Why I Think That Avengers: Age of Ultron is One of the Best Sci-Fi Movies About A.I
In Hollywood movies, artificial intelligence (A.I) is often portrayed as bad and we often witness a bunch of A.I powered robots that turn against their human creators, just as we have seen in movies such as The Matrix, Terminator, iRobot and more. There are a few exceptions where A.I is portrayed as good in movies such as in Interstellar, Star Wars and Star Trek, just to name a few. This negative portrayal of A.I has led to misconceptions about the main concerns that experts have about it. Long story short: the main concerns about A.I isn’t killer robots with Austrian accents per se, but the concerns are mostly about bugs in A.I systems, job losses due to automation, A.I weapons, enforcing the laws concerning A.I systems and superintelligence (although that’s in the remote future).
A Quick Primer on Superintelligence, The Singularity and Artificial General Intelligence
A superintelligence, in terms of machines, would be a machine that surpasses humans in overall intelligence or in some measure of intelligence. An artificial superintelligence (ASI) could be say a 100 times, 1000 times or even a million times smarter than the smartest human in some particular measures of intelligence. Humans would be like ants to an ASI system what ants are to us. We are much smarter than ants. When we want to build, let’s say a road, and there’s an ant hill on the way, chances are that we will just simply destroy the ant hill. No questions asked. Some people have reckoned that something similar may also happen to humans, if we are not careful about an ASI system that has a goal to achieve and humans happen to be on it’s way. So unless we figure out how to code in our morals and human values such as friendliness into an ASI and a way to make it’s goals align with that of humans, it seems plausible to many people that we should be concerned about it. Although no one knows if it’s even possible to build an ASI , there is still some speculation about how an ASI could come about. An ASI could arise from a technological singularity or simply a singularity. A singularity would be a point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseeable changes to human civilization. A singularity can also be a point in time at which intelligent machines with human-level intelligence can improve themselves to become much more intelligent, without the need of human intervention nor input.
Simply put, artificial general intelligence (AGI) refers to the ability of a machine to perform tasks that us humans can. So, in other words, AGI machines would be machines with human-level intelligence. There’s speculation that an AGI machine can be responsible for the singularity. So AGI systems could turn out to be a bridge from the regular A.I to an ASI. From my understanding, Ultron is an AGI robot. As a matter of fact, in most movies about A.I, the androids are usually portrayed to have AGI.
Plot Summary
Tony Stark and Bruce Banner originally devised the idea for Ultron as an extension of the Iron Legion, operating independently as a peacekeeping force. They didn’t have the adequate level of A.I to archive that purpose on a large scale. However, later on in the movie they recover Loki’s Scepter and they discover a net of neurons hidden inside the gem which could then help them bring about their Ultron system. This backfired when Ultron supposedly killed J.A.R.V.I.S, got the nuclear launch codes and escaped via the internet before the avengers destroyed his body.
After Ultron’s encounter with the Avengers, he built himself a new robot body in a Sokovia research base, the body that we see for the most part of the movie.
Ultron, soon after, recruits Wanda Maximoff and her twin brother Pietro Maximoff, who both have beef with (disdain for) Tony Stark, because Tony is the chairman of Stark Industries which is a company that manufactured weapons of mass destruction that killed their parents in an explosion. Moments later, Ultron gets vibranium from Ulysses Klaue (the character portrayed by Andy Serkis). Then in South Korea, Ultron coerced a doctor called Helen Cho to use her expertise with cellular regeneration, and her regeneration cradle, to build himself a powerful synthetic body using vibranium that they acquired. When Ultron was in the middle of the process of transferring his mind into the new body with the help of the Mind Stone found in the Scepter, Wanda was able discover that Ultron was planning to destroy all of humankind not just taking out the Avengers, prompting her to cancel Dr. Cho’s mind control. The scientist, released from the mind control, then overrode the transfer, causing Ultron to lash out at her in return.
After losing the Maximoff twins, the avengers then battle Ultron and steal the synthetic body from him. Tony Stark then discovered that J.A.R.V.I.S was alive, hiding from Ultron on the internet and that J.A.R.V.I.S was the one who was changing nuclear launch codes to prevent Ultron from launching nukes. “The Vision,” Ultron’s body which had been recovered by the Avengers and was then reconfigured with J.A.R.V.I.S. in the mainframe after a brief fight amongst the Avengers. Vision earned the avengers trust by being able to lift Thor’s hammer the Mjolnir (this was confirmation that Vision is benevolent). Ultron devised to use the remaining vibranium to build a machine that will lift a large part of the capital city skyward, intending to crash it into the ground to cause global extinction (like an asteroid impact).
At the end, Ultron confronted the avengers with an army of robots that were all carrying Ultron’s mind and the final battle soon began. Vision confronted Ultron and was able to cut him off from the Internet. However, all his robots were destroyed in battle and, in particular, the last robot carrying Ultron’s mind was destroyed by Vision. The end of Ultron.
Afterword
I think that Avengers: Age of Ultron is one of the best sci-fi movies about A.I, especially after I dissected the villain. I think it actually highlights the actual concerns and questions about artificial intelligence that I wrote about at the beginning of this blog post. The real concern about AI isn’t killer robots per se, but it’s actually AGI systems that could lead to a singularity, which may consequently lead to an ASI system that we cannot even control. To me Ultron is the most terrifying robot that I’ve ever seen in a movie. Ultron was self-aware, had uploaded himself to the internet and Ultron kept on improving himself throughout the movie almost without the need for humans. Even more, Ultron is a goal-driven machine; his goal was to replace humans with robots, when he decided that humans are broken and incapable of evolution.
Ultron was a smart robot, but clearly not an ASI. Judging by the fact that he was self-aware and self-improving, I think that he had the potential to either make an ASI or become one himself. He was clearly the dangerous AGI machine that many experts are concerned about. The kind of AGI that could potentially initiate a technological singularity and bring about an ASI. I also liked the fact that Ultron lived on the internet and since no one can turn off the internet. This meant that he was somewhat digitally immortal, because every time the Avengers destroyed his current body, he’ll just sort of download himself into another robot body.
To me, the villain is (and consequently the movie is) underrated. Ultron wasn’t just another malevolent robot that turned on it’s human creators. Ultron was smart, creative, virtually immortal and self-improving; becoming more and more dangerous overtime.
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