In an A.I. world, we might learn from robot movies

Bill Knight column for Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, Jan. 29, 30 or 31

From “Metropolis,” the Tin Man in “The Wiard of Oz” and “Star Wars,” to TV’s “Twilight Zone,” the remade “Westworld” and “Almost Human,” Hollywood has a tradition of mechanical creatures that long to be human – to assist or oppose, control or mimic, serve or love people.

That’s timely again. Last month, a bipartisan group in Congress introduced the Future of Artificial Intelligence Act to protect both displaced workers and people’s privacy. This month, the Consumer Electronic Show presented robots way beyond motorized vacuum cleaners, like “Kuri” (which answers questions, plays games, takes photos, and helps around the house) and “Aibo” (a robot dog that can recognize faces, obey commands and “do tricks”). Last week, the National Business Research Institute released its annual “Outlook on A.I. in the Enterprise,” which says businesses adopting A.I. last year grew from 36 percent to 61 percent, and that 90 percent of executives working in “business intelligence” say they’re interested in incorporating A.I. to improve data and analytics.

That all seems to ignore A.I. cautioneers like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk.

But the rest of us might be well-served by streaming some robot movies and recall Tom Selleck’s line from “Runaway”: “Let me tell you the way the world is: Nothing works right.”

Historically, writers have used artificial life for many decades. The 1920 play “R.U.R.” by Czech playwright Karel Capek is credited for not only linking ancient tales of artificial people with technology and science, but for coining the term “robot.” And Hollywood’s been both impessive and embarrassing in its depiction (the best low-budget example may be the big-nosed robot used in the movie serials “Undersea Kingdom” (1936), “The Mysterious Dr. Satan” (1940) and “Zombies of The Stratosphere” (1952), described both as “charming” and “an enraged water heater.”

So whether you’re an A.I. skeptic or a Transformer wannabe clank down in an easy chair to rest your microchips, here are 10 top robot/android films:

“A.I.: Artificial Intelligence” (2001). A disquieting result of filmmakers Steven Spielberg (who directs) and the late Stanley Kubrick (who had the concept), this “grim fairy tale” focuses on a 4-foot, six-inch, 60-pound boy (Haley Joel Osment) who loves his mom. But this forever-11-year-old kid is an android. It’s unpleasant but provocative, uncomfortable but ambitious, apocalyptic yet an updating of “Pinocchio.”

“The Day The Earth Stood Still” (1951). One of Hollywood's best science-fiction films, this Gospel allegory co-stars Gort as the mechanical companion of extra-terrestrial Klaatu (Michael Rennie). After bonehead Earthlings kill the celestial prophet who preaches peace, a woman (Patricia Neal) saves the world with her incantation: "Klaatu barada nikto!"

“Forbidden Planet” (1956). Robby the Robot was introduced in this excellent science-fiction version of Shakespeare's “Tempest,” with Walter Pidgeon, Leslie Nielsen and Anne Francis coping with an unseen force on another planet in the year 2200. The bubble-headed robot whiz went on to star in 1957's “Invisible Boy” and TV's “Lost in Space” as well as cameo appearances in “Twilight Zone” and “Gremlins.”

“Heartbeeps” (1981). The late comic Andy Kaufman starred in this offbeat, overlooked gem. He and Bernadette Peters are robots built to be a valet and server, but they fall in love and escape. The film becomes a touching, charming fairy tale.

“I, Robot” (2004). This techno-thriller loosely based on Isaac Asimov’s novel stars Will Smith as an old-fashioned cop in a new-fangled society where a crime may have been committed by a robot. Then he stumbles on a greater threat to the planet.

“Robocop” (1987). Near death, Detroit cop Peter Weller is reassembled as corporate America's idea of a mechanized supercop in the first, best “Robocop” entry. The stylish (but violent) film has a grim plot balanced by a subtext about the near future that's himarious satire.

“Robots” (2005). In a world populated entirely by mechanical beings, a likeable device goes to the city to join his inspiration – who’s discovered to have been deposed in a corporate shakeup putting profit above all. Ewan McGregor, Mel Brooks and Halle Berry star.

“Silent Running” (1972). Lonely Bruce Dern mans a space-station garden ship with Earth's surviving botany, assisted by three wonderful robots he calls Huey, Louie and Dewey. They all garden together, play games and even mourn as a group. Truly touching.

“Terminator II: Judgment Day (1991). Arnold Schwarzenegger reprises his role in James Cameron's sequel to his 1984 movie, now a “good guy” at the center of friction between man and machine, between humanity and computerized gadgetry. Linda Hamilton co-stars.

“Tobor The Great” (1954). Try to ignore that Tobor is robot spelled backward and appreciate the familiar relationship-building between a robot and a child (Billy Chapin). Like “The Day The Earth Stood Still,” TV's “Johnny Jupiter” and other shows, the emotional robot in this fantasy bonds with his inventor's grandson.

‘Shut ’em down!’ or ‘We the people’?

Bill Knight column for Thurs., Fri., or Sat., Jan. 25, 26 or 27, 2018

Shortly before women worldwide marched last weekend, the federal government shut down, and reactions ranged from sarcastic celebration to concerned disappointment.

 The cynics may sing the Beach Boys’ classic car song, “Shut Down”:

“It happened on the strip where the road is wide,/ two cool shorts standin' side by side…”

Granted, it’s difficult to think of Sens. Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer as “two cool shorts,” but the 1.8-mile strip of Pennsylvania Avenue between the White House and the Capitol is wide, if not welcoming.

On the other hand, some Americans think of another government shutdown (the last one, for 16 days, was in 2013), of the republic as self-government, and of why our “selves” aren’t reflected in the “selves” in Washington.

A few officials tried to address the mish-mash of shutdown subjects: a budget, addressing undocumented immigrants brought here as kids, and children’s health insurance. Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) and others drafted a bipartisan compromise accepted, then rejected, by President Trump.

Congress had to pass a spending bill to keep government funded. It didn’t, so 850,000 workers like those handling Social Security disability claims, were furloughed home, unpaid. A million others deemed “essential” – the military, air traffic controllers, corrections officers, etc.– are working, but without pay.

“It is very clear a federal shutdown could inflict serious pain on everyday working people,” American Federation of Government president J. David Cox, talking to Press Associates Union News Service hours before the shutdown. “We urge the president and Congress to keep the federal government open and provide the necessary resources so agencies can provide services the American people respect and rely on.”

The shutdown could postpone pay for 2 million people in the military, and delays in education, compensation and pension benefits for thousands of veterans, too, Cox added.

Despite disruptions – halting small-business and rural communities’ loans and work by the consumer protection services and other key operations – continuing are airport security checks, food inspections and federal courts (while existing funds last), veterans and other health care, and Medicare and Medicaid.

Negotiations are ongoing as this is written, but Schumer’s unexpected support for having taxpayers fund an expensive border wall and McConnell’s newfound praise for the Children’s Health Insurance Program are more suspicious than pleasing, as discouraging as wavering Democrats, including Sens. Tim Kaine and Debbie Stabenow, putting election prospects before principles and the common good.

Foreshadowed by Trump – in May when he said maybe the nation “needs a good shutdown” (which cost the economy billions in 2013), and in August when he threatened a shutdown if he didn’t get his way on a border wall – the shutdown’s responsibility rests on Republicans, according to some Republicans.

GOP consultant John Weaver said the blame is Trump on and Republicans: “Trump created the [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program] crisis. The congressional wing of the GOP refused to fund CHIP. Trump and GOP ignored the pleas of the Pentagon for a fully funded budget. All of this is on them.”

U.S. Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) from the House Appropriations Committee added, “We’re in the majority, we control all three branches. So we’re going to get blamed, whether we deserve it or not. Just the way it is.”

Former Republican Party Chair Michael Steele commented, “Despite the rhetorical effort to paste Democrats with ‘Schumer’s Shutdown’ and to redefine what constitutes majority control of the Senate (‘60’? Really?), the fact remains that this shutdown rests at the feet of the GOP and it appears a majority of Americans agree.”

However, isn’t on all of us, the governed? Trump was elected (by the Electoral College, if not most voters), and voters sent representatives to Congress who are overwhelmingly beholden to Big Money. Both parties seem increasingly to consider politics and elections, not service and citizens.

Again, from the Beach Boys’ hit song from 1963, two lines that sound like such politicians:

“Revvin' up our engines and it sounds real mean” could come from Stephen Miller, Trump's sinister senior policy adviser, and

“Gotta be cool now, power shift here we go,” could be an overly optimistic Democratic strategist playing games with the future.

Overall, though, the shutdown is a moment of shame, not amusement.

U.S. complicity, not Trump’s vulgarity, the key point

Bill Knight column for Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, Jan. 22, 23 or 24

I care as much what vulgarity President Trump uses as what his height and weight are. Instead, what’s important is his attitude affecting policies: enriching the wealthy, damaging the environment and the education and health-care systems, and hurting international relations and individuals from other countries.

Other presidents – notably Democrat Lyndon Johnson – were crude, but did any disparage or dismiss millions of people so high-handedly? Trump’s comments may not reveal racism, but they certainly show a lack of awareness, of knowledge, of history.

People can be victimized by brutal dictators or terrible disasters, and by economic subjugation.

I visited Haiti as part of a church medical mission years ago, but I’m no expert. However, here are a couple, with enlightening perspectives:

“The importance of history in migration cannot be overstated,”  says Tisha M. Rajendra, author of “Migrants and Citizens: Justice and Responsibility in the Ethics of Immigration.”

“Migration is not only the result of poverty and unemployment – these factors mustbe ‘ignited’ by a certain kind of intervention,” she continues. “Some of these interventions, like colonialism, happened centuries ago; others, like foreign investment in factories, happened decades ago. The relationships between migrants and citizens are distorted by false narratives that the relationship is one where mirgants are demanding goods and services they have no right to. This is false. The relationships have their genesis in our own economic and foreign policies.”

Jonathan Katz, author of “The Big Truck That Went By: How the World Came to Save Haiti and Left Behind a Disaster,” specifically addresses that Caribbean nation. The Associated Press’s Haiti correspondent from 2007 to 2011, Katz recently took to social media to challenge Trump. Here are exerpts:

“Lot of folks think they’re making a great argument in the president’s defense by noting that Haiti and El Salvador are, in fact, poor. But they’re just revealing their own racism. Here’s why: In order to do a victory lap around the Gross Domestic Product difference between, say, Norway and Haiti, you have to know nothing about the history of the world.

“You have to understand nothing about the Trans-Atlantic Slave trade, the systematic theft of African bodies and lives. And you have to not understand how that theft built the wealth we have today in Europe and the U.S.

“You’d have to not know that the French colony that became Haiti provided the wealth that fueled the French Empire. You’d have to not realize that Haiti was founded in a revolution against that system, and that European countries and the United States punished them by refusing to recognize or trade with them for decades. You’d have to not know that Haiti got recognition by agreeing to pay 150 million gold francs to French landowners in compensation for their own freedom. You’d have to not know that Haiti paid it, and that it took them almost all of the 19th century to do, to not know about the rest of the 20th century either –

the systematic theft and oppression, U.S. support for dictators and coups, the U.S. invasions of Haiti in 1994-95 and 2004, the use of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to impose new loans and destructive trade policies.

“In short, you’d have to know nothing about WHY Haiti is poor (or El Salvador in kind), and WHY the United States (and Norway) are wealthy. But far worse than that, you’d have to not even be interested in asking the question. [You] ASSUME that Haiti is just naturally poor, that it’s an inherent state borne of the corruption of the people there.

“If Haiti is a s***hole, then you can say that black freedom and sovereignty are bad, hold it up as proof that white countries are better, because white people are better – in 1804, in 1915, and now.

“So if anyone tries to trap you in a contest of ‘where would you rather live?’ – or ‘yeah, but isn’t poverty bad?’ – ask them what they know about how things got that way.

“And then ask them why they’re OK with it.”

Some 670,000 Haitians live in the United States, according to the Wall Street Journal, which has editorialized against deporting about 59,000 of them, as Trump recommends. That 670,000 is less than 2 percent of the nation’s foreign-born population.

“With almost a decade of legality under their belts, the Haitian migrants have put down roots in the U.S.,” the conservative newspaper said. “Returning likely would plunge them into poverty.

“If the Administration and Congress are putting America first,” the paper said, “they ought to let these productive people stay.”

And, it must be added, also “Dreamers,” Salvadorans, Africans and others whose countries of origin victimize them.