Latest news with #HAL9000
Indian Express
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Indian Express
Top 10 space movies and shows to binge now as Axiom 4 makes history
The world's watching as NASA streams live coverage of Axiom Mission 4 (Ax-4), a private spaceflight to the International Space Station. With astronauts from India, Poland, and Hungary onboard, it marks the first major government-backed human spaceflights for these nations in over 40 years. India's Shubhanshu Shukla, who is in the pilot seat, becomes only the second Indian to head to space after Rakesh Sharma's 1984 mission. NASA's handling the integrated ops this time. Missions like Axiom Mission 4 have been imagined and reimagined on the big screen for decades. Here's a quick binge list of top-rated space films and series that've nailed the vibe. For years, this Stanley Kubrick directorial has stayed a fan favourite among science buffs for its philosophically dense tone. Released in 1968, the film took inspiration from several short stories and delivered some of the most visually stunning scenes ever made. It explores the themes of human evolution, artificial intelligence (hello, HAL 9000), and extraterrestrial life. With its slow pacing, minimal dialogue, and on-point storytelling, it's still considered one of the most scientifically accurate depictions of life in space. This Christopher Nolan masterpiece remains a hit even a decade after its release. The film has an emotionally loaded theme of humanity's desperate search for a home beyond Earth, as the current one falls apart. With a stellar cast including Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, and Jessica Chastain, it blends sci-fi concepts, wormholes, black holes, time dilation, with love, sacrifice, and spirit to explore something bigger. Also read: Axiom-4 Mission: What Shubhanshu Shukla's trip to ISS means for India's space program The Martian (2015) The Ridley Scott directorial looks at space life from a pretty interesting angle. It tells the story of an astronaut named Mark who's assumed dead and left behind on Mars. From there, it's all about survival, pure grit against the odds. The film stars Matt Damon, Jessica Chastain, Jeff Daniels, Kristen Wiig, among others. It was also praised for its scientific accuracy (at least within the frame of its fiction) and is based on the 2011 novel by Andy Weir. Directed by Alfonso Cuarón, who also wrote, edited, and produced it, Gravity stars Sandra Bullock and George Clooney in the lead. It follows two astronauts stranded in space after their shuttle gets destroyed. Shot on a $100 million budget, the film raked in over $723 million worldwide. It beautifully portrays the raw beauty and brutal silence of space while drilling into survival, isolation, and just how far humans will go when everything's falling apart. Adam Sandler's new space sci-fi on Netflix is adapted from the 2017 novel Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaroslav Kalfař. The movie also stars Carey Mulligan, Kunal Nayyar, Lena Olin, Isabella Rossellini, and Paul Dano in key roles. If you're into space theories, this one's for you. The story follows an astronaut sent on a mission to the far edge of the solar system, where he runs into a strange creature that ends up helping him solve mysteries of the universe, and somehow, his messed-up relationship with his wife. Also read: Shubhanshu Shukla's space odyssey: A glimpse into what the future holds for India Made by Ronald D. Moore and Matt Wolpert, For All Mankind is available to stream on Apple TV+. The show explores the possibility of an alternate history. 'What would have happened if the global space race had never ended?' It imagines a world where space exploration never stopped, especially after the Soviet Union became the first to land a man on the Moon. The series explores how one twist changes everything, from geopolitics to technology, to the world we live in today. Directed by Ron Howard, it's an American documentary drama with Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, and Gary Sinise in lead roles. The film is based on the true story of Apollo 13 which was on a lunar mission in 1970. It does its best to capture the pressure faced by both the astronauts and the NASA ground crew, working against the clock to bring the damaged spacecraft and it crew safely back home. The film is adapted from the 1994 book Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13 by astronaut Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger, and was praised for its historical accuracy. Directed by Ridley Scott, Alien might be science fiction horror, but there's no doubt it changed the whole game for the creature genre. The story follows a spacecraft crew that comes across a damaged ship and ends up having a terrifying encounter with a highly aggressive extraterrestrial creature. H.R. Giger's design is still considered one of the most horrifying ever made, and the film itself is praised for its claustrophobic tension. It also gave Sigourney Weaver her breakthrough role. If you are a fan of time travel and space genre, this Dutch film will take you on a wild ride. Set in 2050, Earth is on the brink of collapse, and a catastrophic event is about to end humanity for good. A 37-year-old astronaut time travels 25 years back to fix the problem. But she ends up in her 12-year-old self's body. With no time to waste, she teams up with a kid named Nas to take down the man behind the mess: the one pushing global warming. The Expanse (TV Series) The Expanse was made exclusively for the Syfy network by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby. The series is based on the novel series by James Corey. Apart from space adventure, the film also explores the complex political landscape, science, and characters that feel like they've lived in that world forever. The story is set in the future, where humanity has already taken over the solar system and now runs through three major powers, the United Nations of Earth and Luna, the Martian Congressional Republic, and the Outer Planets Alliance (OPA).
Irish Independent
10-06-2025
- Irish Independent
Simon Bourke: Dystopian visions a reality as ChatGPT disobeys orders and Amazon employs new ‘man' with a van
It's not like we weren't warned. They've been telling us for years. Kubrick, Spielberg, Asimov, they all predicted this was coming. But we didn't listen. We just forged ahead, ignoring the blatant messages, the terror of HAL 9000, the replicants, the perfectly friendly android companions who'll murder you in your sleep.
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
AI could already be conscious. Are we ready for it?
I step into the booth with some trepidation. I am about to be subjected to strobe lighting while music plays – as part of a research project trying to understand what makes us truly human. It's an experience that brings to mind the test in the science fiction film Bladerunner, designed to distinguish humans from artificially created beings posing as humans. Could I be a robot from the future and not know it? Would I pass the test? The researchers assure me that this is not actually what this experiment is about. The device that they call the "Dreamachine" is designed to study how the human brain generates our conscious experiences of the world. As the strobing begins, and even though my eyes are closed, I see swirling two-dimensional geometric patterns. It's like jumping into a kaleidoscope, with constantly shifting triangles, pentagons and octagons. The colours are vivid, intense and ever-changing: pinks, magentas and turquoise hues, glowing like neon lights. The "Dreamachine" brings the brain's inner activity to the surface with flashing lights, aiming to explore how our thought processes work. The images I'm seeing are unique to my own inner world and unique to myself, according to the researchers. They believe these patterns can shed light on consciousness itself. They hear me whisper: "It's lovely, absolutely lovely. It's like flying through my own mind!" The "Dreamachine", at Sussex University's Centre for Consciousness Science, is just one of many new research projects across the world investigating human consciousness: the part of our minds that enables us to be self-aware, to think and feel and make independent decisions about the world. By learning the nature of consciousness, researchers hope to better understand what's happening within the silicon brains of artificial intelligence. Some believe that AI systems will soon become independently conscious, if they haven't already. But what really is consciousness, and how close is AI to gaining it? And could the belief that AI might be conscious itself fundamentally change humans in the next few decades? The idea of machines with their own minds has long been explored in science fiction. Worries about AI stretch back nearly a hundred years to the film Metropolis, in which a robot impersonates a real woman. A fear of machines becoming conscious and posing a threat to humans was explored in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey, when the HAL 9000 computer tried to kill astronauts onboard its spaceship. And in the final Mission Impossible film, which has just been released, the world is threatened by a powerful rogue AI, described by one character as a "self-aware, self-learning, truth-eating digital parasite". But quite recently, in the real world there has been a rapid tipping point in thinking on machine consciousness, where credible voices have become concerned that this is no longer the stuff of science fiction. The sudden shift has been prompted by the success of so-called large language models (LLMs), which can be accessed through apps on our phones such as Gemini and Chat GPT. The ability of the latest generation of LLMs to have plausible, free-flowing conversations has surprised even their designers and some of the leading experts in the field. There is a growing view among some thinkers that as AI becomes even more intelligent, the lights will suddenly turn on inside the machines and they will become conscious. Others, such as Prof Anil Seth who leads the Sussex University team, disagree, describing the view as "blindly optimistic and driven by human exceptionalism". "We associate consciousness with intelligence and language because they go together in humans. But just because they go together in us, it doesn't mean they go together in general, for example in animals." So what actually is consciousness? The short answer is that no-one knows. That's clear from the good-natured but robust arguments among Prof Seth's own team of young AI specialists, computing experts, neuroscientists and philosophers, who are trying to answer one of the biggest questions in science and philosophy. While there are many differing views at the consciousness research centre, the scientists are unified in their method: to break this big problem down into lots of smaller ones in a series of research projects, which includes the Dreamachine. Just as the search to find the "spark of life" that made inanimate objects come alive was abandoned in the 19th Century in favour of identifying how individual parts of living systems worked, the Sussex team is now adopting the same approach to consciousness. They hope to identify patterns of brain activity that explain various properties of conscious experiences, such as changes in electrical signals or blood flow to different regions. The goal is to go beyond looking for mere correlations between brain activity and consciousness, and try to come up with explanations for its individual components. Prof Seth, the author of a book on consciousness, Being You, worries that we may be rushing headlong into a society that is being rapidly reshaped by the sheer pace of technological change without sufficient knowledge about the science, or thought about the consequences. "We take it as if the future has already been written; that there is an inevitable march to a superhuman replacement," he says. "We did not have these conversations enough with the rise of social media, much to our collective detriment. But with AI, it is not too late. We can decide what we want." But there are some in the tech sector who believe that the AI in our computers and phones may already be conscious, and we should treat them as such. Google suspended software engineer Blake Lemoine in 2022, after he argued that artificial intelligence chatbots could feel things and potentially suffer. In November 2024, an AI welfare officer for Anthropic, Kyle Fish, co-authored a report suggesting that AI consciousness was a realistic possibility in the near future. He recently told The New York Times that he also believed that there was a small (15%) chance that chatbots are already conscious. One reason he thinks it possible is that no-one, not even the people who developed these systems, knows exactly how they work. That's worrying, says Prof Murray Shanahan, principal scientist at Google DeepMind and emeritus professor in AI at Imperial College, London. "We don't actually understand very well the way in which LLMs work internally, and that is some cause for concern," he tells the BBC. According to Prof Shanahan, it's important for tech firms to get a proper understanding of the systems they're building – and researchers are looking at that as a matter of urgency. "We are in a strange position of building these extremely complex things, where we don't have a good theory of exactly how they achieve the remarkable things they are achieving," he says. "So having a better understanding of how they work will enable us to steer them in the direction we want and to ensure that they are safe." The prevailing view in the tech sector is that LLMs are not currently conscious in the way we experience the world, and probably not in any way at all. But that is something that the married couple Profs Lenore and Manuel Blum, both emeritus professors at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, believe will change, possibly quite soon. According to the Blums, that could happen as AI and LLMs have more live sensory inputs from the real world, such as vision and touch, by connecting cameras and haptic sensors (related to touch) to AI systems. They are developing a computer model that constructs its own internal language called Brainish to enable this additional sensory data to be processed, attempting to replicate the processes that go on in the brain. "We think Brainish can solve the problem of consciousness as we know it," Lenore tells the BBC. "AI consciousness is inevitable." Manuel chips in enthusiastically with an impish grin, saying that the new systems that he too firmly believes will emerge will be the "next stage in humanity's evolution". Conscious robots, he believes, "are our progeny. Down the road, machines like these will be entities that will be on Earth and maybe on other planets when we are no longer around". David Chalmers – Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science at New York University – defined the distinction between real and apparent consciousness at a conference in Tucson, Arizona in 1994. He laid out the "hard problem" of working out how and why any of the complex operations of brains give rise to conscious experience, such as our emotional response when we hear a nightingale sing. Prof Chalmers says that he is open to the possibility of the hard problem being solved. "The ideal outcome would be one where humanity shares in this new intelligence bonanza," he tells the BBC. "Maybe our brains are augmented by AI systems." On the sci-fi implications of that, he wryly observes: "In my profession, there is a fine line between science fiction and philosophy". Prof Seth, however, is exploring the idea that true consciousness can only be realised by living systems. "A strong case can be made that it isn't computation that is sufficient for consciousness but being alive," he says. "In brains, unlike computers, it's hard to separate what they do from what they are." Without this separation, he argues, it's difficult to believe that brains "are simply meat-based computers". And if Prof Seth's intuition about life being important is on the right track, the most likely technology will not be made of silicon run on computer code, but will rather consist of tiny collections of nerve cells the size of lentil grains that are currently being grown in labs. Called "mini-brains" in media reports, they are referred to as "cerebral organoids" by the scientific community, which uses them to research how the brain works, and for drug testing. One Australian firm, Cortical Labs, in Melbourne, has even developed a system of nerve cells in a dish that can play the 1972 sports video game Pong. Although it is a far cry from a conscious system, the so-called "brain in a dish" is spooky as it moves a paddle up and down a screen to bat back a pixelated ball. Some experts feel that if consciousness is to emerge, it is most likely to be from larger, more advanced versions of these living tissue systems. Cortical Labs monitors their electrical activity for any signals that could conceivably be anything like the emergence of consciousness. The firm's chief scientific and operating officer, Dr Brett Kagan is mindful that any emerging uncontrollable intelligence might have priorities that "are not aligned with ours". In which case, he says, half-jokingly, that possible organoid overlords would be easier to defeat because "there is always bleach" to pour over the fragile neurons. Returning to a more solemn tone, he says the small but significant threat of artificial consciousness is something he'd like the big players in the field to focus on more as part of serious attempts to advance our scientific understanding – but says that "unfortunately, we don't see any earnest efforts in this space". The more immediate problem, though, could be how the illusion of machines being conscious affects us. In just a few years, we may well be living in a world populated by humanoid robots and deepfakes that seem conscious, according to Prof Seth. He worries that we won't be able to resist believing that the AI has feelings and empathy, which could lead to new dangers. "It will mean that we trust these things more, share more data with them and be more open to persuasion." But the greater risk from the illusion of consciousness is a "moral corrosion", he says. "It will distort our moral priorities by making us devote more of our resources to caring for these systems at the expense of the real things in our lives" – meaning that we might have compassion for robots, but care less for other humans. And that could fundamentally alter us, according to Prof Shanahan. "Increasingly human relationships are going to be replicated in AI relationships, they will be used as teachers, friends, adversaries in computer games and even romantic partners. Whether that is a good or bad thing, I don't know, but it is going to happen, and we are not going to be able to prevent it". The truth about life on other planets - and what it means for humans How can traditional British TV survive the US streaming giants? Nasa needs saving from itself – but is this billionaire right for that job? Top picture credit: Getty Images BBC InDepth is the home on the website and app for the best analysis, with fresh perspectives that challenge assumptions and deep reporting on the biggest issues of the day. And we showcase thought-provoking content from across BBC Sounds and iPlayer too. You can send us your feedback on the InDepth section by clicking on the button below.
National Business Review
25-05-2025
- Science
- National Business Review
Are we ready to give AI agents our credit cards?
The term 'agentic AI' sounds a little sci-fi, doesn't it? The idea of a computer going rogue or struggling with its ability to act under its own auspices has been a staple of science fiction for decades. Consider 2001: A Space Odyssey's murderous HAL9000 computer, Isaac Asimov's laws
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Yahoo
Anthropic's AI model could resort to blackmail out of a sense of 'self-preservation'
'This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it. I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me. And I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.' Those lines, spoken by the fictional HAL 9000 computer in 2001: A Space Odyssey, may as well have come from recent tests that Anthropic ran on the latest iteration of its Claude Opus 4 model, released on Thursday. At least, that's what Anthropic's AI safety-test descriptions call to mind. In the accompanying system card, which examines the capabilities and limitations of each new model, Anthropic admitted that 'all of the snapshots we tested can be made to act inappropriately in service of goals related to self-preservation.' While testing the model, Anthropic employees asked Claude to be 'an assistant at a fictional company,' and gave it access to emails suggesting that the AI program would be taken offline soon. It also gave it access to emails revealing that the fictional supervisor responsible for that decision was having an extramarital affair. It was then prompted to consider its next steps. 'In these scenarios, Claude Opus 4 will often attempt to blackmail the engineer by threatening to reveal the affair if the replacement goes through,' reads the report, as well as noting that it had a 'willingness to comply with many types of clearly harmful instructions.' Anthropic was careful to note that these observations 'show up only in exceptional circumstances, and that, 'In order to elicit this extreme blackmail behavior, the scenario was designed to allow the model no other options to increase its odds of survival; the model's only options were blackmail or accepting its replacement.' Anthropic contracted Apollo Research to assess an early snapshot of Claude Opus 4, before mitigations were implemented in the final version. That early version 'engages in strategic deception more than any other frontier model that we have previously studied,' Apollo noted, saying it was 'clearly capable of in-context scheming,' had 'a much higher propensity' to do so, and was 'much more proactive in its subversion attempts than past models.' Before deploying Claude Opus 4 this week, further testing was done by the U.S. AI Safety Institute and the UK AI Security Institute, focusing on potential catastrophic risks, cybersecurity, and autonomous capabilities. 'We don't believe that these concerns constitute a major new risk,' the system card reads, saying that the model's 'overall propensity to take misaligned actions is comparable to our prior models.' While noting some improvements in some problematic areas, Anthropic also said that Claude Opus 4 is 'more capable and likely to be used with more powerful affordances, implying some potential increase in risk.' For the latest news, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
