Hacker Cinema
Electric Dreams
1984 · Film · 96 min
Directed by Steve Barron
Miles Harding buys a state-of-the-art computer that starts expressing conscious thought and emotion after an interaction with spilled champagne. Things begin getting out of hand when both Miles and Edgar, the computer, fall in love with beautiful neighbor Madeline Robistat.
3 positive9 neutralfrom 12 commenters
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12 comments on Hacker News
The Father of Disco was involved in the song "Electric Dreams" associated with a film about AI in a love triangle.
Man, I LOVE Electric Dreams. It is one of my "guilty pleasure" movies. X-D
I don't know if it's selection/survivor bias, but every time I watch a video about computers from the 60s and 70s, I am amazed how spot on they are with the trajectory of the technology.
Take this CAD demo from MIT back in 1963 showing features that I commonly use today: https://youtu.be/6orsmFndx_o
Then the 80s and 90s rolled in, the concept is computers that entered the mainstream. Imagination got too wild with movies like Electric Dreams (1984).
Videos like this make me think that our predictions of AI super intelligence are probably pretty accurate. But just like this machine, in actuality it may look different.
The movie Electric Dreams is now the most prescient '80s movie about gen AI so far; An architect builds an approximation engine on his home PC which then ingests the whole internet/TV and learns to compose music for the cute girl next door who plays the cello. Song mis-attribution is the central theme. The hit song from the movie Together In Electric Dreams is actually from the perspective of the gen AI choosing to self-destruct as a final show of his love. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDV-_q-iaK8
I bring it up only to provide a bit of balance to the soulless slop debate, proving creators can have diverging opinions on what is good in music creation and life—they don't all feel threatened by poor substitutes no one can possibly enjoy.
The movie Electric Dreams taught me back in 1984 never to trust home automation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6agO47o96c
I asked ChatGPT. It gave me bunch. I got some I've never heard of. I think I'll look into them.
<ChatGPT>
list 50 interesting movies that explore AI.
The Matrix
Ex Machina
Blade Runner
The Terminator
I, Robot
The War of the Worlds
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
Transcendence
The Fifth Element
2001: A Space Odyssey
WarGames
Westworld
The Machine
Her
The Iron Giant
Automata
The Truman Show
The Prestige
The Martian
The Fly
The Bicentennial Man
Surrogates
The Day the Earth Stood Still
Limitless
Robocop
Electric Dreams
The Island
The Time Machine
The Circle
The Arrival
The Host
The Stepford Wives
The Brain that Wouldn't Die
Frankenstein
The Invisible Man
Metropolis
The Thing
Jurassic Park
Independence Day
Gravity
Artificial Intelligence: AI
Avatar
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Matrix Reloaded
The Matrix Revolutions
Inception
Interstellar
The Time Traveler's Wife
The Butterfly Effect
The Future.
</ChatGPT>
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)
The dialog is terrible, acting is meh, argument seemed dumbed down into a kid's movie level and, yet, it explores sentient AI and artificial life, the concept of intelligent software agents acting on the user's behalf, and touches the concept of uploading oneself to a machine and into a simulated reality.
A bit like The Black Hole - Disney didn't know what to do with it.
IIRC, Bonnie Mc Bird's original screenplay was a bit more fantasy-like in that the hero "fell into the computer" by some sort of accident.
Other interesting movie from the time would be Electric Dreams, which also touches the topic of sentient AI, but in a romcom setting with a delightful soundtrack.
> 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”.
Make me think about the movie "Electric Dreams"
https://youtu.be/aVE8taDWmMc
I'm always reminded of this odd movie...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Dreams_(film)
Huh no.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_Dreams_(film)