“I, Robot” tackles the “Three Principles of Robotics” head-on *Note! Contains spoilers.

Viki's description

However, it was difficult to decide how to conceptualize Viki. Therefore, production designer Patrick Tatopoulos came up with the idea of ​​``a hologram of a human face floating inside a cube that would appear anywhere in the air within the company and communicate with humans.'' This cube is formed from many images in a photomosaic style. To illustrate this, Digital Domain selected thousands of its own movie frames and created images that were projected into the air.

Viki's main body was designed in the shape of a spherical positronic brain hanging below a long cylinder that runs through the center of the US Robotics building (*9). This is different from the typical image of a supercomputer, which has box-shaped cases lined up in an orderly manner. At the time of its release, it had a retro-futuristic feel, reminiscent of ``Electronic Brain Hallelujah'' and ``Virgin Mechanical Danuber,'' which appeared in Osamu The Birds's ``Phoenix: Future Chapter '' (67-68).

*9 In the real world, the quantum gate method, which has been actively developed recently,quantum computerseems to be getting closer to Viki's design. This is because a small amount of noise can destroy a qubit, so a cooling device to maintain the chip near absolute zero, a mechanism to avoid various interferences, and complicated and huge wiring are required. Like a sci-fi moviemysterious shapeIt becomes.

What you can get from “I, Robot”

This movie depicts the fear of AI and robots ignoring the Three Principles. However, in the real world, there is no such thing as the ``Three Principles of Robotics,'' and it is extremely difficult to actually inculcate these into AI.

Science fiction writer Hideaki Sena writes in `` Hideaki Sena Robotics Collection '', ``How have Asimov's three principles been viewed by actual engineers?In engineering, there is ``implementation'' that makes an idea function as a system. However, when considering the three principles based on this, it is extremely difficult to define "human" and "harm" in Article 1.Then, Article 2 and Article 3 The phrase ``as long as...'' also includes the difficult challenges faced by artificial intelligence (AI).The reason Asimov's three principles have not been the subject of serious discussion in the engineering field until now is that they are difficult to implement. I guess it was because I couldn't see the road at all."

However, if we continue to develop AI and robots while neglecting this, there is no guarantee that someone like Viki will emerge somewhere. Instilling ethics in AI is extremely difficult, but necessary.

Text: Takayuki Oguchi

In 1982, he became the director of Japan's first CG production, JCGL. After working as the head designer for the IMAX Dome 3D video "Universe 2 ~Sound of the Sun~" at the Fujitsu Pavilion at EXPO'90, he became a freelance video creator. Won an Emmy Award for the NHK special ``Life: A 4 Billion Year Distant Journey'' (1994). His most recent work is the storyboard for the NHK special "Space Spectacle Vol. 1" (1919). He is also a video journalist specializing in VFX, CG, 3D movies, art animation, exhibition videos, etc., and has contributed numerous articles to film magazines, theater pamphlets, the web, etc. In addition to being a visiting professor at Digital Hollywood University, he is also a part-time lecturer at Tokyo University of the Arts, Graduate School of Animation, Waseda University, Faculty of Science and Engineering, and Japan Electronics College.

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