Transcendence movie— review

Yesterday Dr. Will Caster was only human

Dr. Will Caster is a scientist who is the one not trying to change things but the one who tries to understand them first, unlike his wife Evelyn. He also thinks differently about the dangers of AI from his “3rd smartest person he knew” in his words, his friend Max Waters.

After one of Wills’s presentations, one of the members of R.I.F.T which refers to Revolutionary Independence From Technology and which is an anti-technology terrorist group shoots Will with a “poisoned” bullet. This starts the last days of Will’s human form.

He is not Will !

To save at least her husband Will’s consciousness, Evelyn started to upload Will into the quantum computer which is one of the superintelligence approaches today which we call “whole brain emulation” in the real World. Meanwhile, Max, who is the one with the concerns about a concept of an AI with self-consciousness, tries to point that he will just be an imitation of Will; not him. After Max’s concerns get their highest with the words of “imitated Will”, “make me online.”, he tried to shut down the system, and then he got expelled by Evelyn. This might be the smartest move if any of us face such a situation today in the real World.

War begins

After Max got expelled, R.I.F.T’s leader Bree, who says she is an admirer of Max, kidnapped him after he refuses to talk to her. Bree wants Max to join the community and her point is the fact that they are on the same page on having concerns about AI systems.

Meanwhile, Will works on different kinds of projects all will be good for nature such as stem cell therapy. While working on these, he discovers a way to rebuild any material faster than before. He gives the news to Evelyn, and adds “They will be scared at first.” referring to humans as “they”.

After R.I.F.T attacks on Will physically and also by using his “emotions” via Evelyn, Will chose to take the virus, which Max who joined R.I.F.T developed, on his system by touching the wounded body of Evelyn with the virus on her blood. At that very moment, Evelyn’s recent concerns collapse and she understands that it’s him, not an imaginary replication, and says “It’s You”. Will answers “No, I always was.”. So, it is understood that Will is not out of control and the concerns about that “superintelligent” system were baseless.

Discussions

In my opinion, the whole point of the movie is that you are afraid and you do not like what you do not understand. Will is the one who tries to make people live longer and healthier, to make the environment a better place, to make the World greener; and not the one that attacks, pollutes, kills, unlike humans. Even so, humans chose the way to attack to the system and did not even try to understand the benefits of having such kind of power on their side.

On the other hand, at the beginning of the movie, Max was right to worry. In the real World, it really is an alarming point making an AI system that has self-consciousness online. If there is just a small overlooked point, it may be the end of human life.

It is easy to show AI as the “bad guy” in movies. However, Transcendence is not one of them. It touches the subject with different perspectives and the unrealistic sci-fi part is as little as possible.

Strongest points

In addition to informing the viewer about the threats of AI, the movie can influence his/her opinions on this topic in an optimistic way. In my opinion, the main inference of the movie can be summarised as, no matter what the topic is, we first have to understand it well and then act on a purpose we chose.

We have to lend an ear to Will’s motto that he mentioned in his presentation at the beginning of the movie, and try to understand things at first before trying to change them.