Hacker Cinema
M3GAN
2022 · Film · 102 min
Part of M3GAN Collection
Directed by Gerard Johnstone
A brilliant toy company roboticist uses artificial intelligence to develop M3GAN, a life-like doll programmed to emotionally bond with her newly orphaned niece. But when the doll's programming works too well, she becomes overprotective of her new friend with terrifying results.
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12 comments on Hacker News
I am not a corporate lawyer but AFAIK a CEO and CFO which can be the same person must be a real human for numerous legal responsibilities including those related to the board. The board members also have to be humans. I agree with jalapenos that it would be a fun movie. Perhaps M3GAN 3.1
To me personally that sounds like the setting for a horror flick. Actually it almost reminds me of M3GAN. [1] Fun movie, but I do not want to experience that. That is even before treading into the possibilities of remote hacking, monitoring, manipulation, stalking, etc...
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mqPSTJMjCA [video][2m]
2023 had a lot of big-budget bombs. Ant-Man, Indiana Jones, Mission Impossible, Transformers, The Flash, Fast X, Blue Beetle, Elemental, Shazam!, and the Marvels all underperformed somewhere on the scale from "disappointment" to "disaster".
On the other hand, aside from the massive big-budget hits of Barbie and Mario, there were also a number of mid-budget films that did very well: John Wick 4, Sound of Freedom, Five Nights at Freddy's, Cocaine Bear and M3GAN all exceeded expectations.
So it's hard to interpret this as the "middle class" of movies disappearing. I'd say it's the opposite, in fact. People have gotten sick of the big-budget crap that follows the same formula (note how most of those bombs are superhero movies). It's really the big-budget films that are falling apart.
Hm. It is definitely horrifying if you've seen the movie M3GAN recently.
On the other hand, as you say, it's likely better than the alternative. Which would probably be something like an iPad "bedtime story app" that is less humanlike.
This could provide a viable alternative for exhausted parents to just giving a child an iPad with a movie. It may also open up a huge range of educational uses.
One might imagine in 15-20years though that all of the young people sound like audio books when they talk. Which will be weird.
m3gan film is based on this idea
The M3GAN movie has a scene where she is hit with a broom. Inspired by BD video director says.
but did it have a dancing, evocative-of-social-exclusion-in-middle-school avatar?
https://www.vox.com/culture/2023/1/11/23548955/m3gan-horror-movie-tween-girl
It's social media.
The more social media gives us almost bespoke communities (not even including chatbots) the less resilience people are developing.
The movie M3GAN satirised this nicely.
This is (basically) how voice assistants are structured today, and the results are... lacking. The core issue here is that you're still modeling this like a RPG conversation tree - which is inherently limiting.
You can use AI to help beef up the breadth of possible scenarios supported, but ultimately it's still a conversation tree.
Take two very plausible real-life conversations that can be had. We'll start with one that's a bit more mechanical and domain-limited:
A: "Can I get two tickets to the 8:30 showing of Avatar?"
B: "I'm sorry, but that showing is fully sold out. Would you like the 9:30 showing?"
A: "No that's too late, what else is showing around that time?"
B: "There is a showing of M3gan that starts at 8:40, is that ok?"
A: "Yeah, I'll have two tickets for that."
So in this case the customer went off-script. Your chatbot may be designed to predict intent and walk through a script - a well-edited and wide script, but the user can walk off the script at any time - in this case making a wholly separate query unrelated to the original ticket purchase.
Importantly also that the results of the query are then used to re-contextualize the original intent. This is a very normal conversation that practically no humans would have trouble with - but in a conversation tree-type model breaks very badly.
Now let's take it up another level:
A: "Can I get two tickets to the 8:30 showing of Avatar?"
B: "I'm sorry, but that showing is fully sold out. Would you like the 9:30 showing?"
A: "No that's too late, what else is showing around that time?"
B: "There is a showing of M3gan that starts at 8:40, is that ok?"
A: "I need something kid-friendly unfortunately. What do you have on that front?"
B: "Puss in Boots would be good if your kid like animated movies, there's a showing a little before, at 8:20. Is that ok?"
A: "Yes, two tickets please."
So in this case the user is expecting some type of situational intelligence that merges two areas (ticket buying, movie information and recommendations) and where references to each area must flow smoothly back and forth and inform each other. This level of dynamism is practically impossible to model using conversation tree-type approaches (even AI-assisted conversation trees, which have wider coverage but the same rigid structure).
This is a good example of where current approaches to the problem space produce very rigid, mechanical conversation agents that require the user to have deep knowledge of the (expected) conversation structure, which inhibits discovery of new capabilities and also is intimidating for novices who have not yet internalized the expected scripts.
Another thing: both movies like M3GAN and shows like Wednesday have the prerequisite meme dance, ready for girls to replicate on TikTok.
Wasn't that the whole point of the movie? How horrifying the uncanny valley can be. Not just M3gan herself but the entire world that the movie takes place in. James Wan is a brilliant director.
The new movie M3GAN raises that question. It's not a great movie, but even without the eventual horror elements, it would raise disturbing implications for creating doll robots that can do the work of parenting so parents can focus on what they really care about, like work.