Artificial intelligence (again) and a little bit of Star Trek

Another movie about a perfect robot looking like a real man, this one is by Spielberg.
I don't actually want to write a review on this film. I wouldn't say that its message is pioneering, the more films about supercomputers I watch the more I realize they are all alike. One of the special features of such movies is that a perfect computer has a strong resemblance to a human being. And that is the point I can't understand. I wouldn't like to live in a world where I couldn't tell a human from a machine. Even if it has an artificial intelligence, the machine is still just the machine, no matter how it looks like. The similarity to a living thing just makes it more difficult (sometimes even impossible) to make a decision and switch it off if necessary.



Moreover, computer is something that we invented and that has no counterparts in the wild nature. So why should we give it resemblance to any living creature? It may be a good idea to borrow various mechanisms from nature, but there is no necessity in copying the overall appearance, it's more important to get the main point. I think the ideal robot should look like a sphere hovering in the air with manipulators and controllers hidden inside it and coming out when needed. If you do want it to look like a living creature, the best choice imho would be something like Eve in the "Wall-e" movie, for it's different enough from any being on Earth.

There's another theme of no small account following this discourse. Discovery channel made a movie "How techies changed the world. William Shatner" (he played captain Kirk). It's a documentary telling us how Star Trek affected people's minds and thus really changed the world (it's such a pity we still don't have a working  transporter!..). I think we are very lucky that it was Star Trek that filled people with enthusiasm to produce and invent something new, because its creator, Gene Roddenberry, strove for showing the future where people would avoid the nonsensical wars and appreciate morality above all.
But Star Trek is not the only sci-fi opus, there are many more movies and books about the future. And I'm not sure whether the authors of these works always keep in mind the responsibility they bear. Every idea, even the maddest one, can inspire somebody to put it into practice. I think this important point isn't often taken into account. You can write anything you want in a book, but you never can if this doesn't lead to invention of something that would destroy humanity or even the whole Universe.