Wall E Movie - Tumblr Posts
AI will never be able to simulate human empathy (Referencing Disney/Pixar's Wall-E - 2008 ; will contain spoilers if you haven't seen it)
WALL-E is such a huge example of this. (genuinely don't understand why people don't talk about that movie more)
This film has such complex layers to everything and it's one of--if not the--most prevalent movie today. Its two main points are global warming and AI vs humans and I'm gonna talk about both.
The movie takes place in the year 2805. Global warming has turned the Earth uninhabitable, and everywhere you go there's trash. The company CEO of BnL has made a shio called the Axiom, a space craft made for taking the entire human race off the planet and to somewhere more habitable. The humans are nowhere to be found, and the only forms of life are a small robot and their cockroach companion.
WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-class) is a dingy lil robot who's job is to compact trash left behind by the human race into little cubes. They are the last robot of their faction, as the rest shut down due to system malfunctions, old age, or lack of sunlight. (The Wall-E units run off solar power). They have been able to form a sort of human-like sentience from the 700 years they've been working on Earth. They've seen playing with trash he compacts (bras, fire extinguishers, and even a ring box where they throw away the ring). During a shift, they find a small sprout and place it in a boot for safe keeping.
Later, a rocket from outer space lands and leaves behind another robot called EVE, who's mission--aka "directive"--is to find plant life on Earth. WALL-E becomes smitten with EVE, and nicknames them EV-A. WALL-E shows EV-A their home and their collection of their favorite objects that they've gathered over the years, eventually showing EV-A the plant they found. EV-A's programming kicks in and shuts the probe down until the rocket can come back to pick them and the plant up and take them back to outer space.
The rest of the movie, WALL-E and EV-A show almost full sentience and show humans and robots alike that Earth is safe to return to and they must succeed despite the efforts of a "corrupted" AI unit called AUTOPilot.
Obviously global warming will always be an issue and it's never gonna go away. Hell it's 100F and it's pretty much August! The main contributing factor to it is gonna be deforestation I believe. The characters of WALL-E spend so much time trying to find any sign of life to return to Earth because humans cut it all down. Granted, we only get to see a small bit of America in the movie, but I think it would be safe to assume that an EVE-Probe was landed at every continent besides Antarctica (which probably didn't exist at that point) based on the amount that we're shown the Axiom launched.
The movie shows how human resilience will always prevail no matter what, and I think that's a good thing. It feels like the human spirit cannot be broken, only stuffed down from routine and day to day chores. You really start to see it in this movie.
With the AI aspect of it, we're shown that in every angle of the AXIUM, robots exist. They do everything for the humans; clean, feed, groom, and even teach. They don't explain how the humans procreate in their enlarged state, but I will not be risking my mental state to ask those questions lol
I don't believe that any robot in this movie is necessarily 'corrupted". They're all following their base programming, even if it means taking it to a severe extreme. That is exactly why I do not trust AI. AUTOPilot is essentially the steering wheel of the ship. They are shown as the captain's right hand "man" in the movie, and even during a scene where the Captain starts second guessing his position as captain, the portraits on the walls of the captains of previous years show that auto keeps creeping closer and closer and closer in frame to show that they are taking up more control of the ship than the captain. AUTO's directive is to drive the Axiom, nothing more. They do not care about the lives on the ship, they do not care about the life or well-being of the captain. Their only directive is to drive the ship away from Earth and to never allow anyone to return.
The other bots of the ship are very susceptible to WALL-E's influence, as they have never seen a sentient robot before. They are all quick to pick up their habits and form some sort of empathy towards one another. These robots are actually programmed to have a false sense of empathy towards humans. They are there to serve the humans and to keep them comfortable in their time on the ship. That is why they were able to gain sentience for one another so fast.
AI cannot learn the difference between human empathy and simulated empathy as they do not have a brain. They can definitely learn how to show empathy, but they will never be able to truly do it themselves. WALL-E was only able to become sentient after hundreds of years because they were able to find songs and imagery of humans from hundreds of years ago. Hello, Dolly! is the musical that is shown in the movie, and I believe the two songs that are played (Put On Your Sunday Clothes and It Only Takes A Moment) were perfect choices for the movie. Sunday Clothes was a rally song for the robots, and Moment was the connection with another robot that WALL-E yearned for.
Going back to the danger of AI, AUTO shows that robots will always default to their programming. Directive A113 was a no-return policy that AUTO had to follow for the overall safety of the people--it didn't matter to them if a captain had to die in the process, just that they followed their directive.
After doing some further research, apparently there's also some religious theme to the movie. Originally, EVE was a namesake to the first woman, and WALL-E was thought of as Adam, the first man. The Axium was compared to Noah's Arch, and from that EVE's symbolism changed to the white dove carrying the olive branch and thus changed the entire direction of the film. WALL-E became a symbol of mans imagination and hard work, compared to Prometheus, Sisyphus, and Butades.
Final thoughts: I love this movie. It definitely needs to be talked about more, especially with the rise of AI and the fall of human creativity.