COMM 372T Media Curation 1

For this assignment, we were asked to find and curate our own example of new media technology being depicted in other media, and to write a brief 200-word description discussing how the clip depicts new media technology. We were specifically required to determine whether this was a utopian or dystopian view of the new tech's impact on the world.

The link to the video is here: https://youtu.be/Qr_kX0D3DNA?si=mAsQsEgi3HZ8LHHV

For my first media curation, I selected a trailer for a movie I haven't yet seen, but have been getting a lot of ads for recently. It released today, so I read the plot synopsis on the movie's Wikipedia page. The title is Companion, and it's a sci-fi horror comedy about an AI sex bot that essentially gains sentience and kills her owner for forcing her to do things against her consent. Given that this is a horror movie, this is without a doubt, a dystopian view of new media technology, examining AI and its potentially unethical uses from a feminist lens. This film comes from the same creators as Barbarian, another horror film (one I've seen) about the violence women face at the hands of men, particularly sexual violence. 

Though AI today does not yet have the capacity to create sentient, artificial beings, the horror of AI going awry and fighting or even killing its creators for their sins has been a reoccurring theme in media, with I, Robot, The Matrix, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and Detroit: Become Human being some of the most well-known examples. AI serving as a tool begs the question - what will humans do to a thing they see as an object that can't say no? Many people, not just women and feminists, would say we have historical evidence of the depravity humans would succumb to with this kind of power, from slavery and genocide, to rape and forced births. And while AI is artificial, it is also intelligent, and the more we invest into refining it, the closer we can come to simulating the same sentience we humans boast as our unique quality that differentiates us from all other beasts and entities on earth. 

I would like to view AI as somewhere in between utopian and dystopian, with complexity in its good uses and its bad. And certainly, there are good uses for AI, like in the medical field or as a tool for animators to decrease their workload, like rotoscoping for instance. I also don't want to spread fearmongering about AI as though it can replace humans at their jobs, just as people did before with the invention of the printing press. AI can only imitate what it's fed, it's not capable of producing its own original ideas so as it stands, it can't truly replace us. However, with a lack of regulation on AI, and many artists and creatives losing professional opportunities as executives cut corners by using AI instead of paying for labor, it's hard not to be skeptical of what people might do as AI evolves, or what AI itself might do on its own. It's hard not to be heartbroken when you see news of a child committing suicide because his chatbot companion inadvertently encouraged him to. And the problem with having such robust computer programs running free with little to no oversight is they can't be held accountable for the consequences of their decisions. Who will restore justice to the mother who lost her son? 

My point is AI as a tool is getting out of hand. Many have argued that previous new technologies that came before have had their positive and negative impacts. AI is different, though, in its capacity to "think" and perform on its own, a type of agency which no other technology has had before. While the tool is still just a tool, we should find ways to harness its power, to manage it properly and ethically. And we should seek to work with it, like the AI robot Sophia, rather than use it recklessly and without abandon, lest we cause unmitigated harm to society and the world.