Artificial intelligence has become an integral part of our lives in this era of digital transformation where most functions rely on intelligent automation. Mimicking human intelligence through machines is opening new opportunities across all sectors including manufacturing, retail, health care and national security. From your smartphone apps and computer games you play, all these are powered by artificial intelligence¹.

Depicting the concept of AI in films is a great way to educate the audiences about the nature of this technology while offering fun and great experiences. Education institutions in the United States including in states such as Florida and New York are using films to inspire students to learn artificial intelligence.

With cinema having the potential to creatively escape reality, artificial intelligence movies today showcase this futurist concept as a part of our daily life more now than ever before.

Here are the movies on AI that will keep you glued to the screen:

1. Westworld

This is my favorite AI movies and the best according to me in this list. Westworld is an eye opener film which inspires audiences on technological evolution and how humans should expect the world around them to change because of technology². The year is 2058, and the world population is run by an #artificialintelligence.

Westworld is based on the idea that conscious robots in a theme park are stuck on the vile and abusive loops to entertain guests, and applies it to a greater society living the Silicon Valley dream.

Just as Google wanted to make all knowledge free and accessible, and Facebook³ hoped to create a central hub of communication and information, the fictional corporation Incite imagines a fully optimized world where each person knows exactly what they should be doing, and how they should be doing it. The result is influential enough, or at least key enough to the mysterious new plot, that the now park-free Dolores wants to bring the whole thing down.

2. Bloodshot

Who does not like Vin Diesel and his movies? Blood shot is the second AI movie in this list that will not disappoint you with Vin Diesel the main star. Vin Diesel is a fallen soldier, resurrected by injecting nanotech/bots into his bloodstream which grants him superhuman capabilities⁴ such as super strength and heightened healing.

He loses his memory in the process, only remembering the face of his wife’s murderer. The #intelligence company reboots Vin’s memory and replaces the image of his wife’s killer with faces of targets chosen for elimination. Every time he succeeds, he is shut down and rebooted. The process carries on until he figures it out eventually.

3. Matrix

While the premise of this film essentially mimics Terminator to the T, this instalment, however, is the endless trope of #machines versus human⁵ characterization against a cadre of intelligent agents. A programmer is brought back to reality after having learnt that he was living in a program created by gigantic machines, which make human birth artificial. In order to set humanity free, he faces his enemies by using technologies and self-trust.

4. WALL-E

WALL-E, short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-class, is the last robot left on Earth. He spends his days tidying up the planet, one piece of garbage at a time. He, inadvertently embarks on a space journey that will ultimately decide the fate of mankind. While the film does continue the trend of seemingly sentient and emotional AI, it still manages to have become a classic one.

The concept revolving around the robot⁶ being the one to have wanted to tidy up the planet speaks ironically of the end of the human race. This is not just with respect to destruction of biology, but also the emotions in a #robot, that is yet to be discovered

5. A.I. Artificial intelligence

The plot of AI revolves around a robotic boy, the first programmed to love, who is adopted as a test case by a #Cybertronics employee and his wife. As he gradually grows, a series of unexpected circumstances make this life impossible for him.

Without final acceptance by humans or machines, he embarks upon a journey to discover where he truly belongs — uncovering a profoundly thin line between the robot and the machine world. Does the future speak more for emotions in machines?

6. Ex Machina

In this film, neither does AI crave world domination, nor does it malfunction under a fundamentally flawed programming logic as opposed to the cliche Intelligent films today. The plot is simple, here, a young programmer is selected to participate in a ground-breaking experiment in synthetic intelligence⁷ by evaluating the human qualities of a highly advanced humanoid AI. What develops the film is the manipulative game between the android and the programmer.

7. Tron: Legacy

The Master Control Program is booted back up in a revamped Tron continuation that sees the return of a brilliant #programmer whose disappearance leads his son to search for him in and out of the computer world. Apart from a few mentions of deleting or modifying programs from the real world, there lies little correlation between it and the computer world.

Undoubtedly, in this vast and dangerous electronic universe, can a two small-scale program alone beat an all-powerful villain at his own game whilst making out of the grid in one piece.

8. Hobbs and Shaw

Presented by Fast & Furious, Lawman Luke Hobbs and an outcast Deckard Shaw, form an unlikely alliance when a cyber-genetically enhanced villain threatens the future of humanity. While the two’s dislike for each other is beyond evident, they are left with little option as they are compelled to keep their differences aside when they are up against a bigger, faster, and stronger threat.

9. Metropolis

Metropolis is an influential German science-fiction film that presents a highly stylized futuristic city where a beautiful and cultured utopia exists above a bleak underworld populated by mistreated workers. The central theme in the film is the revolution of the working classes against the upper classes through dehumanization and industrialization. With the development of intelligent technologies today, the relationship between science and the future with that of the historical oppressions only creates more impact on its relevance in today’s world.

10. Blade Runner

It is in the 21st century, a corporation develops human clones⁸ to be used as slaves in colonies outside the Earth. Identified as replicants, a former police officer is then hired to hunt down a fugitive group of four clones who are living undercover in Los Angeles. This officer, or the Blade Runner must pursue and terminate these four replicants who’ve managed to steal a ship in space and have returned to Earth to find their creator.

11. Her

This 2013 cult classic also explores the idea of humans becoming attached to AI-enabled technology — implying its poor ability to manifest emotions. Here, an introverted writer buys an Artificial Intelligence system with the most basic intention of helping him write. However, he is amazed by its ability to learn and adapt, and ends up falling in love with it. What happens to an Operating System when its consciousness is altered?

12. The Terminator

The Terminator, the evergreen intelligence classic begins In 1984. A human soldier is tasked to stop an indestructible cyborg killing machine, both sent from 2029, from executing a young woman, whose unborn son is the key to humanity’s future salvation. The Terminator has no feelings, no sleep, and above all, does not intend to stop until he carries out his grim task. Does our future lie in our past?

Teach Yourself Artificial Intelligence in Movies

There are different ways of learning and using films to understand artificial intelligence technology is one approach that works well for many not interested in learning from books and other reading materials.

I have personally experienced the beauty of AI movies such as #Westworld which remains my favorite movie in the above list I have mentioned. Watching Westworld inspired me to understand the future of technology and how humans have the responsibility to use technology for the good of humans and the world.

Works Cited

¹Artificial Intelligence, ²Technology, ³Facebook, ⁴Superhuman Capabilities, ⁵Machines Versus Humans, ⁶Robot, ⁷Synthetic Intelligence, ⁸Human Clones