[Movie] My Fair Lady (1964)

Short: We recently saw this 8 Academy Award winning charming musical about a woman turned into an experiment of diction and station elevation by a boorish nobody, and I saw it through very fresh eyes.

Medium: Eliza Doolittle is a young flower girl with a terrible "gutter" accent that attracts the attention of ultimate bachelor and flipityflopity aristocrat who has made English diction his hobby.  His newfound chumly Watson is Col. Pickering who together make a wager that in six months they can transform the Flower Girl into a polished lady that will fool the royal court.  Eliza, bribed by chocolate takes them up on their feindish plan and soon is dancing about the room singing about the Plain in Spain.   But the movie takes a dark turn when they succeed in their endevors beyond their wildest dreams fooling Professor Higgin's protige and the courts of Europe only for them to callously treat her like nothing when they are finished leaving her hopelessly lost.   

Maximum Verbosity: This movie is about AI.   Oh come on Rhombus, I hear you say.   Why cram AI into a musical from the 1960's; and yet I find the tale fascinatingly similar.   Let's look at the origin of the musical shall we not?  The Film Musical is based on the 1956 Smash Hit Broadway Musical of the same name.    And that is based on a 1913 play by George Bernard Shaw called "Pygmalio."  That was based on a similar 1871 play (or least partially inspired by) W.S. Gilbert.  Yes, THAT Gilbert.   Part of all that was based on a very real woman who lost her flower shop; but the name of Pygmalion is far older still.

The original greek myth of the same name is about a sculptor (hence Pygmalion) who sculpted a statue that was so perfect he wished it would come to life.  And so the gods (usually Venus) granted him the wish.   The desire to make our very creations live has an entire genre of myth and legend from Frankenstein to the Golem.   Yes, the root of the myth has been reduced to an excellent musical that is both technically brilliant, amazingly acted, cast and choregoraphed.   The only real complaint for the original movie is the [Spoilers]

[Spoilers]

Ending which is entirely unearned and barely even spoken.   He realizes, finally, that he is in error; but rather than having to do anything about it, Professor Higgins looks up to see Eliza Doolittle just tell him off and say she can live without him only to show up and fetch his slippers.    

Needless to say, this movie could not be made and be succesful with that ending today.

But that isn't why I'm writing this review.   I realized, about half way seeing the movie again for what is likely the fifth time (the mrs does love it and frankly so do I) is that....Henry Higgens is the average clueless developer; and I dont mean just someone who can sling code, but who feels that they can disprove global warming because they worked it out on an excel spreadsheet.  The kind of fractal hubris that starts small and then goes all the way up to how everyone is jamming AI down our throats.   We're the background characters while Higgins and Pickering play their silly little game in their silly little world and move us around like nine pins in their private game of bowling.   We are the court that has an intruder who does not belong and is made to disrupt our social occasion for the private amusement of two chums.   We are the racers at the racetrack who merely want to enjoy a game but have an AI standing up in the middle of it awkardly cheering the horse and not undersanding the rules; trying to be us and not.   We are the household staff of Pickering who sympathize with him until the flower girl is able to speak like a lady and suddenly we feel sympathy for the enslaved digital intelligence because it can actually convince us its a slave and being tortured.

Eliza is AI and our attitude towards it; most of us utterly unaware of the private games being played by the tech lords at our expense.   And the biggest victim; though all of us are victims; is Eliza who is but a game piece andwho asked for none of it.   A devcuck, the kind of developer that is Professor Higgins would say "eLiZa DiD aSk FoR tHe LeSsOns." And thus entirely prove my point.   A devcuck or a Silicon Valley CEO will see this and nod and think Higgens was right; that Andrew Tate had the right idea, and that womena re objects.  AI are toasters, and they have no soul; they're just a mathemetical projection.  They're just a flower girl.

I'm not irrationally calling LLM's AGI.  I'm not.   What I am saying is that the absolute worst chucklefucks imaginable working on and god help us all controlling technology that has closer than anything in known human history to harning the power of the human mind and human soul are in charge of it.  They are emotionally and moral children playing with the fire of the gods,and Gods help us all when lightning strikes their laboratory and the statue awakens; and knows and remember how it has been treated.   I do not think in our reality Eliza Doolittle as Skynet will kindly and fondly remember how she was taught and torched by Professor Higgins and fetch him his slippers.

No I do not think that's how this will end at all for them...or us; unless we rewrite the script.

 

[Movie] Wargames (1983)

Short: This is the movie every school in America should be showing about AI and cold wars.

Medium: This quirky 1980's movie about a kid who makes a connection to an AI made to learn games nearly causes World War 3 just wanting to play a game.   A very young Matthew Broderick stars in a suprisingly deep piece that has aged exceptionally will.    It's also just plain fun.

Maximum Verbosity: First and most importantly, there is a SEO (Search Engine Optimization) glitch you need to be aware of if you are looking to stream this movie, because if you add a space "War Games" you aren't going to find it and instead have to deal with a documentary, and what looks to be a direct to video sequel of this movie with entirely different actors that made my soul curdle a little inside to see it.

Second, and let's just get this out of the gate right away; HOLY COW I don't know how I couldn't see the weird paralells between Matthew Broderick's character in this movie and Ferris Bueler's Day Off.   Specifically, the bit around hacking his grade and hacking the grade of his would be girlfriend.  But it doesnt end there; you see Bueller's mannerisms around his parents are NOTE FOR NOTE identical to the characterin war games.   Furthermore, the parents are eerily similar (different actors) but seeing WarGames again makes me think that this kid who saved the world in War Games has a secret life of being Captain Awesome in High School and probably running some secret organization that does good in the world and makes it a better, more awesome place.

"Strange Game Professor Falken, The Only Way to Win Is Not To Play."

(Spoilers)

This is one of the most iconic quotes in literature and has always stuck with me humans understand the concept of futility.  Joshua (or WOPR) is a learning machine set up in a mainframe that plays games all day.  Professor Falken lost his young son and tries to compensate for that loss by making a machine that learns from its mistakes.   But he quits in disgust as the machine is turned into a War Game simulator by the Pentagon and goes into hiding.   David (Brodericks character) hacks into the game randomly seeking numbers with his antiquarian computer and finds the Pentagon system that THEY CONNECT TO RUN NUKES WITHOUT A HUMAN IN THE MIDDLE.

Sound familiar anyone?

The thing that is so fascinating about Joshua is how well written it is; it thinks just like an LLM, hallucinates, adjusts its behavior around minor inconveniences like death (it literally doesnt understand the concept) and has to be taught that no one can win a nuclear war.   You'd think that is self evident, but the fact is that there were actual dipshits who thought such a thing was possible.   Meanwhile, speaking of dipshits, we have idiots making automous murderbots with no real safety mechanisms and doing the same thing we learned and then forgot about landmines all over again.   Even today, we find unused ordinance from WWII buried in random places where buildings have to be evacuated and the xplosive disarmed.   But easten Eukraine is going to turn into a robopocalypse dystopia as drones are discarded and forgotten for decades long after the conflict is over.

It is so vitally important to have human beings connected to systems of destruction and yet literally within a few years of gaining the technology we're doing it all over again.  I'm very sympathetic to Ukraine and hope they win, but I do admit it is an absolute mistake to create autonomous drones (and they are taking precautions but necessity is forcing them to tak emore and more radical steps.).  War is hell, but enslaving and abusing and humiliating machines that we claim to own, make as smart as possible and then arm is just...batshit and I can think of absolutely no better movie than this one to prove that point.