A big Singularity-themed Hollywood movie out in April offers many opportunities to talk about AI risk

I've been planning to try to watch it early, or at least on launch day, and then write up some blog post about it like "Transcendence vs. Superintelligence Theory" or something, to compare it with e.g. the view in Bostrom's forthcoming book (which I've read).

A proposal for a step by step MIRI PR strategy:

(1) : Decide on a person who will speak about the film for MIRI to the public. At best a person who's going to be comfortable in front of a TV camera.

(2) Email the producers of Transcendence. Basically tell them you are the nonprofit MIRI who works on the issue of unfriendly AI risk. You didn't like that Erik Sofge dismissed AI risk in his Popular Science article.

You want to speak to the press about the film, but you want to know what the film is actually about, so it would be nice if the producers of Transcendence would show you the film before the release date. Offer to fly to whatever location in which they might want to show the film. Mention that you will attempt to bring along a journalist for an exclusive story about MIRI reaction to the film.

This proposal should be a no-brainer for someone who produces a film and who wants more PR for the film.

(3) If you have that agreement you message Wired about an exclusive opportunity to cover come along for the screening and cover the reaction of MIRI's spokesperson for it.

Again I think it should be a no-brainer for Wired to send a journalist for such a purpose if you pitch it right. In case Wired decliners you ask around at other places. Tech outlets and places like Business Insider and Forbes.

(4) Once the article is published (it might not be immediately) do all you can to draw attention to it. That probably includes also writing a indepth article on the MIRI blog with arms readers with various important talking points.

(5) Wait for the press to send queries for interviews. Here you have to make a decision about which interview request you want to take. If the press sees you as a general expert on technology there might be a bunch of request that don't have anything to do with MIRI's purpose that you don't want to take.

Something to be aware of is that, as with the novel Zendegi (which had the "benign superintelligence bootstrap project" and "overpowering falsehood dot com"), there are likely to be some specific allusions to transhumanist communities, although the visual media supports more allusive mechanisms based on sounds and appearances and emotional/social gestalts. The allusions in Zendegi were quite ungenerous. I'm not sure what kind of critical or positive environment would be good in terms of their expected positive or negative world outcomes, but I imagine that being able to respond to them could be important for the organization and for people.

Off the top of my head I can see stuff just in the trailer and brief summary.

The protagonist's name is "Will Caster" which resonates a bit with the way futurists semi-often give themselves names that can function as priming/identity hacks like Max More, Will Newsome, FM-2030, etc.

There will almost certainly be scenes that try to replicate the vibe of a Singularity Summit. The trailer has some "guy with big wavy hair standing on a stage speaking to a packed audience" visuals but I don't know how much other stuff might come through.

The uploadee's love interest will be played by Rebecca Hall who reminded me a bit of Julia Galef.

I wonder if memes pairing an image from the movie and an image from RL with a caption would tend to be "good" or "bad"?

I agree this movie will have an impact. My guess it will be polarizing, which is not the worst thing - right now the area of AI risk suffers from lack of attention more than from a specific opposing opinions. Having these themes enter public memesphere, even through entertainment, seems useful.

As far as MIRI commenting on it I think it's too early and would seem to an intelligent observer as jumping on the bandwagon attention whoring - the movie is not even out yet. I imagine after the release there will be a flurry of PopSci type of articles, at which point weighing it might be appropriate and well received.

Posted earlier here: http://lesswrong.com/lw/h1b/link_transcendence_2014_a_movie_about/

The film's trailer strikes me as being aware of the transhumanist community in a surprising way, as it includes two themes that are otherwise not connected in the public consciousness: uploads and superintelligence. I wouldn't be surprised if a screenwriter found inspiration from the characters of Sandberg, Bostrom, or of course Kurzweil. Members of the Less Wrong community itself have long struck me as ripe for fictionalization... Imagine if a Hollywood writer actually visited.

I suspect THE POWER OF LUVVVVV will come at some point as something only humans can do, as opposed to heartless machines.

Uploads first? It just seems silly to me.

The movie features a luddite group assassinating machine learning researchers - not a great meme to spread around IMHO :-(

Slightly interestingly, their actions backfire, and they accelerate what they seek to prevent.

Overall, I think I would have preferred Robopocalypse.

The premise doesn't sounds particularly original:

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AIIsACrapshot
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BrainUploading
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ImmortalityImmorality

"Because if there isn't, they'll dismiss the danger of AI like Erik Sofge already did in an early piece about the movie for Popular Science, and nudge their readers to do so too. And that'd be a shame, wouldn't it?"

I would much rather see someone dismiss the dangers of AI, than misrepresent them, by having a movie in which Johnny Depp plays "a seemingly megalomaniacal AI researcher". This gives the impression that a "mad scientist" type who creates an "evil" AI that takes over the world is what we should worry about. Eliezer's posts do a great job of explaining the actual dangers of unfriendly AI, more along the lines of "the AI neither loves you, nor hates you, but you are composed of matter it can use for other things". That is, that if we create a powerful AI (or an AI who creates an AI who creates an AI who creates a powerful AI), whose values and morals do not align with what we humans would "want", that it will probably result in something terrible. (And not even in a way that provides us the silver lining of 'well, the AIs wiped out humanity, but at least the AI civilization is highly advanced and interesting! But more like: now the entire planet earth is a Grey Goo/Paperclips/whatever). Or even just the danger of us biological humans losing relevance in a world with superintelligent entities.

While I would love to see a great, well done, well thought out movie about Transhumanism, it seems pretty likely that this movie is just going to make me angry/annoyed. I really hope I am wrong, and that this movie is actually great.

I agree. Here's a quick brainstormed statement, just to get the ball rolling:

"This film portrays an implausible runaway unfriendly AI scenario, trivializing what is actually a serious issue. For depictions of much more plausible runaway unfriendly AI scenarios, visit [website], where the science behind these depictions is also presented."

With an A-list cast and big budget, I contend this movie is the front-runner to be 2014's most significant influence on discussions of superintelligence outside specialist circles

Probably. It's not entirely true that the public's awareness and concern for asteroid risk was created by Armageddon, but I bet it's 4/10 true.

Bonus link: Could Bruce Willis Save the World?

I'd guess it's going to go all Mother of Storms at the end, which is happy as endings go.

Mr. Sofge's review says this,

"Being smart doesn’t guarantee malice, or a callous urge to enslave or destroy less-capable beings. Those are human traits, assigned to the idea of intelligent machines with the kind of narcissism only humans can muster."

which sounds like an accusation of typical mind fallacy when we warn that AI may turn unfriendly.

But then he says this,

"The machines become smarter, but not superior. They’re the ultimate intellectuals—far too busy with discourse and theory to even consider something as superfluous as enslaving or supplanting their creators."

which sounds like he doesn't really get what rationality is about.

Previous discussion: http://lesswrong.com/lw/h1b/link_transcendence_2014_a_movie_about/

I started by thinking that one should wait till the film comes out. No I think that's a bad idea. At the point the film comes out relevant journalists will read the articles that are already published. If those contains quotations from a MIRI person, than that person is going to get contact for further interviews.

It might also worth thinking about whether one can place a quote of a MIRI person to the Wikipedia article for the film.