Artificial intelligence has been a source of inspiration for filmmakers for decades, and these carefully-curated films feature some of the most powerful, thought-provoking, and bold takes on the topic to date.
For a long time, movies about artificial intelligence could be split into two camps. The first is the cautionary tale: an allegory for man’s automation anxieties or an indictment of our hubris. These movies position A.I. as a threat of our own creation that will inevitably wipe us out. When humanity is viewed through the lens of the almighty algorithm, we would render ourselves obsolete.
The second camp is films that ultimately ask « how is a robot’s life different from a human’s? » These stories take a more empathic approach to not only the concept of artificial intelligence, but artificial life. These movies place humans in the role of a God-like creator, making us reckon with our creations. Usually the sympathetic synthetic characters start out subservient to their human overlords. But over the course of their journey, the lines between what makes them different from humans begin to blur. Eventually, though they are made of wire and metal, they feel more human than flesh and bone.
As we hurtle towards what film has long represented as “the future,” we reckon with these postulated concepts in real time. Luckily, cinema is keeping pace, and we now have movies that go beyond the binary concepts described above. The aim of this list is to share bold and unique movies that not just feature A.I., but make the concept of A.I. the focus. Sorry 2001: A Space Odyssey and A.I. Artificial Intelligence…