Nolen Gertz

The Final Terror (1983) 📽️

Current mood:

"Cutbacks in higher education [in the Netherlands] are starting to have a greater impact."

The Call of Cthulhu (2005) 📽️

Current mood:

Disappointing that it won't be out in time for Halloween but still exciting that Dick Maas will once more make Dutch canals an unexpected slasher breeding ground...
🚣‍♀️🔪🥽🩸

I'm not an economist but seems worrying that the whole US economy is seven companies in a trenchcoat, passing the same $20 up and down

I think we all knew America's second civil war would be Furries vs Fascists...

Mute Witness (1995) 📽️

Current mood:

this is incredible

Stalker Already Using OpenAI's Sora 2 to Harass Victim A journalist claims that her stalker used Sora 2, the latest video app from OpenAI, to churn out videos of her.

“…that Sora is being used for stalking and harassment will likely not be an edge case, because deepfaking yourself and others into videos is one of its core selling points.”

Far from an edge case, it’s the primary use case.

I just saw someone use the abbreviation “AI;DR” and I’ll be laughing for a while.

#NihilismAndTechnology

I see pieces like this a lot, often w/ a spin of lamenting cultural degeneration, but reading is a LABOR issue, it’s declined because so many people are working overtime or two jobs & employers expect after hours work. France has Earth’s highest reading rate b/c long lunch breaks & labor protections

Sam Altman’s AI empire will devour as much power as New York City and San Diego combined. Experts say it’s ‘scary’ | Fortune Andrew Chien told Fortune he’s been a computer scientist for 40 years but we’re close to “some seminal moments for how we think about AI and its impact on society.”

delete chatgpt and stop using generative AI 🖤🤍

Post from Threads user rodneyowl: "Ireland has declared the Basic Income for Artists scheme permanent. This will be officially announced in tomorrow’s budget. Details to follow. Congratulations to all who fought for it and the present and future artists of all sorts in Ireland. That includes me 👌We’re just comin to the end of a 3 year pilot scheme. It’s been a roaring success. For every €1 paid out to the 2000 participants, the government got €1.46 back. Can’t argue with that. Other countries are already taking note."

Damn. This is amazing. £325 per week, paid monthly, for 3 years - and the result was a profit for the Irish economy:
www.citizensinformation.ie/en/employmen...

First slide of my lecture on Desk Set (1957) 📽️

Last slide of my talk seen from the Concordia Film Theatre balcony

Always fun to be invited to give a Philofilm talk...

🚨 Tonight! 🚨

Postman is well known for his book Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985) in which he argued that television reduces complex ideas to easily digestible visual content, diminishing important topics like politics to nothing more than simplistic entertainment.
3/

INTRODUCTION 2 TECHNOLOGICAL DYSTOPIAS AND THE MOVIES THAT LOVE THEM 2 WHEN MOVIES MAKE YOU AN OFFER YOU CAN’T REFUSE 6 NIGHT OF THE LIVING DIALECTIC 10 FROM THE FINAL GIRL TO THE FINAL HUMAN 14 CHAPTER 1 – “IT DOESN’T FEEL PITY, REMORSE, OR FEAR, AND IT ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT STOP…EVER, UNTIL YOU ARE DEAD!”: ROBOT MOVIES 17 1.1 THE RISE OF THE MACHINES 17 1.2 WHEN MACHINES BECAME MONSTERS 19 1.3 A ROBOT IS A BOY’S BEST FRIEND 23 1.4 MONSTERS FROM THE ID 25 1.5 WHEN ROBOTS BECAME A REALITY 30 1.6 ROBOT RIGHTS AND CIVIL RIGHTS 32 1.7 ROBOTS IN THE BEDROOM AND ROBOTS IN THE BOARDROOM 38 1.8 THE ROBOT REVOLUTION 43 1.9 ROOTING FOR ROBOTS 49 1.10 THE FUTURE OF ROBOT MOVIES 57 CHAPTER 2 – “IN TIME, YOU WILL COME TO REGARD ME NOT ONLY WITH RESPECT AND AWE, BUT WITH LOVE!”: ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE MOVIES 66 2.1 MIND OVER MATTER 66 2.2 THE INVISIBLE THREAT 72 2.3 WHEN AI TOOK A SPACE ODYSSEY 79 2.4 TRUSTING AI TO SAVE US FROM EACH OTHER 88 2.5 TRUSTING AI TO SAVE US FROM THE END OF THE WORLD 95 2.6 PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND AI 100 2.7 BOLDLY GOING WHERE NO AI HAS GONE BEFORE 106 2.8 THE IMITATION GAME 111 2.9 LOOKING FOR MEANING IN A MEANINGLESS WORLD 114 2.10 THE FUTURE OF AI MOVIES 126 CHAPTER 3 – “I CAN’T BE ALONE IN THINKING NOTHING REALLY EXISTS!”: VIRTUAL REALITY MOVIES 138 3.1 THE EMPATHY MACHINE 138 3.2 THE COUNTERFEIT WORLD 141 3.3 VIRTUALITY AND VIDEO GAMES 150 3.4 UNCANNY VIRTUALITY 155 3.6 WHEN THE VIRTUAL BECAME REAL 164 3.7 SEX, DRUGS, AND VR 176 3.8 DEATH TO THE DEMONIC CREATORS OF VR! 181 3.9 THERE IS NO SPOON, BUT IS THERE STEAK? 188 3.10 THE FUTURE OF VR MOVIES 198 CONCLUSION 211 THE POLITICAL UNCONSCIOUS 211 THE TECHNOLOGICAL UNCONSCIOUS 214 REFERENCES 218

Think I may have finished my technology movie book...

A little more than halfway through building Lego Haunted House

Lego Halloweening with my son...

Arendt warned that totalitarians don't lie about reality, they change reality to make their claims about reality come true. Trump said Portland was a warzone, and look at it now...

Crypto currencies are gaining in value thanks to the US govt shutdown. Sure hope Trump doesn't have any personal investment in crypto...

"According to one survey, 30% of international travellers are now using generative AI tools and dedicated travel AI sites such as Wonderplan and Layla to help organise their trips."
#NihilismAndTechnology

Chopping Mall (1986) Demon Seed (1977) Mindwarp (1991) Pulse (2001)

Updated my Letterboxd Fave 4 Films for Spooky Season...
letterboxd.com/ethicistforh...

this is wild: while Stephen Miller's guy was in Minnesota for his uncle's funeral, somebody was able to see his entire phone and take pictures of his Signal group chats talking about military deployments to Portland, and brought them to the Strib (gift link: www.startribune.com/trump-offici...)

AI-generated ‘participants’ can lead social science experiments astray, study finds Data produced by “silicon samples” depends on researchers’ exact choice of models, prompts, and settings

People are running stats on LLM-generated participants and think they’re being social scientists when in fact they’re technically just playing a very strange video game. This is like saying you’re doing math research because you’re playing sudoku.

www.science.org/content/arti...

Fabulous news everyone: Market analyst says the AI bubble is 17X bigger than the dotcom goldrush, and 4X larger than the subprime bubble that caused the 2008 crash Welcome to the future bub.

That this is from PC Gamer's site still feels exotic and weird

A Chinese Ghost Story (1987) 📽️

Current mood:

On the one hand, very excited to learn from my son that he and his classmates automatically reject any movie or tv show that uses AI in its marketing. On the other hand, a bit worried that my son thinks all marketing looks like it was made by AI and so he only wants to watch Youtube videos...

Michael Crichton thought it would take a vast corporate conspiracy to replace actresses with AI. What an optimist...
#NihilismAndTechnology