For this assignment I revisited a film that came out last year in 2023 that was personally one of my favorites of the year. It stars John David Washington, Denzel Washington’s son, who is a soldier in the future after artificial intelligence has detonated a nuclear bomb in the US. Since then, people have betrayed AI and only the people of a place called New Asia support its existence. Mr. Washingtons character, Joshua, is on an undercover job in New Asia with his pregnant wife who is believed to be the daughter of the mastermind of the AI technology that has caused this international turmoil. The purpose of the undercover mission is to discover where the new weapon they’ve created is at. Later in the movie we find out that the new weapon is in the form of a child, specifically Joshuas and his wife’s child, who is called Alphie. Instead of destroying Alphie, Joshua risks his life and eventually gives it to protect Alphie.
I enjoyed the religious parallels of this movie as Joshuas wife, Maya, is seen as a Virgin Mary character who mothers what the world sees as something destructive but actually possesses the power to save it. Also, the simplicity, but directness and power of the title. AI is displayed in a godly way as being so powerful it controls humans which is a potential reality in our world. I think the real warning of AI is greatly portrayed in this film as it, along with technology and science, can replace the abstract thinking of humans. This of course is a deep internal threat to where the origin of the movie’s plot being the AI dropping a nuclear warhead is something to objectively worry about. For all it takes it one technical mistake or a slight increase of autonomy to a system to create a world of regret. Therefore, I think AI can be used in helpful ways to us, but “should it” is the question of high consequential thinking and even morally difficult to navigate.