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Intriguing BBC article about a Japanese scientist who has created a realistic human looking robot, Repliee Q1. Hey girls get this, “she can flutter her eyelids and move her hands like a human”!!

One of the things Stanley Kubrick wanted to do with the film AI: Artificial intelligence was to create a real robot boy for the lead role of David. He hired the video director Chris Cunningham to create it for him, but the all Cunningham’s efforts failed to be convincing enough. Imagine how uncanny and fascinating the film would have been with an all too human robot in the lead. It would have really underscored the ethical dilemma at its heart, i.e. could you love a machine? This would have meant that the boy would be aged a convincing three to five, not an implausible nine or ten as in the case of Haley Joel Osment, who was great in the role of David, but really too old to be believable. The problem with casting a human child was that the film would either end up being too cute or not cute enough. Well, if you've seen AI, you'll know what I mean.


Links

The BBC article can be found here

Here is the story of what is known about Kubrick's vision of AI from the Kubrick FAQ site

Here is the story on which it is based, Super Toys Last All Summer Long, by Brian Aldiss

Here is a long and detailed interview with Chris Cunningham, in the course of which he discusses working with Kubrick and his impressions of Spielberg's AI

finally a Wired article about the theme of artificial intelligence and Kubrick, the Intelligence Behind AI