The Creator        1 star

There has been a lot of talk in the news about AI lately including that it may be a threat to the very existence of humanity. So, it is appropriate that I saw the 2023 movie The Creator by director Gareth Edwards (Rogue One). I don’t recall there being much promotion of it before it came out. The movie stars John David Washington (BlacKKKlansman) as Joshua, a retired soldier of the war against AI. In the opening sequence we learn that AI served people well as robot servants, then as police and soldiers, until a war started against humans. The US then banned AI, but the country of New Asia embraced it, developing it further. The US has a super weapon called NOMAD, a sort of space station armed with missiles that can be easily seen in the sky but cannot be attacked and can destroy any target. US intelligence discovered that the New Asian AI creator, Nirmata has created a new AI weapon called Alpha One that will be able to destroy NOMAD and thus win the war against humans. Joshua is called back into service as he is the only one familiar with the New Asia base where Nirmata is believed to be located. Now, the AI robots or “simulants” look and behave exactly like humans except for the hardware around their necks and head. (That is except for the police who are just human shaped hardware.) The Creator follows a cinematic tradition of AI beings that threaten mankind from films like Terminator and 2001: A Space Odyssey. What makes this movie different, and problematic is that the AI robots think and act just like humans to the point that many humans see them as people. This point is exemplified by the robot that Joshua finds that turns out to be the weapon, Alpha One. The robot looks like a small female child, to the point that it seems adorable and has no idea that it is a super weapon. Instead of destroying the child, Joshua abandons his mission and protects the child, who he calls Alphie, hoping it can lead him to his wife, who was believed to have been killed in the war but now is reported to be alive. All this is the setup for the action that ensues, consisting of the many violent combat scenes of the war between the Army and the New Asian military and their AI robots, all in Asian settings giving the movie a Vietnam War feel. The portrayal of robots as so humanlike went too far in my opinion, with them being thought of as alive. Whatever they may look like, they are still machines designed by people. The depiction of the weapon, NOMAD, was another problem. If a nation had the technology to create such a destructive device, why wouldn’t they make more of them? The movie seems to have borrowed elements from other science fiction movies like the Death Star in Star Wars, the dark sets of Blade Runner and the tentacled robot in The Matrix. Finally, it makes the US the bad guys who are trying to kill off the AI beings who just want to live. (This is illustrated in a scene when Alphie is asked what she wants and she simply says, “to be free”.) One would think that a war with AI would involve hacking through the internet, but no. There is no mention of the internet or computer servers. AI seems to exist only in the form of robots. The Creator does not help in our dilemma of what to do about the ever-expanding AI in today’s world.