How the Movie 'WarGames' Anticipated Our Current AI Fears 40 Years Ago

Slashdot reader quonset shared this report from CNN:Forty years ago this summer, a new movie floated the prospect of the world being destroyed by artificial intelligence run amok - anticipating current anxieties about where the technology could potential lead - a year before the "Terminator" introduced the futuristic threat known as Skynet. At the time, "WarGames" spoke to another issue very much on the minds of movie-goers: The danger of nuclear annihilation during the Cold War, years before the Berlin Wall and Soviet regime fell... Yet a recent re-viewing of the movie... makes its spin on AI seem even more pointed and timely - the idea that in seeking an emotionally detached, people-free solution to a problem, we might sow the seeds for our own destruction... The AI, in this case, is more sensible than its creators, as opposed to the more malevolent force featured in the new "Mission: Impossible" sequel. Yet the apprehension that has entered the chat - as underscored by recent congressional hearings regarding the perils associated with the technology - is that future iterations of AI won't be so benevolent, and might actually be smarter than the resourceful teenagers that we can deploy to thwart them... As Ryan Britt wrote recently at Inverse.com, what really makes "WarGames" scary isn't that the computer is evil, but rather its potentially dire inability to recognize nuance the way a human can. "In 'WarGames,' the computer doesn't understand the difference between a game and real life," Britt noted. CNN says the movie deals with questions that have "simply continued to evolve" as "reality has caught up with science fiction."

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