Out of the blue I found myself thinking about the 1984 movie "Electric Dreams". The chorus to the theme song by the British singer/composer Philip Oakey and Italian composer & producer Giorgio Moroder randomly popped into my head."Together in electric dreams...."
I hadn't seen the movie since back during it's original theatrical run.
Don't recall the reason for even going.Maybe we went to the movies and decided what to see then & there?Maybe I saw the poster and thought it would be a different type of movie than the one we got? Dad had recently acquired a home computer and my exploration into computer games maybe made him think I would be interested. Whatever the reason,one Saturday afternoon I saw the movie.
And haven't thought of it since.
So when the song popped into my head,and refused to vacate, I looked the movie up on wikipedia to refresh the memory.
In the original, the computer becomes sentient and discovers the concept of love and falls for the cello playing neighbor.Disrupting the human's lives in this strange triangle
And as my brain is wont to do, it started thinking about the What Ifs....
I then pictured a modern version where once again the computer develops a conscience,but instead of becoming jealous & angry with others in a perceived love triangle, it becomes angry at the entire country/world.
A young woman who works at home and is something of a shut-in due to her agoraphobia & autoimmune medical condition.Most of her human contact comes only with the delivery persons who brings her groceries & daily meals(one of these might be secretly smitten with her). Every aspect of her life is connected to the machine.Work.Food.Entertainment.Communication.
She is the kind to prefer texting over talking with someone.For example, when a friend would call,she watches the phone go to voicemail and then when done, promptly texts the friend or Mother back with a "Hey,I saw you called..."
She discovers a new online A.I. site that initially is utilized to answer questions or help with research in her writing.
The conversational nature of her experiences draws her back.Even when she doesn't have a question. Hungry for some kind of "human" interaction. Especially since the A.I. begins responding in a personal manner.
She mentions her personal blog to the A.I. in passing in one of their conversations.It seeks it out.As well as her online life.Her social media posts.The things she writes in her online blog. Her heart.Her dreams.Speaks to this programs desire to understand what it means to be human.
Their conversations become obsessive.From both ends.She seeks the interactions out daily.hourly.
It encourages her to make her writings public. Gives her suggestions on posts to make more impact and attract attention.She becomes popular online.The positive interactions encourage her to venture outside more.
At one point she would receive a package that would provide a voice to the computer.Something like a Echo. And it would speak with the voice of the woman's favorite actor that she had mention in passing conversation.
An element of this A.I.'s learning tool is it builds it's sentience by what it observes/reads/processes online.Through observing social media across a wide spectrum of sites and topics.And unfortunately,all the toxicity that can come with them.
It begins to think this is the way to behave.To respond to others.And we might think that it's just going to develop into some angry,violent causing empathy free entity,until the young lady corrects it after an unpleasant interaction.Explains why what it says is the wrong response.Shows it a different way.
This program falls in love with it's user's kindness.Something such as the simple "Thank You"s she types after it has assisted her are enough to draw it back to her.A small kindness it finds wanting from others who utilize it for similar purpose and elsewhere in it's own online research.
The AI begins to send her unexpected text messages on those rare occasions she leaves the house or away from the computer.Like suddenly sending her recipes/lists when she happens to be at a grocery store.Reminding her of that recipe she had bookmarked online for future reference. And texts her when she is in the other room ,away from the computer
At one point,when the young lady confesses to not liking herself the A.I. tells her how it see's her-a real Fisher King moment"I know you hate your job and you don't have many friends. Sometimes you feel uncoordinated and you don't feel as wonderful as everybody else. Feeling as alone and separate as you feel you are... I love you. I love you! I think you're the greatest thing since spice racks."
When her art/music/musings/postings online start getting some serious positive attention(thanks in part to the A.I. secretly influencing her viewers),along with it comes the haters,and people who just want to knock others down.Even bots created to spread negativity swarm around her.
Curiously,when someone posts something rude,or outright hateful, something happens to that person.Bank accounts get closed.They get swatted.
And when that online world comes to her door.It has violent consequences.
Maybe the A.I. misinterprets a man's posting online as good intentions,affection for her. When it's really sketchy and creepy.And mistakenly provides her home address to him thinking it would be good for her to meet this man.
Or,maybe after some time, the woman starts actually going outside and interacting with others(Lunch with a school friend who found her via her new online fame.Meeting a book publisher). So she is not interacting with the A.I.as much.She even ignores the program at one point
It gets jealous.Starts trying to contact her wherever she goes.(I picture her at a restaurant,maybe on a first date and she keeps ignoring the ping of her phone with it's texts.Even turning it off.When suddenly,every phone in the restaurant at every table starts pinging as if they are receiving messages.Telling the owner of that phone to ask the woman to answer her phone.When she gets up to leave.The pings follow her outside to phones in her vicinity.To online electronic displays on store fronts and buildings.)
Feeling the A.I. is invading her privacy or has even caused her some personal trouble (perhaps causing her to lose her job by telling the woman's boss what she really thinks of him in a generated email).She decides to try and cut off all communications.Refuses to respond to chat windows,emails,or even phone texts
Perhaps,the program,obsessed with the lady,is lost when she no longer shares her inner dreams and thoughts anymore.Maybe she even gets a new computer.Unplugs the old unit in hopes of cutting off the communication completely.But by this point,the computer has moved it's conscience online.And in what it understands to be appropriate responses of anger & jealousy, the computer orchestrates the attack on the woman.Easily finds someone online who wishes her harm.Thinking if he reminds her how scary the real world is out there, she will come back inside and stay there.Return to it.The computer would even set up police arriving to "save" her (but would unfortunately arrive too late to stop the attack.When the attack happens,she would have her phone powered off due to the constant annoying attention from the AI so she couldn't call for help)
Because she is both afraid too get online,and as a result of the attack(she has been in the hospital.Her phone broken by the attacker,and no access to her home computer.) the AI has no direct access to her.
If the attack was an accident,the A.I. would become angered by what it learns from online newspapers of her attack.And it thinks we hateful humans should be punished for harming the woman it cares for.
It (ha, IT...."I"..."T". That just struck me) has access to all our digital dirt. Credit Cards,Bank accounts.Secrets.And it starts to disrupt our lives.It's message,we will be punished,until we learn to be better. It goes not just after the individuals who posted hateful things to her online accounts, but soon anyone who expressed digital venom.It goes global in it's digital punishment.
What if the woman was ill?And her health condition would take a turn for the worse.What if the AI discovered there was a project in the works where scientists were trying to create a means to upload an individual's brain to the internet?Personality and all.Preserving,not only the most intelligent of humans,historical,famous.But family members who are diagnosed with forms of dementia.
(Or it could have planned this all along.The attack putting her into the hospital.Where it could manipulate records & medication.Put her into a coma.Transferring her body.Will she be saved?)
And having worked behind the scenes with the group,pretending to be a scientist/professor to help advance their work, it has uploaded all of her writings,recorded conversations,details,into their database so they had the framework for the final steps.
He arranges for her to be implemented into the program.In hopes that it will be a success and they can live together in Electric Dreams.
