How does the recent Hollywood film 'Archive' look at artificial intelligence?

It has been a hot topic in Hollywood for decades: robots and artificial intelligence. The film Archive, released in 2020 and now showing at Amazon Prime, is the most recent film to address this topic. University Lecturer in Philosophical Ethics Sven Nyholm explains how realistic the representation of artificial intelligence in the film exactly is.

Equivalent

The film covers a range of sci-fi topics, including uploading your consciousness to a digital afterlife, but its central premise is the question: Can we make robots that are truly "equivalent" to humans?

According to Nyholm, it is plausible that humans could develop AI that behaves similarly in a limited number of situations, but not completely. “If we have an AI technology that lacks an animal-like or human-like brain or nervous system, it is hard to see how it could feel feelings or have affective states that are similar to ours or those of animals,” Nyholm says.

Realistic

Despite all the attention Hollywood is paying to movies about robots matching or surpassing humans, that's not something many researchers are currently working on. "The majority of AI researchers work on much more narrow topics,” Nyholm says, but he adds that researchers occasionally contemplate science fiction scenarios to inspire their work.

So the focus on matching humans is not entirely realistic: "I think it probably doesn’t really match up with a lot of real-world AI research. However, it makes for a good and engaging narrative in a science fiction story,” Nyholm says.