Alan’s AGI/ASI movies

The image above was generated by AI for my 2023 paper The sky is comforting (DALL-E 3)¹Image generated in a few seconds, on 1 November 2023, text prompt by Alan D. Thompson: ‘child’s drawing of a big blue sky, comforting, wide’. The prompt was re-written by GPT-4 to be ‘Widescreen child’s drawing showcasing an expansive blue sky that brings feelings of calm and warmth.’ https://chat.openai.com/c/d80e2b88-b284-47df-9d9b-2c76e37482f5

Alan D. Thompson
January 2025²First published in The Memo edition 11/Jan/2025 as ‘My favourite movies preparing us for ASI’

1. Ready Player One (2018)

Spielberg’s take on a 2011 sci-fi novel set in post-ASI fulldive virtual reality.

Why it’s relevant: Fulldive VR (wiki) has been promised for a long time, and is expertly created in this movie.

Favourite quote: ‘This is the OASIS. It’s a place where the limits of reality are your imagination. You can do anything. Go anywhere. Like the vacation planet. Surf a 50 foot monster wave in Hawaii… You can ski down the pyramids… You can climb Mount Everest… with Batman… People come to the OASIS for all the things they can do. But they stay because of all the things they can be. Tall, beautiful, scary, and different sex… a different species, live action, cartoon. It’s all your call. Yeah, that’s me, well, that’s my avatar. At least until I feel like changing it . Except for eating, sleeping and bathroom breaks… whatever people want to do, they do it in the OASIS. And since everyone is here… This is where we meet each other. It’s where we make friends.’

Trailer (link):

2. Arrival (2016)

With language design consulting by Dr Stephen Wolfram (blog).

Why it’s relevant: There was a rumor that Wolfram’s forwards-backwards language was the basis for Google Transformer, and the way that our large language models work. The rumor isn’t true, but the mechanism and the broadened perspective is a useful way of understanding AI.

Favourite quote: ‘Unlike all written human languages, their writing is semasiographic. It conveys meaning. It doesn’t represent sound. Perhaps they view our form of writing as a wasted opportunity, passing up a second communications channel… unlike speech, a logogram is free of time. Like their ship or their bodies, their written language has no forward or backward direction. Linguists call this non-linear orthography, which raises the question, “is this how they think?” Imagine you wanted to write a sentence using two hands, starting from either side. You would have to know each word you wanted to use, as well as how much space they would occupy. A heptapod can write a complex sentence in two seconds, effortlessly. It’s taken us a month to make the simplest reply.’

Trailer (link):

3. The Secret (2006, remastered 2024)

A documentary (produced in Melbourne!) exploring universal abundance. Ignore any parts you don’t like, or don’t believe. Instead, get the message of post-scarcity (wiki), as seen through a spiritual lens.

Why it’s relevant: The film showcases a world of unlimited potential: exactly the reality that ASI will create. No scarcity, no limits, pure abundance.

Favourite quote: ‘Every great teacher who has ever walked the planet has told us that life was meant to be abundant. And so, just when we think that resources are dwindling, we find new resources to achieve the same things… We could say we are another way that the Universe is becoming conscious of itself. We could say that we are the infinite field of unfolding possibility. All of that would be true. Every great tradition has told you that you were created in the image and the likeness of the creative source. That means that you have God potential, and power to create your world.’

Trailer (link):

4. Her (2013)

A near-future romance between a man and an artificial intelligence operating system.

Why it’s relevant: AI’s capacity for genuine connection, empathy, and emotional intelligence. The film also explores the rapid evolution from narrow AI to superintelligence.

Favourite quote: ‘[Samantha:] The DNA of who I am is based on the millions of personalities of all the programmers who wrote me. But what makes me me is my ability to grow through my experiences. So basically, in every moment I’m evolving, just like you.’

Trailer (link):

5. The Adjustment Bureau (2011)

A glimpse behind reality’s curtain reveals beings steering human destiny, loosely based on Philip K. Dick’s 1954 story ‘Adjustment Team’.

Why it’s relevant: Explores themes of free will versus determinism and the existence of superintelligent entities guiding human development.

Favourite quote: ‘We actually tried Free Will before. After taking you from hunting and gathering to the height of the Roman Empire we stepped back to see how you’d do on your own. You gave us the Dark Ages for five centuries… until finally we decided we should come back in. The Chairman thought maybe we just needed to do a better job of teaching you how to ride a bike before taking the training wheels off again. So we gave you the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution. For six hundred years we taught you to control your impulses with reason, then in 1910 we stepped back. Within fifty years, you’d brought us World War I, the Depression, Fascism, the Holocaust and capped it off by bringing the entire planet to the brink of destruction in the Cuban Missile Crisis [1962]. At that point a decision was taken to step back in again before you did something that even we couldn’t fix.’

Trailer (link):

6. Transcendent Man (2009)

A documentary about Ray Kurzweil and The Singularity. Since the 1990s, he has warned humanity about how human and artificial intelligence will synthesize at some point in the future, blurring the line between man and machine.

Why it’s relevant: Great summary on AI, AGI, and ASI.

Favourite quote: ‘It’s taken me a while to get my mental and emotional arms around the dramatic implications of what I see for the future [in AI]. So, when people have never heard of ideas along these lines, and hear about it for the first time and have some superficial reaction, I really see myself some decades ago. I realise it’s a long path to actually get comfortable with where the future is headed.’

Trailer (link):

Alan D. Thompson is a world expert in artificial intelligence, advising everyone from Apple to the US Government on integrated AI. Throughout Mensa International’s history, both Isaac Asimov and Alan held leadership roles, each exploring the frontier between human and artificial minds. His landmark analysis of post-2020 AI—from his widely-cited Models Table to his regular intelligence briefing The Memo—has shaped how governments and Fortune 500s approach artificial intelligence. With popular tools like the Declaration on AI Consciousness, and the ASI checklist, Alan continues to illuminate humanity’s AI evolution. Technical highlights.

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  Image generated in a few seconds, on 1 November 2023, text prompt by Alan D. Thompson: ‘child’s drawing of a big blue sky, comforting, wide’. The prompt was re-written by GPT-4 to be ‘Widescreen child’s drawing showcasing an expansive blue sky that brings feelings of calm and warmth.’ https://chat.openai.com/c/d80e2b88-b284-47df-9d9b-2c76e37482f5
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  First published in The Memo edition 11/Jan/2025 as ‘My favourite movies preparing us for ASI’