#022 The Banality of Evil
Since at least Stanley Kubrick’s HAL (2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968) cinematic imagination has reveled in the techno-disaster narrative of the benevolent A.I. turned psychotic anti-hero. Might the spectacle of these futuristic nightmares distract us from the more subtle -but more concrete- ways in which digital computers have already begun to turn on us?
Already the keenest critical eyes discern a new “banality of evil,” perpetrated by artificial intelligences and computational models that act in relatively un-dramatic but nonetheless ethically dubious ways across a range of social, political, and economical fields.
Films in this programme
Watch High Speed Trading in Action
CNN
(U.SA 2013, 2:50 Mins)
(U.SA 2013, 2:50 Mins)
A short news clip on computer controlled high-frequency trading focuses on the aesthetic changes to the stock-trading “floor” now...
Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (Episode 1: Love and Power)
Adam Curtis
(U.K 2011, 59:32 Mins)
(U.K 2011, 59:32 Mins)
The first episode in a three-part series produced by the BBC explores the proliferation of Ayn Ryand's pseudo-philosophy of...