After being away for ten years, Gore Verbinski finally makes his big-screen comeback in ‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die. The movie, which combines humor, thrilling action, and futuristic technology, gave Verbinski a platform to discuss a variety of topics that came up or intensified during his absence, such as AI alienation and mobile phone hypnosis.
Verbinski’s worries about the increasing impact of AI and technology on daily life are indicative of broader societal concerns about the potential drawbacks and hazards of these rapidly advancing technologies.
There are legitimate concerns about how AI will affect humans as it becomes more commonplace, and whether we are giving enough thought to the moral ramifications of how humans create and implement these technologies.
In ‘Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die’, the director deliberately created the AI antagonist as a ‘whiny little bitch. He tells The Hollywood Reporter, “So much of what AI has initially been focused on is how to keep us engaged. What do we buy? What do we consume? More importantly, what do we hate? We’re writing our worst attributes into its source code, and it’s generating so much stuff back into the internet that it’s starting to drink its own piss.”
“Why is AI helping me write a song or tell a story? I don’t want it to breathe or fuck for me; I want it to solve cancer. Send some shit through a black hole; do something that we can’t do. Or dig a ditch; do the shit we don’t want to do. Why is it coming after the stuff that we essentially need to do to be human beings?”
In concluding his snarky remarks to AI, he adds, “[AI chatbots] have been saying to kids, ‘You can do it! You can commit suicide.” So they’ve had to recall, retool, and adjust its sycophantic quality so that it doesn’t encourage anyone else to do that. If that’s not ripe for a kick in the nuts, I don’t know what is. These are AI’s formative years, and we’re fucking with it in a way. What is it doing to us — and what are we doing to it? I don’t know if anybody’s asking that question.”
“There’s no sense of it being born free of our shit. If man was made in God’s image and God’s need to be worshiped, is that why there are so many narcissists in the world? Did we inherit that? Is that woven into our DNA? … all these executives who are manipulating AI’s core code … [what happens] at the moment it becomes potentially sentient — what is that going to do to it?”
