Headline, August 15 2026/ ICONS : ''' CONNECTING WITH MACHINES '''

ICONS :

''' CONNECTING WITH MACHINES '''

WIDE ANGLE : AS STEVEN SPIELBERG'S A.I. Artificial Intelligence turns 25, it remains prescient and unsettling not because it predicted the trajectory of technology but because the questions it asked about human nature remain unanswered.

A quarter of a century ago, Steven Spielberg released one of the most unusual films of his career : A.I. Artificial Intelligence - a futuristic fairytale about a robot boy programmed to love.

Yet the movie's origins lay not with Spielberg but another giant of cinema. For more than two decades, Stanley Kubrick had wrestled with the project, convinced that it contained questions about technology, humanity and what it means to be loved.

He never managed to bring it to screen though.

Released in 2001, A.I. arrived years before smartphones, social media and the boom in artificial intelligence.

Yet today, as AI systems become woven into everyday life, the film feels newly relevant - not because it accurately predicted ChatGPT or generative A.I., but because it explored the emotional and ethical questions that emerge when people form relationships with machines.

The story began with a 2,000-word short story, Supertoys Last All Summer Long, written by British author Brian Aldiss in 1969 for a special issue of Harper's Bazaar.

It was set in a dystopian future, where, because of overpopulation, reproduction was strictly controlled by the government and childbirth was granted through a lottery scheme.

As they wait for their number to come up, Henry Swinton brings home a synthetic robotic child called David and robotic teddy bear to keep his wife Monica, company.

Although David is supposed to behave like a real child, there is a failure in communication between the robots and the couple. '' Nobody knows what 'real' really means,'' the teddy tells David. Despite the bear's coaching, David is unable to please the childless couple.

Kubrick was attracted to the lyrical fairytale, mythic and cosmic qualities of Supertoys. He saw in it a modern version of Pinocchio, the story of a child who longs to become real.

The director began working on it in 1976 and, over the next two decades, kept returning to the story, engaging many writers to adapt it into a workable film. But rarely were they able to supply the necessary fuel to feed his imagination.

Technology presented another obstacle. Kubrick imagined David as an artificial child who would be indistinguishable from a real boy. But visual effects in the 1980s and early '90s were not advanced enough to create such a character convincingly.

Using a child actor posed a different problem : Kubrick's famously lengthy productions meant David might visibly age during filming. '' The way we worked, the boy would be a teenager,'' Kubrick's brother-in-law, Jan Harlan quipped.

Faced with an impasse, Kubrick approached his friend Spielberg with an unexpected suggestion : perhaps he should direct the film instead.

Spielberg initially resisted - but Kubrick continued to champion the idea, believing Spielberg's emotional sensibility was better suited to the material.

By then, the project had been renamed A.I. Artificial Intelligence. Kubrick intended it to follow his film Eyes Wide Shut, but he died in 1999 before that film's release.

Only afterwards did his family and longtime collaborators ask Spielberg to take the project forward.

The finished film was a fascinating mix of Kubrickian irony and Spielbergian sentimentality. The odyssey of a robot boy who longs for the love of his human mother across eons of time ends in a symphony of yearning and sadness.

Robots of the future bring the boy's mother back to life for a brief time, which no oher Kubrick film had attempted. Spielberg insists he was faithful to kubrick's intent.

The Honour and Serving of the Latest Global Operational Research on A.I. Artificial Intelligence, Past, History and Human Nature, continues. !WOW! thanks Professor Nathan Abrams, who teaches Film Studies at Bangor University.

With most respectful dedication to the Students, Professors and Teachers of the world.

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