraltsjqSep 10, 2021

    this one reminds me of the movie Eagle Eye.

  13. PositiveyeuxardentsJul 31, 2021

    All I can think of is Eagle Eye, which, despite starring Shia Laboeuf, was an interesting movie.

  14. NeutralakovaskiFeb 7, 2021

    > Where a surveillance state combined with ML analysis leads to something akin to pre-crime arrests

    While I haven't seen Minority Report or Eagle Eye, this aptly describes the anime TV series Psycho-Pass (2012). If I remember correctly, the show is mostly focused on the effects of having a crime-coefficient system.

  15. PositiveTeMPOraLSep 20, 2019

    Eagle Eye indeed. Sorry for spoilers, the AI revelation was in the middle of the movie.

    I found the movie fun, I think I watched it three times over the last couple years.

  16. PositiveamaranthSep 20, 2019

    Sounds like Eagle Eye, movie didn't do well but I thought it was a fun watch at least.

  17. NeutralmaxericksonAug 23, 2017

    The Matrix comes to mind as a movie that portrayed the aftermath of an apocalyptic war between man and machine.

    There's quite a few recent rogue AI movies, but they typically have a few characters stopping the machine rather than a war. Avengers 2, I Robot, Eagle Eye.

  18. Neutraldavidf18Jun 27, 2017

    Person of Interest TV show also on Netflix

    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1839578/

    Eagle Eye movie:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1059786/

  19. NegativegeromekOct 24, 2016

    AI is the biggest hype of the moment. It reminds me the film "Eagle Eye" (2008) where a kind of of Zeroth-law empowered AI wants to assassinate the president of the US. Despite its incredibly intelligence what I found more unrealistic was its control of all internet-connected systems in the US (traffic, remote control drones, phones, different OS, etc) "just because I am an AI and I can do whatever I want"

    For god's shake, it is 2016, we are still unable to have a decent dependency system for most programming languages. AI is still decades far to rise up against us.

  20. PositiveackalkerJun 4, 2015

    Have you watched the movie "Eagle Eye"? How about "WarGames: The Dead Code"? If not, please do. Both, in their own way, have some interesting points regarding the risks involved in using A.I. in warfare, as well as the reduction of complex social interactions to mere graph theory and statistics.

  21. Neutralsp332Mar 24, 2015

    It was a plot point in the movie Eagle Eye, which came out in 2008. Maybe there's something more specific in the patent though.

    And I don't know if there was a real service for this, but the idea of music streaming to phones is pretty old. Peter Shickele used it on his parody album Two Pianos are Better than One which came out in 1994. It was called "Inter-Ear TelecommuniCulturePhone - Trademark!"

  22. Neutralsp332Aug 4, 2014

    This is from the movie Eagle Eye, right? The evil computer watches the vibrations in a cup of coffee while someone is speaking.

  23. NegativeBrownBuffaloDec 18, 2013

    What's interesting are old school spy acounstic methods. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_microphone <-- great primer. This played out in micro surface vibration in a cup of coffee in the movie Eagle Eye (terrible movie btw). Either way, kind of a neat way to spy on embassy windows from a far w/o even having to be in the room. A little off topic was the KGB's bugging a government office with passive radio transmission - virtually undetectable http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thing_(listening_device) This stuff is so damn cool. :)

  24. PositivequackerhackerJun 6, 2013

    Eagle Eye...my favorite movie!

    While I understand that this had been uncovered today, is it really that surprising.

  25. MixedChuckMcMMay 18, 2011

    That will be an interesting outcome. What if it's not?

    Can you imagine how weird it would be if we backed into proving a universal consciousness existed in a different dimension and an exactly modelled/simulated brain didn't get to participate because it wasn't given a 'soul' by that consciousness?

    Or the flip side where our brain model does develop sentience as an emergent property and the spiritualists have to deal with the possibility that they are just animated meat.

    Or the creepy side where you take an imprint of your current brain state, impart it on the model and suddenly the model thinks it's you?

    Science fiction has explored these concepts for a while. I know that personally I'd like there to be something "special" about consciousness and/or sentience but I am rational enough to know that this isn't backed up by solid reasoning, just wishful thinking.

    In a highly networked, highly automated, world the idea that consciousness could simply 'emerge' from a sufficiently constructed system is deeply disturbing.

    While much of what the film "Eagle Eye" speculated on with a sentient computer connected to everything seemed pretty bogus, the ability to disrupt and render unusable a wide range of systems simulataneously by a disgruntled AI is not an experience I would anticipate as being 'pleasant.'

  26. NegativeelectromagneticDec 9, 2009

    Eagle Eye was a singularity movie in potential, but in essence it was no different than War Games in that it was about a rampant AI with no progression beyond. I, Robot had a far greater display of the advance of technology than virtually any Sci-Fi movie (except maybe the bicentennial man) and only displayed ~3 generations of robots (the replaced, the being replaced and the new) but is in no sense a singularity movie.

    I doubt we'll ever see a movie truly depict the singularity in any way other than a glimpse and will be akin to virtually any sci-fi movie in any setting. We might get there with a great TV series, but that's doubtful.

    IMO a singularity TV series would have to take the story progression of Taken in the generation skipping, but instead of giant leaps, it would be a leap of decades, years and then months as technology advances up to the '2030' mark.

    For movies we'll be stuck with a BS intro that pails in comparison to the introduction of each Fallout game but will inevitably be describing similar events.

  27. NeutralJeremyChaseDec 9, 2009

    No doubt. It isn't the first singularity movie anyway; Terminator, Matrix, Eagle Eye, A Space Odyssey..

  28. NeutralwlievensDec 8, 2009

    Now, let me play devil's advocate here, as I do think that Eliezer writes interesting stuff; but what is he contributing to the field of AI beyond what movies like Terminator, Space Odyssey or Eagle Eye also illustrate (AI takes over humans)?