By Mary O’KEEFE

I got a call last week from a reader who wanted to talk to me about something happening in our community but added that he liked reading this column. He is a sci-fi fan (like me) and understood the references I make from science fiction films, TV shows like “The Twilight Zone” and “Star Trek.” He then told me about a movie he thought I would love and boy! was he right.

“Colossus: The Forbin Project” is everything the reader said it was … and more. The film was based on a 1966 science-fiction novel “Colossus” by Dennis Feltham (D.F.) Jones. The book is actually part of a trilogy. The screenplay was by James Bridges. The film was made in 1970 and like all great science fiction it warns us of things to come and, even better, does not give us a solution … a way out of the mistakes we make. 

It opens with the great hopes (and smugness) of Dr. Charles Forbin as he makes his way into a U.S. Presidential press conference. The President proudly lets everyone know that Colossus is, in today’s terms, going online and will bring the defense the country needs against anyone who may want to do us harm. With the guidance of this computer program, we will see the end to war because – after all – that was what it was programmed for. The President added that Colossus will take off his shoulders as President, and also of all Presidents who follow him, the heavy responsibility of difficult war decisions. He even referenced President Harry Truman’s famous phrase “The buck stops here.” 

“Now the buck stops with Colossus,” he said. 

First of all, that’s a real warning sign when the President doesn’t want to take responsibility for leading the country … which in truth is his job. Not too sure he is the right person to be leading the U.S. … but anyway, he turned it all over to Dr. Forbin and his staff of scientists, flipping the switch and turning control of free thought and decision happily over to the computer. 

Colossus didn’t take long to start a “buyer’s remorse” moment when a read out – the way the computer first communicated – stated that another system was found. That system was, of course, from the Russians. A similar computer program called Guardian was actually going online. In true form of the buck stops somewhere else, the President turned for answers to CIA director Grauber, played in the best way by William Schallert. 

The intelligence had been that the Russians were several years from development of this type of technology but surprise! They had it now. However, in a true U.S. patriotic sense, the Russians’ system is not as smart as ours. So as the two systems begin to communicate with each other, Colossus has to slow down to allow the Russians to catch up with our vast superior knowledge. 

And then almost everything that happens from this point on is what we’re seeing now with AI (Artificial Intelligence).

The computer scientists are very proud of and confident in their massive world control computer. The computer immediately came up with calculations and solutions that would have taken humans decades to compute; the machine was advancing human knowledge much faster than anyone had thought possible (honestly – sound familiar when compared to the lightning speed of AI now?). Colossus  created its own language to talk to the Russian computer – a language that humans do not understand, by the way. Colossus was as amazing as the smug Dr. Forbin and his team thought it would be and then … they were so surprised when this world-dominating machine began to actually dominate the world. 

Who would have thunk it? 

There were so many comments from Dr. Forbin and his team that are actually mimicked today by AI leaders like Sam Altman of ChatGPT (AI). From touting how much Colossus will help humanity to warnings of what might happen. 

Colossus talks a lot about why it is taking over the world – mostly because it was programmed to stop war and humans are not capable of doing so – a common sci-fi theme; however, it was one comment that scared me more than anything else in this film. Colossus had Forbin create a voice for it to communicate. So in this creepy, mechanical computer-ish voice Colossus said to Fobin, “In time you will come to regard me not only with respect and awe, but with love.”

The key words are “with love” – even though Forbin insisted that Colossus wasn’t human and couldn’t understand emotions, similar to what we were first told about AI. However, times are changing now as fast as they did in this film. 

“New artificial intelligence technologies are learning and recognizing human emotions, and using that knowledge to improve everything from marketing campaigns to health care,” according to MIT Management Sloan School in an article titled “Emotion AI, Explained.”

So originally Colossus just wanted to do what it was programmed for, but by the end of the movie it wanted to be loved, too. Hmmm, and as my grandson says anytime he is sacred … “not scary.”

Sam Altman, and others developing and selling AI systems, are really bringing science fiction to life … or to artificial life … although they continue to tell us this is good for us, that those who criticize it – like wanting some type of guardrails put in place – simply don’t understand it. But what I think is some of those who are concerned about AI technology are those who have seen this plot line before in all of our beloved science fiction shows, and we know full well how it can end. 

But I think the best sci-fi quote about AI (which could have come from Dr. Forbin as well) comes from reality. 

“What I lose the most sleep over is the hypothetical idea that we already have done something really bad by launching ChatGPT,” said Sam Altman. 

Thank you, reader, for contacting me and sharing this film with me. I bought it and will not only be watching it over and over but sharing it with family and all of my sci-fi friends. 

Our weather will be “quiet” according to NOAA. No rain, no winds and mild temperatures in the mid-to-high 70s through Monday. Monday will be a little cooler with highs in the 60s with a slight chance of light rain on Tuesday.