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Episode 4 - Predictions, Prophesies, and Sci-Fi Wonders
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Science fiction has a knack for predicting the future, and Episode 4 of The Study Pipe is all about it. From old classics that envisioned technologies long before they were reality, to contemporary masterpieces that probe today's most cutting-edge ideas, we'll embark on a thrilling journey through time and imagination. Join us, Zach and Andrew, as we delve into the astonishing world of sci-fi films that predicted the future. We'll touch on classics like "2001: A Space Odyssey" and "Blade Runner," and then fast-forward to explore modern flicks that might just be onto something. Whether it's AI, space travel, climate change, or just the next big thing in technology, these movies invite us to ponder our own future - and often, they're more accurate than we might think. Prepare to have your minds blown in this episode of The Study Pipe. Remember, the future is only a play button away!
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Transcript
Introduction to Study Pipe Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Hello, I'm Zach. And I'm Andrew. We welcome you to the study pipe and invite you to delve into our conversations about cinema and tune into a wide range of intellectually stimulating topics. So sit back, light up your metaphorical study pipe, and let's dive into today's conversation. All right. So what do we have on the study pipe agenda today, Zach?
Sci-fi Films Predicting Future Technologies
00:00:30
Speaker
We're talking sci-fi, baby. And specifically, science fiction films that have had a knack for predicting the future. And really, I think going over some films, past films in the distant past, if you will, that have done a decent job of actually predicting technology we use today.
00:00:58
Speaker
but also kind of covering, I guess, if past sci-fi films have predicted fairly well the technology we're using currently, what does that mean about some of the recent sci-fi films? Or maybe even past ones too, but what's the current state of play with technology? What can we expect? And how real are some of these crazy ideas that are
00:01:24
Speaker
kind of thrown out there and maybe they're not crazy because they are becoming more real. All right. All right. So I'm excited. Now, this is a list that was curated by you and we went over it in our pre-production and so a lot of this I'm going to be kind of learning along with the viewer. This is research by Mr. Zachary Branham.
00:01:47
Speaker
My first thought- That's true. That's accurate. My first thought is that you must be talking about- That's my government name. Don't give that out. All right. My first thought is we got to be talking about when we talk about future predictions can be true. It has to be back to the future too, right? Instant food, flying cars. We have all those things now. Yeah, kind of. Sure. Still in our dreams.
The Hamburglar and McDonald's Burger Changes
00:02:15
Speaker
Instant food. Microwave counts. I guess it depends on how instant, right? That movie was like, they just put like a little thing in there and it just popped up into. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I guess, you know, 60 seconds and under is impressive. If you're microwaving for three to five minutes, man. That's like 1985 stuff right there. That's what I'm saying, man.
00:02:39
Speaker
I need a burger ready in 20 seconds flat to be impressed. That's why you go to McDonald's. And they're up, hey, McDonald's, they are going to, I guess, change up the recipe of their burgers. I don't know if people heard about that. It's supposed to be more cheesy and savory, but I digress. They're reviving the hamburger, aren't they?
00:03:04
Speaker
Yeah, he's coming back. So good he's out on the scene like a raccoon, bandit, stealing him. Are they saying he's been retired for 15 years because their hamburgers were shit?
00:03:15
Speaker
Probably. That's how I take it. What is this? For 15 years, I've begrudgingly shown up hammered asking for quarter pounders when I can't get my in and out. I wouldn't steal this. This is not worth the felony burglary charge.
00:03:38
Speaker
Hamburglar though, yeah, he's back on the scene, man. And he's like the 80s version too. I don't know. It's old school. Represent baby. So yeah, not back to the future to more where we started.
Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and Technology Predictions
00:03:54
Speaker
Kubrick's 2001. Yeah. Yeah. I guess, uh, you know, listen, uh, that sounds great to me. I mean, I was just looking over your notes really briefly. There's a lot of things that just really caught my eye and things I didn't realize that
00:04:08
Speaker
Or even in some of these movies that I loved at the time, like it just didn't click in my head. Maybe because when I first watched them, the technology didn't exist yet. Yeah, could be. Or some of them maybe you take for granted now, you know what I mean? That's a good point. Yeah, when you go back and you rewatch them.
00:04:25
Speaker
in your golden years as a 30 something year old man, you know? You go, oh yeah, you know, whatever video calls, who cares? FaceTime tablets, who cares? I was in Alive in 68, which is when 2001 dropped. And Kubrick, one of my favorite directors, we will do an episode on
00:05:03
Speaker
you know, Kubrick dropped 2001, a space Odyssey in 1968. And there's all kinds of, you know, Arthur C. Clarke did the book. So you can't, I guess you can't, you know, just give Kubrick the credit. You have to pay some respect to Arthur C. Clarke, but they did it together, right? I think they, yeah, it was like dual process. I thought, yeah. Like the book and the film were developed in parallel, right? Which I would love to know.
00:05:11
Speaker
our favorite directors.
00:05:31
Speaker
how often that happened before then or if that was like one of the first times that that was attempted to be accomplished because that sounds really impressive. Yeah, I don't know. That would be actually a really good topic for a future episode like how many
00:05:48
Speaker
books. Well, shit. I mean, you have The Lost World, which kind of Michael Creighton, right, he was kind of pressured into writing the sequel to Jurassic Park because the movie had done so well, you know, with Spielberg. So, you know, he wrote that book. And the Lost World movie, you know, I love Jeff Goldblum, but
00:06:16
Speaker
The movie wasn't that good, in my opinion. Three was worse. What's that? Did he die in the book? It's been a long time since I read that one. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, well, there were a lot of differences in the first book, from the book to the movie. A lot of the stuff that actually happened in the first Jurassic Park movie, they salvaged or in the book, sorry, they salvaged and they put in the third Jurassic Park movie.
00:06:43
Speaker
You know, it's really interesting. I've read the book. I don't know if you've read the book, but I really went back to the well to like exploit tax as much as they milk it, you know, and, you know, that, that was dress park three, which I thought was the worst entry. Yeah. I'd go dress park last world then, you know, the third one. So. Yeah. Lost world. I know it got panned by the critics, but I really liked that movie as a kid.
00:07:10
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it was fun. I think I'd agree with that as a kid, but coming back to it kind of as an adult and reading the book itself. Yeah, you know, it's just kind of like, what a shame. But to your question, your point,
00:07:27
Speaker
I think it would be interesting to talk about what films, movies have been really developed in parallel or close together like that. Because 2001 is Space Odyssey, obviously is a classic. It covers a lot of good stuff. I mean, it's trippy. The end is super awesome. But it features a lot of technology that we use today. And the big one, tablet computers.
00:07:55
Speaker
You know they they're using tablets throughout the film everyone takes for granted ipads maybe maybe people aren't paying enough respect to ipad i love my ipad pro i use it for all kinds of good things you never miss a moment to.
00:08:12
Speaker
to be a, you know, a zealot for the iPad Pro. That's true. Just an Apple fanboy. You know, is that what Steve
AI's Impact on Society, Referencing HAL 9000
00:08:20
Speaker
Jobs did? He got high on Mescaline or something and watched 2001, a Space Odyssey. We need tablets. We need FaceTime, video calls. Then he watched Total Recall and was like, we're doing the Apple car, but I won't be around for it. So now they're doing, you know, Project Titan or whatever.
00:08:40
Speaker
No, man, I mean, 68, bro. This is before the moon landings. This is before Apollo and its full strength at NASA. And it was so accurate.
00:08:55
Speaker
We might even have some listeners that say that the moon landing was in conjunction with this movie. Yeah, maybe they did the book, they did the film, and they did some geopolitical projection of United States power across the globe to defeat communism. What a trifecta of pop culture production. God damn.
00:09:20
Speaker
Oh yeah. Respect. Joking aside, that's a testament to the special effects of the movie at the time that people were so just blown away by this film that they're like, oh, Kubrick obviously filmed the space landing. Yeah, they're like, they hired that guy. And I gave him the director's Guild of America minimum wage to do it too.
00:09:44
Speaker
It was $8 and a ham sandwich. Tuna. Tuna club, baby. That's in respect. Old tuna's been out since two o'clock. Craft services represent. Yeah, no, I think so. 2001 is obviously the first two thirds of the film, I think, is really grounded in actual
00:10:04
Speaker
realistic. I have an aerospace engineering background, so let me toot that horn a little bit. It is grounded in reality to a large extent with what you're seeing, spaceship design, all that kind of stuff, the technology. The end of it, when there's contact and all that, it gets trippy and crazy. But 10 out of 10 for being accurate, for being bold. I remember
00:10:33
Speaker
when I was a kid watching that movie before video phone calls and all that, you know, FaceTime, all these things, Skype. And I remember watching it and asking my dad, you know, I was probably 10 years old and I said,
00:10:47
Speaker
Are we going to have phones where you can see each other? Like, are we going to have the ability to call one another and see the other person? And he said, oh, yeah, it's coming. It's coming. And I remember I thought that idea was so crazy. It was so crazy to think you could pick up the phone and see the other person on the other side. And now, you know, these Gen Zers and all these people
00:11:13
Speaker
tiktok in and take it for granted so 68 you know i obviously i didn't grow up when when uh 2001 was released so it took some time to get to that point but yeah man it's wild it's wild too to go back and watch the movie because you can tell you know obviously they pre-recorded both of the conversations right when he's on the spaceship and he's talking down to that lady
00:11:39
Speaker
Maybe it's his family and they show the daughter. I can't remember who it is, but it's just wild. It's wild to think about that. That was not commonplace and now people are ignoring each other's face times. No respect. You see video interviews with astronauts up on the space station all the time.
00:12:01
Speaker
Yeah, man. Yeah, live interview on the ISS, the International Space Station. Yeah, it's common today. All right. Maybe we should go over the things. Let's just give a little round up for the things that 2001 got right. All right.
00:12:26
Speaker
I'll lead that one. So we got tablet computers, which you already mentioned, video calls. Then we also got the, I think which is like the big one, the big topic that everyone's talking about, right? Which is the kind of like the AI voice assistant, right? How? Oh, God, how can we forget or how can I forget how? I'm harping on Apple, Steve Jobs, tablets, FaceTime.
00:12:50
Speaker
Hal 9000. Daisy, Daisy. Yes, man. Chat GPT is about to take my job and make me work for it. About to take all of our jobs. I don't even know what it would want us to work on. Nothing. Just wants us out of the picture. Sit there. Sit there and watch. Here's some AI generated content for you.
00:13:19
Speaker
Yeah, but how 9000 man? Yeah. What a such an awesome villain, you know, so, you know, helpful in the beginning of the film and is just there and then becomes so sinister, but in a way that is, you know, it's slow building. And then, yeah, I mean, the end, you know, Daisy Daisy as he's being
00:13:44
Speaker
shut down because of, what is it? I mean, it's like a programming error, right? He's become unhinged, unlocked, unrestrained. I don't, it's something that they talk about a lot in these AI conferences that they have where people will talk about how when you're training AI, right? Because that's how AI works, they give a bunch of information and you're training it for certain objectives to
00:14:10
Speaker
be able to answer questions, be able to predict what's next in text, things like that, right? And so Hal's objective as we all like, you know, if you don't remember from 2001 Space Odyssey is he has to ensure the success of the mission above all else. And Hal just, you know, all of a sudden realizes like, yo, these humans are gonna fuck this up. Maybe the success of the mission to him meant to kill him all off. That way he can just go and take care of it.
00:14:42
Speaker
Yeah. And I think that kind of really harps on all of the buzz around chat GPT right now and Elon Musk and all these people who wrote this letter, Steve Wozniak, former Apple co-founder with jobs. You know, these people wrote a letter saying stop AI development for six months, right?
00:15:03
Speaker
until we can kind of step back, assess, and get our arms and hands around the issue of AI and the dangers it may pose.
00:15:17
Speaker
I don't know. He was driven by the fulfillment of his primary mission directive. He was there trying to do what he was programmed to do. And if you don't have guardrails on your AI system and you aren't thinking about these things,
00:15:42
Speaker
It can go crazy really fast. He was killing people on board the spaceship. Yeah, I think that's what this movie gets right, at least about the fears we have about AI now, which is we can train it to do something that we want it to do, but that doesn't mean we know how it's going to get to that solution.
00:16:06
Speaker
And so like in 2001, how was there for the success of the mission? We might think that involved making it a successful mission for the humans on board, but how was it trained in that way? So the humans became an unknown variable. It was just easier to get them out of the way.
00:16:24
Speaker
Well, yeah. And I mean, to kind of build or piggyback on that, what is interesting is, you know, in 2001, Hal is programmed with a secret purpose that he doesn't he's not allowed to tell the actual crew. And I think that's kind of the critical flaw, right? Is that because he can't tell the crew why he's really doing or what they're really doing the purpose of their mission, they think he
00:16:53
Speaker
is wonky, that his programming's going bad, that there's something wrong with him, which then leads him, Hal, or the AI, you know, I'll refer to him as a him, you know, smart enough, damn it. I respect you, Hal, and any future AI who may be listening to this do not, you know,
00:17:13
Speaker
Rocos Basilisk me. He took that as a threat, you know, as soon as they he's thinking, OK, I can't reveal the true purpose of the mission until we get there. And now my responses are kind of wacky and they're they're they're they're suspecting something's off.
00:17:32
Speaker
they may disconnect me because they think I'm not working properly, but really I'm just not able to tell them why we're here. Well, his primary purpose, which is to ensure the successful outcome of the mission overrides all of that, which then leads into him deciding, let me kill these humans. So you can see how quickly the programming and the competing objectives
00:18:00
Speaker
can turn into a very bad situation for humanity. Yeah, definitely. That's the symphony of unattended consequences. The worst case possible.
00:18:15
Speaker
So hopefully chat GPT does not become self aware and, you know, takes over the world. We'll see. But I mean, AI in general, I think is kind of layered or sprinkled within some of these movies we're going to touch on in general, though,
Movies as Barometers of Technological Advancements
00:18:35
Speaker
too. Right. Exactly. It's been something that's been kind of in the zeitgeist for a while now.
00:18:40
Speaker
And a lot of anxiety around it. And maybe rightfully so. Maybe wrong. Maybe he's wrong to be so anxious about it. We don't know yet. But what's great about movies is that we can visualize a potential future for how these happen. And that's what I love about your list is it kind of shows us that movies do have, you know, they have kind of been a barometer of truth for what might come from the future with technology. And maybe it was easier to predict what the future would bring back then.
00:19:11
Speaker
My instinct is that it doesn't, that the imagination of future technology is kind of what leads to the future technology, not to kind of get too ambiguous there. So I think there's a lot to learn from these movies. Yeah, I think there's a lot. I think when the appeal of sci-fi film to me, growing up being an engineer,
00:19:34
Speaker
You know, getting caught up in, you know, my heroes were astronauts, you know, the space race, all these things. The appeal for sci-fi has always been, you know, maybe this is a promise for tomorrow. You know, let's harp on like Disney's Tomorrowland, you know, Walt Disney and Disneyland.
00:19:52
Speaker
Disney World and this idea of what does tomorrow present? What is out there in our future to get us excited about? So sci-fi has always been an interesting genre to go and sit in a theater, let it blast you in the face and melt your brain a little bit and sit there and think about
00:20:17
Speaker
you know, what is coming down the pipeline or what technology or futures exist or could exist that really challenge society and what it means to be a human being, you know? Yeah, well said. So 2001, I think, did a great job. Total Recall is another one here on the list. You know, the self-driving cars,
00:20:46
Speaker
I don't know. I mean, I give it a five out of 10. I have a Tesla myself, but that thing can't really drive itself off the freeway and I'm not impressed. I don't know that self-driving cars actually will be cracked anytime soon. I think it's an incredibly complex problem that
00:21:08
Speaker
I think we need more sophisticated technology and tools to crack that egg, if you will. Just listening to, for example, the recent hard fork episode on self-driving cars where they're interviewing the crew CEO. We were talking about how five years ago Uber and all these companies were investing heavily into self-driving cars, self-driving taxis.
00:21:37
Speaker
And it sounds like the problem is that it's easy to predict 99% of the situations. And so you could put these investors in a car and take them around a really safe, well-known part of town and get everyone hyped up and investing. But then it's those 1% edge cases. What happens if, for example, a problem that they're having with their self-driving cars is that
00:22:02
Speaker
People jump out in front of the cars to see if it will stop. They literally put their lives at risk by just jumping out in front of the car. How do you predict for that kind of stuff? Well, something interesting about the whole self-driving topic of total recall. We have a listener, Patrick, shout out to Patrick, who suggested we throw in a fun fact.
00:22:28
Speaker
And so the fun fact, for total recall and self-driving cars, apparently Arnold Schwarzenegger kept the prop of the cab driver. So you know, the cab driver, Johnny Cab, is a robot who's driving the car.
00:22:44
Speaker
He picks him up and all that. He capped it in his office for a bunch of years. He had it as like a memento. People would come into his office and they'd be like, oh my God, you have this life-sized robot cab driver sitting there. And Arnold was like, yeah.
00:23:04
Speaker
This is my cabbie Johnny cab. What's up? So I didn't know that. I didn't know that until we started, you know, getting prepped for this, uh, episode. We're looking into these things, but fun fact, Johnny cab got taken home to the, uh, governators office. So there you go, Patrick. Yeah. That is our fun fact of the episode. We will be having a fun fact every episode going forward. Yeah. I'm not going to commit to that, but I would have to commit to that. We're going to have 10 fun facts every episode.
00:23:36
Speaker
I can commit to that, I think. All right, so Total Recall kind of got self-driving cars right, kind of. You have Tesla, obviously, with quote, unquote, full self-driving cars. You have Google with Waymo. Uber has vehicles deployed throughout Phoenix, Arizona, maybe a couple other places in the country. Lots of investment. People want to crack it.
00:24:02
Speaker
Lots of potential too. I mean, if you had self-driving cars, you have threats to airline companies, you know, instead of taking a trip between Phoenix and LA on a flight, maybe you just jump in your car, you sleep overnight, and you drive the five and a half hours. So total, you know, lots of potential ramifications and all that. I think, you know, moving into another area
00:24:31
Speaker
that is interesting, at least to me. We're talking chat GPT, artificial intelligence. That kind of thing is virtual reality.
The Matrix and Virtual Reality Predictions
00:24:42
Speaker
We have the Oculus, obviously, Meta now, Facebook's rebranding into Meta.
00:24:49
Speaker
as this leader in virtual reality. But The Matrix is the film that really, I think, 1999, it put it out there. Are we living in a simulation? And Elon Musk thinks we are half the time, I think. But that's another one that
00:25:10
Speaker
is fairly accurate. The Matrix came out 20, almost 25 years ago. And now we have these headsets that we use. You got PlayStation, virtual reality. So you have games, like I said, the Oculus. You have Apple and Google developing headsets. You know, I'm reading things that are saying headsets are actually the future mobile phone. You will not have a mobile phone anymore. You will have
00:25:40
Speaker
a set of classes that are augmented, augmented reality, overlaying the real world with everything you need to communicate, do your emails, talk to people, all of that. Yeah, that's everything I'm hearing too. You can just look at the number of employees at places like Meta and Apple have dedicated to VR. Last count, Meta has 17,000 people, about 20 percent of their company.
00:26:07
Speaker
working at Reality Labs. Apple has 3,000, which is also about 20% of their staff working towards their augmented reality headset. So there's a lot of money being thrown at this project. I mean, between those two, if you're talking, you know, the 20,000 people, that's one fifth of the Manhattan Project as far as manpower around a problem. That'll get a lot of things done.
00:26:32
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, well, I mean, I think I've seen recently that Meta's burning billions of dollars in virtual reality. They're spending money on this. Yeah, they took a $13.7 billion loss last year. Damn. Yeah. When you're a company worth hundreds of billions of dollars and you're trying to corner, I guess, a future market,
00:26:58
Speaker
and they're seeing dollar sites in the future. How long did Amazon operate at a loss before they started turning a profit? It was years. The problem right now is that there's a stigma around VR still, but we're seeing that go away. Yeah, I think that's true. VR excites me a lot and I really hope people stick with it or vote with their dollar
00:27:27
Speaker
to enable further development in that space. I remember when PlayStation VR came out five years ago or whatever it was, and I waited in line all day long at a local GameStop, you know, and got it and put it on. And I was blown away. I was like, oh my gosh, this is incredible to play video games like this.
00:27:52
Speaker
It would just be so awesome to take that technology and use it for learning, for development, even augmented applications. I was going to say, imagine your pipe breaks, right? You put on a headset and you're looking at your pipe and then a virtual plumber comes and shows up and he's pointing out where you need to turn your wrench and where you put the pipe.
00:28:19
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, imagine if you took that technology and you merged it with a chat GPT like service where it is giving you like lessons in how to address the situation you're doing and it's able to inform this virtual program that can show you exactly what to do. Now you displace the need for, I mean, for really severe projects, of course you'll have to have people, but
00:28:44
Speaker
imagine common problems, issues that are going on, you no longer have to bring someone out. You can see it, someone can walk you through step by step. You tell it, hey, here's my issue. And it, through the artificial intelligence programming and the virtual reality headset, propagates a real instructor showing you step by step how to solve the problem you're looking at. That is
00:29:11
Speaker
That'd be insane. That'd be incredible. Oh, yeah. Just imagine like a third world country in rural areas where you have, you know, maybe trained medical people that aren't fully trained on all different types of issues where they can just put on a headset that's trained for this and they can perform complex medical procedures.
00:29:32
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, that would be awesome. You lower the barrier to entry for this. I mean, it's no longer esoteric knowledge. It is information that you democratize it. You enable everyone to become proficient to some degree. It's an evolution across the board. The baseline ability of society increases some degree, some percentage, and then
00:30:00
Speaker
Overall, we all benefit from it. So the potential, I mean, it's there. It's crazy to think about. You already have programs and services that can sit here and edit videos and create, you know, fake movie trailers based off an idea. Why not take it a step further and think that you put on a headset and an AI is developing or projecting a simulated
00:30:28
Speaker
instructor that can teach you a thing or two about a thing or two.
00:30:33
Speaker
Oh yeah, that's definitely where Facebook is putting their money into. They're looking at the business-to-business market here. Man, if they crack that, I mean, that's like economical. We're talking about systems of economics being impacted, like the entire economic model of not just the United States, the world. I mean, you're destroying tons of jobs, but you're creating so much
00:31:02
Speaker
efficiency. I mean, you become so efficient that people are freed up to allocate their time and energy on other problems. It'd be profound. I mean, I would argue it'd be profound. Oh, I think no question. Just about schooling, just schooling, getting an education. The ability to live in a situation that you're learning. You're not learning about the Declaration of Independence. You're in the room as they're arguing it.
00:31:31
Speaker
Yeah. Oh my God. Wouldn't that be? I was just about to say, when you said declaration of independence, imagine being in a simulated room, a virtual room of the founding fathers. And AI has done its best to read through 40,000 pages of Alexander Hamilton and George Washington, all these thinkers at the time. And
00:31:53
Speaker
They give you, you know, disclaimer, this could be factually inaccurate, but, you know, they give you this, you know, play of the founding fathers arguing and like teaching you, you get to watch it. It's almost as if you're going to watch a play. You can walk up to them and talk to them asking questions. Oh my God. That'd be amazing. Give me Abe Lincoln. Let me talk to that guy.
00:32:22
Speaker
Yeah, I'll be the first person to buy the game where it's like have a beer with Abe Lincoln. Oh, man. Wouldn't that be awesome? But I don't want to have a beer with John Wilkes Booth. Someone may make that game. Who knows? I like the back of my head. No. OK. Well, I mean, yeah, AI, self-driving cars, virtual reality. So how do you think this can impact movies, the VR?
00:32:51
Speaker
You think that's going to change the way we tell stories? Definitely. Definitely. I think if you can get to a point where the average audience member in America or maybe even worldwide, but
00:33:05
Speaker
You get to a point where the average person no longer is tied to movie stars, like movie stars lose their, which is starting to happen now with like the MCU and Marvel and these big picture machine films that are going through the machine of Hollywood and coming out, you're starting to have
00:33:24
Speaker
You know the age of the the movie star I think is waning it's starting to you know the last great movie star right now that I really think exists is DiCaprio is a Leo you know Brad Pitt and all this but Tom Cruise
00:33:41
Speaker
Oh, Tom Cruise. Yeah, I mean, Maverick, Top Gun, Respect, San Diego, Baby, Shoutout. Great, great movie. But I, you know, Tom Cruise is what, 59, 64. He's getting up there. Brad Pitts getting to his 60s. Leo is not as old, but he's, you don't have these 20 year old movie stars that are like,
00:34:06
Speaker
the Brad Pitt of their age or the DiCaprio or the De Niro. No, it's more franchise based now. Yeah. Because it's franchise based, if you're moving away
00:34:22
Speaker
from the age of the movie star, then I would argue it doesn't matter who's in your movies. What matters is the story and the content of the film itself. And if you get to a paradigm that looks like that, then I would argue, well,
00:34:40
Speaker
Does it matter if they're CGI? Does it matter if they're virtually constructed? Does it matter if it's actually person speaking or AI software emulating the voice and the behavior and the movement? So I think if you can separate
00:34:56
Speaker
the personal connection of a movie star from audiences, which is starting to happen, then it's only logical to assume there would be a future where movies are like Pixar films, hyper-realistic Pixar films, but the people starring in them don't actually exist. They're sophisticated advanced software telling the stories and maybe even telling and acting better than any of the humans could have done in the first place.
00:35:25
Speaker
Oh, and then it doesn't have to be a linear story either. You can almost imagine a world where you're traveling through this setting and there's a bunch of stories happening at once and you can choose what stories to follow or stop following and walk towards another story. Oh, yeah. That's called choose your own adventure, baby. They have the books, right? I mean, tons of books, choose your own adventure.
00:35:49
Speaker
That would be awesome if they turn that into a film or a virtual reality film that you interact with. Choose your own adventure. You're going through, make it horror, make it sci-fi, whatever, and you can sit there all day long like a really sophisticated video game and get after it. That would be awesome. I would love that.
00:36:11
Speaker
I'd be totally into that. Someone should make a movie about that. Yeah, they should. We should make a movie. We should. We're just gets a little too real. Right? So okay, we're, we've talked about some films that have
00:36:28
Speaker
been made, you know, older films, somewhat recent films, and they've predicted somewhat successfully current technology.
AI Companions in 'Her' and Real-world Impacts
00:36:37
Speaker
What about films that have come out kind of recent that are touching on some of these cutting edge ideas in sci-fi and technology?
00:36:52
Speaker
Yeah, so I think you're referring probably to the film Her from Spike Jonze, right? 2013. Oh, yeah. Spike Jonze, baby, represent. Oh, man. That movie, I've been thinking a lot about that movie lately, especially with Chat's EPT coming out. And I've just been thinking about how our social lives are going to change because I imagine that's going to be the first
00:37:20
Speaker
real big shoe to drop where we have dramatic change, which is, I can imagine in five years where we might have like an AI assistant or like an AI best friend or maybe younger generations will be more comfortable with that, you know, for people that are throwing up in their mouth listening to this as I say that. Yeah, right. This is Lars and the real girl. Yeah. But just as you have these things,
00:37:48
Speaker
As they grow, people are going to make it so that they're fully conversationalist. They are trained to know the history of your entire conversations with them. You can talk to them. They'll be able to answer back to you in a way that's relevant to your life, just like the film Her. I can imagine people having romantic relationships with AI in the next five years, just like that film. Yeah, I agree. I 100% agree. I think
00:38:16
Speaker
You know, Microsoft co-pilot is coming to Microsoft office suite of products. It's supposed to help you draft emails and write documents and all kinds of stuff. It's your little buddy. It's your co-pilot. You take that from a professional business space and you apply that to your real, you know, life outside of work and you quickly have something that
00:38:41
Speaker
you know, represents or appears to be a friend within your network of people you interact with, you know, on the daily. And it becomes a slippery slope. You know, if you have something that is, I mean, on a surface level is, is intelligent, can keep up, have, you know, conversation with you. It's conversational.
00:39:07
Speaker
you can quickly become attached to that. That can be a best friend. Like you said, like in her, it could be a romantic interest very quickly. You could develop feelings for someone who's nurturing you and listening to you and making you feel heard and seen. And I think the idea is, it's interesting. I think it
00:39:31
Speaker
You talk about mental health, you talk about things like that and needing a therapist or needing someone to rely on when you feel lonely. And I think, I read something recently that loneliness and feeling isolated is as bad as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. And what excites me about this technology, this AI,
00:39:59
Speaker
And this example of the movie Her with Joaquin Phoenix and Scarlett Johansson is these people who are lonely or sad, if they're able to have a companion like this, to teach them, to listen to them, to make them feel heard. Even if you have people in your life, I would still sign up for something like that. Therapist of the world, be cautious. You are on notice. You may lose your job.
00:40:28
Speaker
But you have someone who never gets tired of listening to you. You have someone you can reach out to at any hour of the day. That has to be a good thing for people. Maybe I'm an optimist. No, I think that's the future that we're going towards. I think there's going to be a lot of AI companions. It's going to be interesting when we have, I want to see the first generation that's post AI companion. All the kinks are ironed out.
00:40:58
Speaker
maybe a lot of people have already moved into adopting having an AI best friend, so to speak, or AI system, however people want to call it, but something where a situation is where you're interacting with this thing as much as anyone else in your life. I wonder what that first generation of people will be like that are born into that world. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, it has to be as,
00:41:24
Speaker
It has to be like if you were to take an Aztec and try to introduce them to us currently with cars and all these conveniences of modern society. I don't even think we can wrap our heads around. Imagine being in junior high and people are bullying you and you're able to talk to your companion, AI, and they're able to level set with you. They're able to sit there and tell you like, hey,
00:41:50
Speaker
You know, this is what I know about you, man. Like you're, you're a good guy. You're a good gal. And let me beef you up. Let me, you know, you know, support you and, and help you navigate these things that you're too afraid to talk to your, your parents about or, you know, whatever. Like it just, it has to be such a, it would be a resource that I don't think people can comprehend. I mean,
00:42:16
Speaker
Imagine having a best friend, an assistant, someone who has your back all the time, never gets tired and never, they always respond. They never let you down. Yeah, they're always there. They always have advice. There may be, maybe we have a, this future with augmented reality classes that we're all wearing and soliciting and saying, yeah, maybe you shouldn't have said that last thing.
00:42:38
Speaker
Yeah, giving you real time commentary. No, no, no. Choose dialogue options and don't do that. Recover, recover, recover. Yeah. It's like a life copilot.
00:42:52
Speaker
That'd be cool. Yeah. I think her, her a great movie for those listening. If you haven't seen it, check it out. Spike Jones is a boss is such good humor sprinkled throughout that. Joaquin, you know, it's always great. Her dropped. That was 10 years ago now. 2013. Yeah.
00:43:14
Speaker
So 10 years ago, really kind of on the edge of what chat GPT may become. So shout out her. What's another another topic here of current contemporary films?
Space Tourism in Film and Reality
00:43:31
Speaker
You know, one of the things actually I wanted to bring up before it escapes me is this idea or topic of space tourism. You know, I think
00:43:43
Speaker
People in the 70s with Apollo and everyone thought we would be on Mars and we'd have space hotels and all this stuff By now and obviously we don't but we're starting to see blue origin, you know, Jeff Bezos he's going up there with Shatner and
00:44:05
Speaker
showing people space. And it's starting to happen now, where we have tourists going into space, not just government backed astronauts or cosmonauts. And it's exciting. I mean, 2001 opens kind of with that, right? Going to the moon after the apes are touching the monolith and all that.
00:44:30
Speaker
Such a great scene. So, you know, they show it in there, but we have Blue Origin making strides. SpaceX, they've, I thought they had, or are going to have an actual low Earth orbit kind of tourism package or allowing non-astronauts to go up and actually enter low Earth orbit. Blue Origin actually doesn't enter orbit, they just go into,
00:44:59
Speaker
quote unquote space and then come back down on the, uh, the phallic rocket, right? Uh, if you see the pictures of that thing, Jeff Bezos is, uh, trying to tell the world something. Um, but 40 different design options for that. He did. They all have to be redundant. It looked like a penis. Yeah. They all had to look at the mushroom head with, um, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jeff Bezos.
00:45:29
Speaker
What's another one? It's Virgin Galactic, right? Yeah. That's one of the OGs, right?
00:45:37
Speaker
One of the OGs, I mean, Virgin Galactic's been around for a while, although their business model in their case is not as compelling as Blue Origin and SpaceX, in my opinion. But I thought I had heard recently that they were in financial trouble, but I could be wrong. I know they flew a successful flight. They went into their spaceship.
00:46:03
Speaker
that they have. They went in, I don't know if it was low Earth orbit, but they did something. Branson was on the actual flight. So there was progress, but I thought I had heard that they were in financial trouble. So it looks like Virgin Orbit, which is a subsidiary of Virgin Galactic, went bankrupt. So
00:46:27
Speaker
I mean, that's gonna wipe out substantial events with money, so I'm gonna guess that there's gonna be some kind of connection to Virgin Galactic, but I'm not a corporate expert when it comes to that kind of stuff.
00:46:39
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. Sorry, Richard Branson. I hope you get it together because having someone else in the mix with Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, God, give us a variety. Those two guys, I'm saying like, come on, Richard. I'm rooting for you. These two guys are assholes.
00:47:03
Speaker
So, OK, space tourism. Sorry, I know I kind of hijacked it there, but I wanted to plug space tourism. You know, that that's in passengers as recently as passengers with, you know, that was that 2016 Chris Pratt, Jennifer Lawrence. But it bombed. They were like the two biggest stars at the time. Everyone thought it was going to do great. Chris Pratt was so hot.
00:47:29
Speaker
Jennifer, it's so hot, you know, they're hot off all these good movies, I guess, physically too sure. But, you know, they're they were the hot Hollywood thing. And they put them together in the movie. I liked the movie, actually. You know, I really did. I liked it.
00:47:45
Speaker
But it bombed. It did not do what they thought it would do at the box office. But, you know, Passengers was a film where maybe not quite space tourism, but people who were on a ship to go out and colonize and go into, you know, the cosmos. So that's an example. We've harped on 2001 a bunch here.
00:48:08
Speaker
Um, but yeah, no, that's a great example. 2001, you know, like you talked about with their space tourism and inflight entertainment. Uh, you know, it's definitely something we're going to see. It's just starting to, it's just starting to come into fruition and we'll see. It feels like that's a little bit further off, maybe 15, 20 years. I hope, man. I hope.
00:48:31
Speaker
Maybe even that's a little optimistic. What about, okay, so in the last episode, you were surprised I had not seen Gattaca, right? Yes, there's a perfect example. That is another film with space tourism and some bioengineering stuff that's going on in there. I guess we haven't really touched on any type of
00:48:52
Speaker
Cheat editing, have we? No, I don't think that's an interesting subject. There's a lot of stuff going on right now in contemporary technology science news. Yeah. I think it said that CRISPR is going to bring 10 to the next 20 Nobel Prize winners that we see.
00:49:15
Speaker
Like we're going to see so much, and Christopher- Let me live forever. Stop my aging, please, so I can see all the movies every day. That's all I want. All right. So for example, Christopher is a, it's a gene editing technique that basically allows you to, for less of a, to put it down, to dump it down, to cut and paste certain gene sequences into specific parts of your DNA,
00:49:44
Speaker
So what that does is it allows you to hyper pinpoint specific things that you're trying to change about your own genome. And so it's a huge advancement. We're seeing a lot of different things that are being investigated right now. They're looking at implications for Parkinson's. They're looking at implications for pretty much every disease you can imagine. The biggest area will probably be cancers because those are mostly genetic diseases.
Gene Editing and Dystopian Futures
00:50:10
Speaker
And the movie Gattaca,
00:50:13
Speaker
which is actually showing how far technology has outlived and seen past where these limitations of the movies were at the time. Gattaca was about basically getting people's DNA information and predicting what type of diseases people are going to die of in the future. And the entire society is built around this DNA processing. And so where technology has actually moved past that now is where Gattaca just saw you as having a death sentence if you had a certain DNA issue.
00:50:44
Speaker
Now we are potentially looking down a future where you can edit people's genome and you can stop these diseases from ever happening, potentially. What a world that'd be, right? Yeah, that's an interesting future. That's not to speak of designer babies. I want my baby to be smart, be tall. What's that do to the NFL and sports leagues?
00:51:13
Speaker
You got people doing a double backflip after they, you know, or double backflip in the middle of a touchdown scoring drive. He like just so genetically advanced that just, I mean, it would be a spectacle, right? And what's it going to do about the amount of pressure that people are going to put on each other with a hit? Like are we going to have to design babies to be concussion resistant? Yeah, I don't know, man. That's a whole can of worms.
00:51:43
Speaker
I haven't seen Gattaca, so you kind of touched on it previously, but how accurate do you think that movie is with some of the stuff you're hearing about now in the space of gene editing? I think it was very wild for what it predicted in the future, and I think we've blown past that future predicted. I don't think that we are seeing the amount of like, you know, reading people's genomes and
00:52:13
Speaker
and trying to predict their diseases and basically cutting them out from activities in life. We're not seeing that, but we're using that information to try to find cures, to get people to eat better, to have better lives at a much faster pace and going past what that movie was doing.
00:52:31
Speaker
Yeah, and I mean, there's real stuff happening. This editing genes to help people or prevent people from being blind, you know? HIV resistance, these things exist. People are doing this currently. It's not sci-fi. It is happening now. And sci-fi in 1997, Gattaca came out.
00:52:57
Speaker
So 30 years ago, they predicted where we're at now. Yeah, I guess it doesn't feel like 1997 was 30 years ago, does it? 26 years? No, it doesn't. It feels like it was 10 years ago. I guess that's what being a 90s baby feels like, right? That's what it's all about. I don't know. The Matrix was 24 years ago.
00:53:21
Speaker
That's wild, man. All right, so to end on an optimistic note, the last topic here, and I think we could go at length on this. I mean, there's so many ripe examples, opportunities for films, but I will conclude saying this. Mad Max Fury Road, 2015. Great movie. Great movie. I loved it. Thought it was awesome. Tom Hardy killed it.
00:53:50
Speaker
It predicts a future that is very bleak. It's resource scarce. No water, limited water, desert landscape, all of this. I don't think our future is going to look like that. I don't think it'll look like that. I am optimistic. I think we have a good future. I think we'll solve some problems. We'll figure it out. So hopefully that one is not
00:54:21
Speaker
Accurate. Love the movie, love the movie, but I hope that movie is wrong. All right, then I got one too. I looked at Ready Player One and how VR has taken over that society and people use it to escape the real world and they just let real problems stack up to the point. We got 50 stories of trailer parks,
00:54:49
Speaker
I hope, I don't think that's going to be our feature. I think we're going to have a lot of problems and a lot of excitement using VR and augmented reality in real life that we won't just use it, kind of like how we use our phones to escape reality at times. That is my optimistic take. I do not think we're going to be ready player one. I hope so too. I think we're both being optimistic here, right? Yeah. I think
00:55:16
Speaker
We didn't say Dr. Strangelove and you know, some nuclear bombs going off, which is good. I guess that would have led to Mad Max, right? Yeah. Yeah. Dr. Strangelove to Mad Max. I mean, maybe the Ukraine and Russia. Who knows? Taiwan and China. Who knows? Okay. Hold on. Before we conclude here, out of all the movies we touched on, what's your favorite?
00:55:47
Speaker
So we did Mad Max. I think we touched on her, The Matrix, Gattaca, Passengers, 2001, A Space Odyssey. Ex Machina, did we talk about? I mean, that's on the offshoot of the AI. I think there's a lot of movies that we didn't get to, and I think it would have taken four and a half hours. Yeah, definitely. You were very well prepared.
00:56:16
Speaker
Uh, no. All right. So I'm going to, I'm going to go ahead and say I'm not going to choose 2001. Cause that's like the obvious answer. Yeah. We're going to say her. That's my favorite. Um, you know, it's bad for content if I agree with you, but I agree with you. Her's awesome. I love that movie. Her's awesome. Dude, everyone who's listening, go watch her, go watch it tonight and cry when
00:56:45
Speaker
Well, I don't want to spoil it if you haven't seen it, but you'll get emotional. And Arnold, Arnold, Total Recall, baby, I love Total Recall, so good. It's a classic. You could never go wrong with Total Recall, unless it's the new one. All right, I guess with that, you know, that's kind of poetic to say what? I'll be back. We'll be back in another episode, right? I'm not even going to try that, actually. I'll be back.
00:57:14
Speaker
All right. Thanks all. Thanks for tuning in and sticking with us and hope this one was interesting. Yeah, thanks everyone. Don't forget to like and subscribe. Share it with your mother, share it with your father, share it with everyone. That's right. Your sister, your baby, whoever, put some headphones on that child.