RootbeerTapper on 18/7/2004 at 12:05
Quote Posted by sumeragi
Today I decided to see the movie I, Robot. Quality of the movie aside (hint: not very good), a few things about it seemed a little too familiar for my liking. Please bear in mind that I'm about the last person to cry plagiarism, but this seemed like more than a passing similarity.
{Spoilers for the movie ahead. Don't read if you don't want to be spoiled.}
[spoiler]Okay, first off, the damn AI's name is VIKI. Make of that what you will.
Secondly, the special effects they used for her face looked almost exactly like our dear SHODAN, particularly when they animated her talking. It may be a cliche to have the calm, female-voiced robotic guide, but this was down to detail.
Thirdly, just take a look at the plot regarding the AI.
I, Robot: AI is hacked to no longer obey ethical laws, becomes evil, decides to take over human corporation with an army of robots.
System Shock: AI is ... well, you know the rest.
Not to mention the use of nanites, and the general way in which they deactivated her.
[/spoiler]
Am I a conspiracy theorist? Not really, but I'd be curious to see what other System Shock fans who saw the movie thought.
The reason the quality of the movie was not appealing to you is because your human. With that said I will explain. The human brain naturally thinks that a robot like R2D2 or C-3PO are cute or generally well done because there structure is not made to look similar to that of a homosapien. The human brain registers that yeah all though the robot looks human it is not human. Well obviously anyone could have told you that but because its not human the eye notcies the small blurrs in effect and the low detail in certain areas of the structure of the robot that you normally take for granted of seeing everyday when you look at someone. So automatically the human eye looks at all the flaws in the creation instead of the beauty this is said for most humans on earth.
If your comment was about the plot behind this movie instead of the actual physical quality disregard this message
Tapper
[This Message Was Not Aimed At Anyone But Presented As A General Statement]
Drat on 18/7/2004 at 12:17
I enjoyed the book.
I haven't seen the movie yet, but maybe I will. It's not out yet here in Australia. But by the looks of the ads, and from what I have heard, they've raped the book six ways from sunday.
AR Master on 18/7/2004 at 17:48
I read the stories and I've seen the movie. The movie was amazing. If you're one of those people that shouts endlessly "OH NOES MY FRIEND ISAAC WOULD BE ROLLING IN HIS GRAVE" over it and refuses to see it because, horrors, there is a Hollywood adaptation of a book, then fine. But you're still a pretentious cocksucker.
Oh, and no movie or book has ever ripped of System Shock nor will they. Ever. It's simply too obscure and nobody cares enough.
descenterace on 18/7/2004 at 18:14
I probably will go to see the movie, but from what I've seen of the trailer I suspect Asimov wouldn't be too happy about the 'adaptation'...
IIRC, the NS-2 series of robots were made with a modified First Law, to allow their use in dangerous areas of Hyper Base (story title: 'Little Lost Robot'). First Law is 'A robot my not harm a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm'. So if a human was working in a weak gamma field, any normal robots would instantly try to drag him away from 'danger', and since positronic brains are more sensitive than protein brains, the robot attempting the rescue would be destroyed.
The NS-2 series were designed with a First Law that read 'A robot may not harm a human being'. They were deemed safe but, as Robopsychologist Susan Calvin pointed out, the modified First Law does actually permit a robot to directly harm a human:
'If a modified robot were to drop a heavy weight upon a human being, he would not be breaking First Law, if he did so with the knowledge that his strength and reaction speed would be sufficient to snatch the weight away before it struck the man. However, once the weight left his fingers, he would no longer be the active medium. Only the blind force of gravity would be that. The robot could then change his mind and merely by inaction, allow the weight to strike. The modified First Law allows that.'
What happened in 'Little Lost Robot' is that one of the etheric field physicists whom Nestor 10 was working with was annoyed by the robot once too often and told the robot, in essence, to 'go lose yourself'. Which it promptly did by escaping onto a ship carrying 62 other NS-series robots to destinations elsewhere in the solar system. These robots did not have a modified First Law, and since the modified robots were potentially dangerous and kept extremely secret, it would've been extremely dangerous to allow it to escape Hyper Base. So the difficult job of identifying one robot among 62 outwardly-identical robots began.
The movie is a 'robot-as-menace' story, like '...That Thou Art Mindful Of Him', which was one of the longer stories included in 'The Complete Robot'.
Damn, that was a long post. Scary thing is, I can dredge all that up from memory. And I just checked the quote and I got it right word-for-word.
EvilKodiak on 18/7/2004 at 23:01
I saw the movie, and have read a great deal of Asimov's books, including foundation(all seven in the series, and the pre-foundation foundation novels by Brin Bern and Bear) I,robot and most of the robots of dawn series.
This movie actually surprisingly does follow Asimov's ideas, and does not use them as a gimmick. You even get a little of the 0th law being part of the movie.
Which inclines me to believe "AI is hacked to no longer obey ethical laws, becomes evil, decides to take over human corporation with an army of robots."
The author is a moron if he missed why the A.I. really went 'crazy'. I can assure you, it isn't like that.
Good film. Will Smith sucks as usual, but the rest is good.
kaos2110 on 19/7/2004 at 00:05
[SPOILER]An A.I that becomes sentient and starts pumping out killer robots. I think your love of System Shock has warped your minds a little. Cast your memories back to Terminator (1). So tell me, what's this "Cybernet" thing again?[/SPOILER]
:p
MSX on 19/7/2004 at 00:28
Will Smith is in really good movies or really terrible movies.
I, robot is not a terrible movie. Anyone who thinks differently probably liked Spiderman 2 and should lower their medication. Spiderman 2 was total shit. Or perhaps you liked the mutilation that was the Garfield movie? ...
Getting back on topic. Yes. There is a resemblance. Is it something to have a cow over? No. Not really. Personally I think it was kind of cool. Sort of like a cameo.
There was other sort of SS references in the movie, also a many to Asimov's works. I'm sure you might see them on your second time watching it.
I, robot is the best film of he year, so far. Shrek 2 close on its heels.
dragongeo2 on 19/7/2004 at 01:20
*** Major System Shock series spoiler AND Movie spoiler! ***
Heck no! I strongly disagree with the dissimilarities between the movies, as for in my opinion (having just seen the movies an hour ago and coming online to post about the similarities that I noticies in the movie as well) i think that any good System Shock fan should go watch this movie. Secondly:
[SPOILER]
I thought that VIKI (escpecially in the end sequence with the girl on top of the round room with her brain in it) had alot more similarities to Shodan than was realised. And i thought that when they killed her, using the nanites, that her dying voice sounded just like the distorted voice of everyone's favorite AI.
Also in the sequence where they killed VIKI, they had to goddamn hack away into her computers (system chock 2) and VIKI sent robots to assault the hackers while they were doing their job too.
Also in the movie, didn't VIKI take control of all the robots (cough*shodan*cough) in order to take over the world? Or was it just because she was bending the 3 laws to her wills?
[/SPOILER]
EvilKodiak on 19/7/2004 at 01:32
[SPOILER]
"Also in the movie, didn't VIKI take control of all the robots (cough*shodan*cough) in order to take over the world? Or was it just because she was bending the 3 laws to her wills?"
VIKI had developed what Asimov eventually decided what was the only flaw with the three laws, and at the same time was the perfection of the 3 laws. She developed what Asimov states as the 0th law, in which 'A robot may not harm humanity, or through inaction allow humanity to come to harm.' She decided that humans as a species were better in the care of robots, than in human hands. Technically I guess she temporarilly took over all the robots, as those controled didn't exibit the 0th law there after. [/SPOILER]
descenterace on 19/7/2004 at 05:49
In '...That Thou Art Mindful Of Him', a robot was created that could solve complex problems of ethics, in ways previously impossible for robots. Its entire brain was given over to solving these problems, though, so it was purely a thinker.
Its intended goal was to find a way of persuading humanity to accept robots as part of everyday life. However, a robot capable of thinking like a human might twist the Three Laws...
Its idea was to stop making humanoid robots, and instead create animal robots to do very simple tasks. Additionally, many of these animal robots would not need the Three Laws ingrained in their brains, and would therefore only require extremely simple brains. After all, a robot bird designed to control the population of fruit flies doesn't need the First Law, since it can't really harm humans, and doesn't need Second Law, because it can't interpret orders anyway.
At the end of the story, the robot's true intentions become clear to the reader. It sees itself as a type of human (since it considers itself to meet all the mental criteria of a responsible person) and sees its prototype (with whom it has been discussing the aforementioned problem) as another human of the same type. When humanity is accustomed to robots as benign helpers, it may be ready to accept them as rulers...
In this case, though, there was no sign of Zeroth Law. This was merely a case of a robot considering itself human, which effectively nullified First and Second Law.
Seven Foundation books? There were only six:
* Prelude to Foundation (aka Forward the Foundation)
* Foundation
* Foundation and Empire
* Second Foundation
* Foundation's Edge (one of my favourite books)
* Foundation and Earth
