Fear of aliens in the public consciousness gave way to fear of artificial intelligence

American experts on unidentified flying objects proposed to build a center for receiving guests from space. On the right is a Hungarian-born Coleman von Kevitsky, a former UN official, on the left is Karl Viet, president of the German branch of the UFO research community; photos from the international conference on UFOs, October 31, 1967 in Mainz, Germany. In the foreground - a table lamp in the form of a flying saucer.

In 2004, during a training flight over the Pacific Ocean, two US Navy pilots reported an unusual phenomenon: a mysterious, incredibly fast flying object boiling the sea, unfolding in the air, and able to fly about 100 km per minute without visible engines.

This episode was one of many that underwent research within the framework of an extremely secret program of the Department of Defense, which worked from 2007 to 2012 with the support of a group of US senators. In the article about this program, the New York Times mentioned a secret warehouse in Nevada, where the government may be storing “alien alloys” from similar flying objects.

In the old days, such rumors and revelations would have driven society into a frenzy. They would have joined the Roswell incident and Zone 51 in the pantheon of discussing UFO plots. However, in 2018, the possible existence of aliens barely makes its way through the news flow, mostly hammered by such mundane problems as scandals of sexual harassment, the suspension of government work and the decrees on reducing corporate tax collection. Instead, we worry more about another threat to our lives: artificial intelligence.
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Intrigue with aliens

Not so long ago, society was seized with the prospects of meeting small green men and unidentified flying objects. For decades we have been interested in the unknown Universe and in what may exist in it - and this obsession looked at us from the screens of cinemas and television.

The film “Close contacts of the third degree” by Steven Spielberg offered a harmonious first contact with interstellar travelers. The Alien gave the kids hope that they might stumble upon an alien friend in the tool shed. The original trilogy "Star Wars" by George Lucas brought to life whole galaxies, clogged with alien life. "Star Trek" showed the reassuring sight of humanity, burst into a wonderful cosmos, filled with discoveries, exploration and adventure.



The flip side of the coin, of course, was the concern that something we could find outside the planet would either kill or enslave us. Franchise "Alien" James Cameron [in fact, Ridley Scott / approx. transl.] exploited the fear of losing our position at the top of the food chain. Alien creatures penetrated our bodies and minds in the series "The X-Files ". In the first episode of South Park, Erik Cartman was teleported across the beam aboard a flying saucer and subjected to anal sounding. And in The Simpsons, Kang and Kodos influenced the 1996 US presidential election with a boldness superior to the “Russian hackers.” [The American media are actively discussing the alleged interference of the Russian special services in the 2016 elections, which Donald Trump won / approx. transl.]



Twenty years later, science fiction still makes the public happy. Accountants of the film "The Last Jedi" will tell you that people still like a good space opera. Arrival and Living recently told stories about encounters with aliens in interesting and successful ways, and we even have time for a big evil alien villain we will see in 2018 thanks to the movie Avengers: War of Infinity .

But the prospect of meeting with creatures from the stars no longer seems to us as wonderful and frightening as it once was. We no longer need to go into space in search of the future: it is already here, in our pockets (and it can also order the delivery of Chinese food).

Robots revolution

When we turned away from the stars and fell to the screens, our concern about the fate of mankind also changed. We are no longer afraid that the aliens will take away our future - we now have to worry about the technologies that we ourselves create on our planet.

The development of AI carries out more and more unpleasant scenarios about which the old blockbusters dedicated to aliens warned us. In 2016, the first attempt by Microsoft to release the Tay AI bot turned into recognitions of love for Hitler just an hour after the launch of the project. Tesla director Ilon Mask called on the UN to ban the use of weapons with AI before it accomplishes the “third revolution in military affairs”. And in China, the government is deploying AI surveillance cameras capable of tracking 1.3 billion people more abruptly than Big Brother ever dreamed of.

With the development of AI’s presence in films and on TV, the aliens blasting us seem almost old-fashionedly attractive compared to the frightening uncertainty of the world revolving around a computer. Will Smith moved from saving the Earth from the destruction of aliens to save her from the robotic servants who flew off the coils. At a later time, Out Of The Machine , A Robot Called Chappy , And Excellence attempted to investigate the difficulties encountered when the lines between human and robot were blurred.

However, concern about intelligent machines is not new. It all began, most likely, with Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner. A stunning image of a disorderly built-up, smog-smothered future filled with bounty hunters mumbling "to improve" toward grainy images on computer screens.



Epic tape in the style of neonuar introduced into popular culture the concept of intelligent machines, almost indistinguishable from man, and asked the audience a question - where does our humanity end and start them.



Two years later, the Terminator franchise appeared, replacing Scott's existential and atmospheric reflections with skinned Arnold Schwarzenegger with a huge cannon. “Inhuman, tireless, irresistible” - promised the trailer for “Terminator”, reinforcing the kind of severe materialized destruction with a face without emotions in the public consciousness, and warning us about the world that we create for our doom.

The Wachowski brothers [now sisters] in 1999 went even further with their “Matrix”, turning to attentive minds who could not get rid of the feeling that there was something wrong with the world. “What is real? How to determine the "real"? "- asked immaculately dressed Morpheus, reducing humanity to a complex battery, designed to fuel the dominance of robots. Scientists and psychos have since argued whether we exist in a giant simulation.

In 2013, the film " She " Spike Jones outlined the near future, in which we do not just rely on personal AI assistants: we build relationships with them, we fall in love, and in some cases we try to have sex with them. “Blade Runner 2049” also used the idea that artificially created replicants would be able to start relationships with people, going beyond the roles invented by their creators. People already treat digital assistants like Alexa or Syria as living people, but Jones and Scott went further, imagining that the AI ​​will outgrow us emotionally and spiritually as well as intellectually, which is why we will be even more alone than before.



For 30 years from the time when Blade Runner forced us to ask questions about our future intimate relationships with machines, the need to tell stories about AI in the future tense has disappeared. And although more fantastic stories like Electric Dreams are still jumping into the future for decades, the last season of Parks and Recreation shows a dystopian present in which a global techno company with a positive image uses people's personal data to send them personalized gift baskets with the help of drones.

And then there is the " Black Mirror ". In addition to the sinister accuracy with which he predicted a scandal with the British Prime Minister and his tricks with the pig, he constantly gives out nightmarish scenarios close enough to reality for this show to seem almost prophetic: the digital “grain” installed behind the ear records all that we hear and see; an application that rewards and punishes people on the basis of a joint social rating; hackers blackmailing people by secretly making records of how they masturbate in front of a laptop camera.



Even science fiction admits that we now have a more serious cause for excitement than aliens: ourselves.

In the 2009 film Avatar, Cameron turned the script “aliens against humans”, which he created 30 years ago in Alien. This time, the Na'vi aliens play the role of losers, fighting with the greedy military enemy - with us. The battlefield is not Earth - this is Pandora, a resource-rich moon that a private security company is trying to get for mining. The rest of the universe is not trying to doom us to anything; people do this very well on their own.



And if this message seems close to reality, then the same can be said about the warning from the Stanley Kubrick movie " 2001: A Space Odyssey ." And although Kubrick’s image of a malicious, inhuman intelligence, rebelling against its creators, was revolutionary, HAL 9000's ability to express emotions was also very well remembered. "I'm scared. I'm scared, Dave. My mind refuses, I feel it, ”says HAL monotonously, when he is forcibly deactivated, begging not to take away from him the consciousness that people gave him for a short time before they take him back.

As culture shows, our fears of space and computers with superhuman abilities are nothing compared to people's propensity for cruelty. Even in the most lofty science fiction and blockbusters the same message can be traced:

We need to fear not aliens or artificial intelligence, for the most terrible enemies for us are ourselves.