Episode 052: We Might Love David If He Wasn’t So Creepy — A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) with Jim Davies

Join Alex and guest host Dr. Jim Davies in a discussion of the portrayal of artificial intelligence, consciousness, and love in Steven Spielberg’s Pinocchio-esque film, A.I.: Artificial Intelligence (2001)! We explore the idea of artificial intelligence, what it means to be conscious or sentient, and how well the film works on these fundamentally hard-to-define fronts. Though Jim is a cognitive scientist, Alex also asks him about the film’s idea of love and what it means to be loved, which hits at The Velveteen Rabbit‘s ideal of what it means to be real and who is worthy of love! Listen, we think David, who was played so well by Haley Joel Osment, could be loved if he just didn’t act so oddly. Like, seriously, if you are making a 10-year-old boy, then at least give him the knowledge of a 10-year-old boy!

Find all of Jim’s work: jimdavies.org

Here’s the article Jim discusses in the episode about how aliens look and how intelligent we perceive them to be: How Our Desire for Social Information Affects Tastes in Paintings and Belief Systems (2014)

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Legal stuff:
1. All film clips are used under Section 107 of Title 17 U.S.C. (fair use; no copyright infringement is intended).
2. Intro and outro music by Sro (“Self-Driving”). Used under license CC BY-SA 4.0.
3. “Et Voila” used under license.