Author: Anya Kumar

  • Unleashing AI: Advanced Research Facility Adventure – Let’s Play Part 1

                I asked ChatGPT to create a game using the following prompt: “Create the code for a python choose your own adventure game with a storyline about AI. Each choice the player makes should build on the last in order to have a cohesive storyline. The player should take at least five steps before reaching…

  • Who is the Villain?

    Throughout the semester, we’ve seen plenty of outright villains– Proteus of Demon Seed, the Terminator of The Terminator, HAL of 2001: A Space Odyssey, and more. Almost every film, however, asks us a question– who is really the villain? Even the examples above almost beg that question, but films like Ex Machina have us debating…

  • A.I. and Harm

    While there have been attempts to create laws and guidelines surrounding A.I., its rapidly expanding abilities call for a constant need to change and update these policies. As we’ve discussed many times throughout the semester, the usage of A.I., specifically to create deepfake images of people– often women– in the nude or in sexual content,…

  • Worlds that Don’t Exist

    “What’s good for an AI can be very different from what’s good for a human being.” from Propositions for Digital Minds and Society by Nick Bostrom and Carl Shulman Reading Propositions for Digital Minds and Societies truly required me to practice Gayatri Spivak’s ‘three yeses’, as outlined in the syllabus. It’s not necessarily that I…

  • Are you human? and Other Questions

    Like other pieces from the franchise, the final cut of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner contains many tests and questions, like the Voight-Kampff test that aims to identify replicants versus non-replicants. The questions often refer to animals and less often, family members, to evoke emotions in the test-taker and separate humans– who are meant to feel…

  • DEI & AI

    DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) and A.I. are both highly discussed topics right now. In recent years, just as many corporations and institutions have implemented new DEI tactics in order to foster inclusive communities, media programs have been exploring often ignored storylines and listening to the voices of writers and creators that have long been…

  • Creating with A.I.- Who made this project?

    A few months ago, I saw a tweet, now lost in the abyss of Twitter (X), envisioning a world in which you and your friend could go to a theater, each put on a headset, and individually input an idea for a movie you’d want to see. Within minutes, the film would be completely generated…

  • Creators & Creations: To whom am I speaking with?

    Recently on Twitter (X, if you must), a user posed a question asking for examples of scholars who spent years after their discovery distancing themselves from it. The example stated in the Tweet itself is Oppenheimer, and various popular responses include Dong Nguyen and the highly addictive Flappy Bird, David Mech and his outdated analysis…

  • Ex Machina: Is it really about AI?

    When I started Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2014), I was intrigued by its relation to Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics”, as discussed before the film, and whether or not they were broken by the fault of the creator or the robot itself. As soon as Nathan (Oscar Isaac, looking suspiciously like Shel Silverstein) and Caleb…

  • Where are the Women?

    Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) provides plenty of slower moments that force a viewer to reflect. One major question I had on my mind was, Where are the women? The few women in the story barely have any screen time or lines, and are minimal in the grand scheme of the film. In…