This article was taken from the May 2014 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by <span class="s1">subscribing online.
Wally Pfister knows a thing or two about ambitious film-making.
Having been cinematographer on all of Christopher Nolan's films, it's no surprise to hear his directorial debut,
Transcendence, isn't a modest affair. It's a thriller about artificial super-intelligence, starring Johnny Depp as a murdered AI researcher who gets uploaded to a computer, becoming more powerful than his political enemies could imagine. "From the moment I saw 2001: A Space Odyssey when I was seven years old, I was fascinated with AI and technology," says Pfister, an avid Wired reader (a copy appears in the film, with Depp's character on the cover). The film's focus is the technological singularity -- that supposed point in the future when the intelligence of machines overtakes that of our own -- and its potential consequences. "You can't help but consider what could go wrong," says Pfister. "If you take every neuron and synapse from a person and you put them inside a machine, what do you end up with?
If you're capable of capturing human emotions, does that contain all the pitfalls? Is there jealousy, rage? Emotional responses where there should be intellectual ones? It's fascinating, that notion of tampering with a very organic creation."
While writing and making the film, Pfister met a team of scientists from MIT, Berkeley, Stanford and the California Institute of Technology to learn about nanotechnology in cancer research, robotics, AI and neurobiology. "I brought two Berkeley scientists in for every part of the process: during the writing; when we were selecting props; when we were filming the brain upload -- they vetted the science. They actually had more advanced ways of doing things than what I was portraying, but it was too graphic for me to include -- like taking off the cranium and tapping into the brain directly."
For all the politics inherent in the film's drama and conflict, Pfister strived for ambiguity. "We would be wise to be sceptical and wary of AI and our dependence on it," he says. "Is the technology a malevolent or benevolent force? Can it be one, or the other? You decide."
Transcendence was released to cinemas in the UK on April 25.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
