If you're looking for a good movie, I suggest "It's No Game." If you've never heard of it, that's OK. The film, just released this week, is a bit less than eight minutes long. It tells the story of a pair of Hollywood writers who learn that they will be replaced by an artificially intelligent algorithm that generates screenplays.
By now I'm sure you've guessed the kicker: "It's No Game" was itself written by an artificially intelligent algorithm that generates screenplays. Although the algorithm is still crude, we may be looking at the future.
The algorithm is called Benjamin - it chose its own name - and is the brainchild of director Oscar Sharp and Ross Goodwin, an AI researcher who is a graduate student at New York University. Their idea was to feed a neural network lots of sci-fi screenplays and teleplays to give it a feel for dialogue, setting and plot, then switch on the bot and see what came out.
Last year, as part of a competition, Benjamin scripted "Sunspring," its first effort at a short sci-fi[1] film. Three people who seem to be trapped somewhere - it feels like a bunker, but the screenplay calls it a "ship" - engage in quick dialogue that is at once utterly nonsensical and yet oddly charming. (Money quote: "I don't know what you're talking about." "That's right.") Slate magazine opined that the film "feels like a movie shot in a foreign language you once studied but never really understood."
I don't entirely agree. The unadorned screenplay is bizarre, but when actually directed and acted, "Sunspring" offers a weirdly compelling tale of passion and betrayal. A monologue at the end, incomprehensible on the page, burns with a certain life on the screen.
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