Previously, you have written about science, aerospace and cosmology. What is it about this world that first captured your attention?
We hear a lot, these days, about mega-trillionaires wanting to colonise Mars, but that’s a pitiful and vain ambition, and not what space exploration is really for. The reason why we explore is to see what’s out there out of pure curiosity, and above all, to look back from afar at our home world and truly see it for what it is. Just ask any proper astronaut. I’ve loved space and its scientific aspects, astrophysics and cosmology, for ever, because who in their right minds isn’t fascinated by the question of where we came from, how life arose, and the Big Question, of course. Is earthly intelligence unique in the universe, or are there other minds out there?
When working on your documentary, 2001: The Making of a Myth, did this raise any of the concepts or questions you have discussed in Robots on Screen for you (e.g. machine intelligences and rights, and electronic minds becoming smarter than our own, etc)?
There’s a lot of nonsense sold to us about AI becoming conscious. That’s hype to draw in financial investors, and for anyone interested in doing a proper interview, I would love to talk about how microchips alone probably cannot deliver self-awareness. You have to have a body, you have to have senses, literally in order to ‘be aware of’ anything. You have to have hopes and ambitions, pleasures and dreads, and probably, you have to be meaningfully “alive” as a biological entity. Discuss . . .
On the other hand, the possibility of AI doing us harm is very real. They don’t “mean” to. They don’t have enough consciousness actively to have it in for us. However, careless human uses of the technology before it is properly matured represents a very real danger to us all, from the bedrooms of our kids with their laptops and phones, to the war rooms of the Pentagon and the Kremlin.
Aside from yours (obviously!), do you have any other favourite books that you would recommend to people who have enjoyed Robots on Screen?
An old MIT book from David Stork, Hal’s Legacy is a good one, as is The Enchanted Loom, a history of how computers emerged from the weaving industry. Of course I have plundered Quarto’s Iconic Filmmakers book series as an essential reference source - the Spielberg appraisal in particular. Brands in the Age of AI is a perfect and timely companion to Robots on Screen.
And, finally, what new projects do you have on the horizon that we can look forward to?
Your cousins across the Atlantic are releasing ARTEMIS: NASA’s New Lunar Adventure in April ’27, marking the first anniversary Artemis II’s lunar voyage. I’m also looking at a visual history of undersea exploration, a subject just as fascinating - and in many ways, rather more colourful - than space flight.