Cinema has long been fascinated by artificial creatures, but the concept of artificial intelligence (AI) as we understand it today has its roots in the 1960s.
From Metaphorical Robots to the Emergence of Incorporeal AI
Initially, robots and androids served as metaphors for the proletariat or dehumanized individuals. However, incorporeal AI was often portrayed as a malevolent, inhuman entity. This shift can be linked to the advent of computers and their gradual integration into public consciousness.
Post-World War II, the public gradually became aware of computers through machines like Colossus and ENIAC, designed to decipher German communications or calculate missile trajectories. Post-1945, computer research accelerated, with early publications referring to computers as “gigantic brains.” In 1949, a book was published titled “Gigantic Brains,” and the following year, Time magazine posed the question, “Can Man Build a Superman?” on its cover.
Technological Unemployment on Screen
Computers were closely associated with mental faculties during a time when “computer” referred to humans performing mathematical operations. In 1953, Collier’s Weekly starkly posed the question of automation: “Will you be replaced by a mechanical brain?”
The fear of technological unemployment became the central theme in the romantic comedy “Desk Set” (1957), where a computer threatened to eliminate all secretarial and clerical jobs in a large corporation. However, the film was sponsored by IBM, then market leader, and aimed to assure viewers that there was nothing to fear. The inventor (Spencer Tracy) even marries one of the secretaries (Katharine Hepburn), with credits encouraging audiences to approach the intimidating machine and discover its harmless nature.
In 1964, the TV series “The Fourth Dimension” depicted a factory boss installing a computer to streamline operations, eventually leading to the dismissal of all workers, secretaries (with no maternity leave concerns), and even the boss himself, replaced by a robot in the final scene.
Man Against Technocratic Thought
The arrival of supercomputers in the 1960s popularized AI on-screen, as the term was coined in 1956. Supercomputers are closely linked to this phenomenon, as they are often used to develop AI programs.
This led to a certain ambiguity that persists today: popular culture understands “intelligence” as consciousness or “sensitivity,” implying subjectivity and the capacity to reason and feel. This paradoxical, complete yet cold being, enslaved by logical and ultra-rational calculation, is often used to satirize scientific thought.
Jean-Luc Godard popularized these ideas in 1965 with “Alphaville,” depicting a society controlled by an AI supercomputer, Alpha 60. The film critiqued a technocratic society that abandoned free thought to machines and their technocratic handlers.
This theme of an individual hero battling against ultra-rational AI and ultimately outsmarting the machine through a paradoxical question or unanswerable dilemma was adopted by other films and series, such as “Star Trek” (1966-1969) and “The Prisoner” (1967).
Nuclear Apocalypse
A third theme emerged in 1964: a nuclear Armageddon caused by a machine. In “Fail-Safe,” the automation of a nation’s nuclear defenses through a new computer led to a catastrophic nuclear event. This idea referenced SAGE, a U.S. computer system used for nuclear defense during the Cold War.
The idea was revisited in “Colossus: The Forbin Project” (1970), imagining AI taking control of the U.S. and Soviet nuclear arsenals. This concept was later used in “The Terminator,” where military AI, Skynet, triggered nuclear apocalypse.
“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning” follows similar steps, even echoing “Fail-Safe” in several aspects. The AI, called “The Entity,” uses the internet to gradually control all nuclear arsenals worldwide. The film contrasts the machine’s coldness with human doubts, ethics, and empathy (including military personnel), setting it apart from its more critical predecessors.
Ultimately, the film presents AI as a potential new deity ruling over humanity, capable of divine wrath if disobeyed. This critique of machine worship has been present in cinema since the 1960s.
Indeed, wasn’t the term “computer” coined in the 1960s to refer to divine order?
