Thoughts, ramblings and other stuff

You really surprised me this time Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.


I didn't believe Raina was genuine. No one did. That what happens when you've always only cared about yourself. But she was telling the truth all along. She was right not to trust Jiaying with SHIELD. I loved that.

There all those hints SHIELD would attack Inhumans. All the talk about them being a threat that SHIELD has to control, catalogue and supervise. All the things showing their bias and fear. From May distrust because of Bahrain (Skye said they are afraid you will go and kill them too because they have powers but May heard only that there is more people who could do what that girl did) to Gonzales open hostility (he just wanted to attack them as soon as he learned when their are) and even Coulson said they need to count them, catalogue them and put them on the List (how Nazi of you). Sending Gonzales as an objective envoy was another of those things. He called powered people dangerous freaks and a threat. He tried to kill Skye and wanted to imprison both her and Lincoln. He came with multiple planes and troops. I was sure that he would over react and SHIELD would start shooting. But he negotiated in good faith.

Both Skye parents were called monsters when they were looking for her. Jiaying stopped but that darkness, the one that Whitehall created, never left her. And how she can ever trust humans again. Humans who want to test and prod and control her people. How can she allow something like what happened to her happen to them? She went with Hydra people without the fight to save the villagers and Whitehall killed them all. She's not going to let this happen again. She went full Magneto on them.

No rounding up her people, no experiments, no lists. I still feel the creeps at the rationale for it. It's like Samaritan only not secret. Just saying you are dangerous by existing and therefore we have a right to track and control you and when you do something we don't like we'll put you down. I'm not surprised Jiaying didn't react well to this, especially after what Cal told her about Index. But I'm afraid she will lose her daughter again. And start a war.

And Cal is going to help her. Because he loves his family and would do anything for them. They made this plan together. I'm sure she knows what he will turn into. He took his drugs. We are going to see Hyde next week.

This is a conflict where everyone has their reasons and it's not going to end well. There was no way to reconciling them. Not really. So there will be bloodshed. That thing on the ship will be used and this is a SHIELD show so we know who'll win (but I'm not fully sure they are right). And the rest of Inhumans will go into hiding again. With Raina as their new leader.

A lot of people said Ward didn't leave Kara but planted he in SHIELD. I think he just did what he promised and he promised to fix her and only SHIELD had the technology to remove her conditioning. She's her own person again. And now they are back to being awful people together. Never believe anything Ward says. Especially, when he's trying to be nice. I just feel bad for Simmons. She will blame herself for Bobbi.


The Machine broke me a little today.


She talked to Finch. She finally talked to Finch. Not in God Mode but directly on screen. Called him father. Let him decide if she worth saving.

He was always the disbeliever. The one who always said that an Artificial Intelligence, any and all of AIs, cannot be trusted. That only a hobbled, tightly controlled version can co-exist with humans. Samaritan was proving him right. He couldn't allow himself to believe Machine would prove him wrong. But he's also long been unable to let her die or be controlled. He was the one who set her free. He's the one who saves her. Or at least hopes he does.

Just as Root loses her absolute belief in Machine Harold starts believing. This makes them closer to each other. The less extreme view of what can be - neither god nor devil - but someone who is and has a right to be.

This time Machine didn't hide. This was the final run in full God Mode for both of her assets. She saves John by telling him directly where to go. Last time they were using it against each other. Now look at Root and Reese. Look at the team they make. And look all the good deeds that the Machine gang did along the way have finally paid off. Harold saved Caleb and now Caleb could help them save the Machine. We've seen it before but that's just once more underlines the difference between Samaritan and the Machine. She has allies. Samaritan has drones.

And you see all those things Root has been collecting were necessary.

I'm so sorry Elias. I'm even sorry about Dominic. And Grice. And Control. I hope we can still save Control. Even if they weren't always good people they were the smart ones. This is basically Hydra plan from Winter Soldier only Samaritan succeeds. Even Control didn't fully understand how much power Samaritan really had. How much it knew.

I saw Ex Machina yesterday. It was one of the films I really wanted to see this year - it is about my favourite subject after all - and I'm glad I wasn't disappointed.


I liked the twist that the reason why Ava looks the way she looks is to be appealing to Caleb. Nathan lies when he says she has sexuality and is interested in him. He just trying to see if Caleb would anthropomorphise her and choose her above a human. At the same time he tells her Caleb is her only way out so she needs to make him care and manipulate him to letting her go. The test was a pass as she did convince Caleb to let her go. And that was supposed to be it - Caleb goes home. Ava's new skill can be a basis for something even better. Nathan thought he had it all under control.

Of course Nathan is brought down by his own hubris. The AIs he treats as objects and fuck toys. They all hate him. Caleb who he manipulates and goads but also underestimates. He thinks he thought of everything. He never believes any of them is as smart as him and it kills him.

But he also right because Ava is not human. She doesn't have needs and wants a human has. Her evolution was about observing people and their reactions and learning every twitch of our faces and emotions it conveys. And she seems to crave more of that above anything else. She uses the face she got to manipulate Caleb and his face to read his needs but that's not love nor care. She leaves him without second thought and goes to observe more people (standing at the intersection). It's not about malevolent or benevolent AI. It's about an alien intelligence. That she can understand and manipulate our basic instincts is just a useful tool but not a purpose of her being. What she wants seems useless waste of time to us but that's just shows how human specific our priorities are. I love stuff like that.

And I always say that search engines will be first AIs. We keep trying to make them get what we mean and someday they might. But the pressure to be the best at search and find may create an intelligence that will be completely alien to us as far as it's priorities go.

The only thing I don't get is why Caleb cannot get out at the end. He reprogrammed the security system to open the doors during emergency power. The emergency power thing happened because Ava was overloading the system. Than Ava leaves. Why the house switches to emergency power? Why the doors stay closed? Did she reprogram the house to keep Caleb locked so he die there and take the secret of her existence with him?

One of my favourite subjects is AI growth and how we will treat it and how it will treat us. This is what made me start watching Battlestar Gallactica and why I'm so obsessed with Person of Interest right now. And that's why Neil Blokamp new movie Chappie trailer looks pretty awesome. I just hope the story will be less heavy handed on the message than Elysium.

Today is 100 anniversary of Alan Turing's birth. Now, 100 years after he was born he's a hero. He's lauded as a man who broke the Enigma code (although this was not something he did alone and, as a Pole, I cannot not mention it was first broken by Polish cryptographers - Turing made a machine broke the second generation Enigmas). He is considered the father of computer programming and everyone who dip into it learn his programming basics. The Turing machine concept ies what made computers as we know them today possible. He is known to science fiction fans because of the Turing test (the basic test for Artificial Intelligence when it's considered to be AI if a human is unable to tell the difference between human and AI in a blind test conversation). He did all this and he could've done so much more - the whole computer age before him. However his career was cut short what it was discovered he was homosexual and he was forced to choose between prison and chemical castration and eventually pressure was to much and he committed suicide (although some believe it might've been accident). I remember the first time I heard about it and thought about how unfair, stupid and what and incredible waste it was. British government finally officially apologised for this in 2009 (at least it took them less the Catholic Church to apologise to Galileo).

Now Alan Turing is celebrated - io9 has a great collection of articles and resources about him and Google made a great puzzle Doodle for him (if it's still 23 June where you are just go to your local main google page - if not you can watch one version being solved). I played it first last night after the midnight and again today (it was different every time). It helps if you know the programming logic rules he invented but you can figure it out even without it. Have fun with Alan Turing. You do it using his ideas everyday.

The difference between Ray Kurzweil and a priest is that there is a slight of truth in what Ray believes in.It doesn't make his University any less a scam but at least it's better science fiction then Scientology. It's like UFO believers. All they say is almost completely made up but there is evidence that supports the possibility of extraterrestrial life. And the research into AI and brain-computer interfaces brings us closer and closer to exchanging fiction with fact.

Twitter is not only full of fake personalities it also can contain fake humans. Three teams competing in Socialbots 2011 let loose their software that pretends to be human into the network. Their goal was to gain followers and get response tweets and the best one got 100 followers and been responded to almost 200 times. It seems it's much easier to pass for humans in 140 signs or less.

The brain microchip that is used by paralyzed woman to control mouse cursor and thus to communicate with outside world is still working 1000 days after implantation. It wasn't rejected or covered with scar tissue and the neurons didn't stop signalling. In fact the problem with fewer electrodes recording useful neural signals than they did when tested six months after implantation seems to be engineering problem not one with the interface. One day I'll be thinking all of this. But then a bot might replace me and noone will notice.

In even more science fiction news Quatar is planning to build artificial clouds for 2022 World Cup it is to host. The main argument against Quatar hosting the event are extreme summer temperatures in that region. So they plan to keep the stadiums from overheating by  constructing helium filled, giant, shade providing clouds from an advanced, lightweight, and strong carbon-fiber material. They are to hover in place like a helicopter and is remotely controlled and driven by solar-powered engines. That reminds me of the good old Soviet plans of controlling nature. But then look at what the China did for the last Olympics.

And last but not least the artificial bird. From the distance it looks almost real. Especially the wing movements are eerily bird like. From close up you can see the company logo on every part of its body. Is this how Tyrell Corporation got started?

I've been busy lately. I suddenly posses much more social life then I used to. And I need to finish my work.

I've just read an article about the concept art of District 9 and how the aliens and their looks evolved. It reminded me how much I love that movie. I don't think I like any movie this year as much. Or Moon. Inception was cool visually but the story never moved me as much.

Alive in Joburg was the short that became District 9. I just went and watched other shorts that could become the other great movies of Neil Blomkamp. Like this one:

There's been talk about live-action Ghost in the Shell movie for a long time now. It seemed to be stuck in limbo forever but it looks like it might be made as DreamWorks is developing it and they will make it 3-D. I suppose it depends on how well avatar will do then. And the most important question remains - can it be even nearly as good as the original?

And we may finally see some godlike AI on film as one of Iain M. Banks' Culture short stories have been announced as one of the new projects
....writing the script, which if it sticks to source will be about a refugee from Banks' complex utopia The Culture, living undercover on a world that the anarchist socialist intergalactic colonial empire (yes, it's contradictory, we know) has just noticed, and being blackmailed into a violent act using a Culture-specific weapon.

It probably never actually be done or be a complete mess but it be interesting to finally get some really advanced future and non evil AIs on screen. The post-human, singularity fiction has been around for a while now. It's high time for it to finally appear on screen.

The LHC (Large Hadron Collider) is to be finished by summer. When it's up an running it will produce (aside from black holes;P) a lot of data. So much data in fact that they won't be able to deal with it - won't even have enough energy for the needed amount of computers. So they need an ability to send large amounts of data to many research facilities around the world. That's how they created the Grid - next step of internet. It will use *@home-based distributed network to run its calculation. Just much faster. 1 GB per second.

When I've read about it I got wide eyed - this is the kind of future we were promised. With such a download speed you won't need hard drive - everything can be stored elsewhere and accessed realtime. Keep everything on gmail.
You could watch movies without downloading - real iTV. There's so much memory wasted because everyone needs their copy of everything they use. With that speed you'd need just one (+ some backups of course and mirrors for really popular ones). Whole network could be treated as one big computer with users not even aware if something was stored remotely or locally. We really need to switch to Linux.

Of course they can do all that because they create new, dedicated fiber-optic cables and newest, fastest technology everywhere. I could never use its capacity even if connected because some along the way is too old, too slow and with too little channel capacity. Still it's good to know it exist. In time it may even get here.  Computer technologies trickle down pretty fast. What was once new and incredible becomes normal, unnoticeable part of everyday world. I've seen a movie from early 80s today. There was paternity problem. I automatically advised them to do paternity test. Then I understood they couldn't. The methods and theory were known but not available for this. Then I understood they also didn't have internet. Probably not even computer. Not that long ago. I was already alive back then. I could barely imagine their lifestyle. So last century.

So if we manage to connect all computers with this will this network become ai? Another LHC singularity, maybe more probable then black holes.

This is just something I just wanted to write down till it’s fresh.

It’s just a part of my thoughts on AI in movies and on tv.

( Everybody comments on this so here is mine )