UPR news director Sheri Quinn talked to UPR reporter Erin Lewis about the Sundance Film Festival's panel on AI.
Lewis: One of the bigger films was 'Love me,' which premiered at Sundance this year, and really focuses around AI as a satellite and a buoy and discusses consciousness and identity in relation to artificial intelligence. There are a number of others though 'Eternal You.' There's also the New Frontiers digital 'Griot,' focused on artificial intelligence and had some conversations around those films as well.
So the panel included a couple of scientists, as well as the co-directors of the film 'Love Me,' and another director of a previous film from Sundance. And it was really fascinating, they had a very interesting conversation about AI and consciousness, stream of consciousness was the name of the conversation of the panel. And it really kind of took a deep dive into what it means to be conscious. And, if we can tell or if we sort of want to know if AI is conscious. They also focused a lot on how much that can teach us about being human and a major reason we focus on AI and are so fascinated by it is because of what it can tell us about ourselves, what it means to be human.
Quinn: Would you say the panel was overall optimistic about AI? Or was there fear? Criticism?
Lewis: Yeah, so interesting. I think that overall, given the topic of the people on the panel, there was definitely an optimism and interest in kind of learning about AI and kind of the more positive side of it. But there was a question at the end where they kind of started to, to look at both sides of what AI can do that's really positive, but also the more negatives and there is definitely some fear from some audience members of the negative sides of AI.
