They’re plagiarizing your homework! They’re ripping off your art! They’re probably you’re stealing your data right now! Are they the tech bros in training that sat behind you in undergrad? No, but good guess! They’re AIs. And for better or for worse, they’re here to stay. Scientists and sci-fi writers alike have been dreaming and warning of a future when synthetic intelligence has integrated into modern society, and that future is here! To celebrate (and commiserate) the rise of our robot overlords in training, here’s a list of the 10 best sci-fi movies about artificial intelligence – so when the end times come, you’ll be prepared.
Ghost In The Shell
Hailed as one of the greatest animated films ever made, Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost In The Shell is a seminal sci-fi anime that spawned an entire franchise – and a sea of imitators. Set in the cyberpunk metropolis of New Port City, the action follows Motoko Kusanagi, a public security agent who is also a full cyborg. Made entirely of machine parts, the only thing human that remains of Motoko is her “ghost” – the in-universe word for the soul. While hunting down a renegade hacker calling himself “The Puppet Master,” Motoko battles with explosive rounds and explosive philosophical questions alike. What is the nature of human consciousness? Can a digital soul without a body be considered human at all? When two consciousnesses merge, is the self annihilated or assimilated? While light on modern depictions of AI, the film instead focuses on the merging of the synthetic and the organic. The human the robot. The ghost and the machine.
Her
Do you ever feel like ChatGPT is a better listener than your friends and lovers? If that’s the case, you might be interested in a product called the OS – the romantic co-lead of Spike Jonze sci-fi slowburn opus Her. The plot follows Theodore Twombly, who, like you, is fed up with human relationships and is looking to dip a toe in the synthetic dating pool. After purchasing a copy of OS (and answering a few questions about his relationship to his mother) the AI within, like a romance robot genie, wakes up and names herself Samantha. And so begins a marriage of man and machine like you’ve never seen before. Woefully romantic, the film relies entirely on verbal conversation (and some verbal sexy stuff) to portray a deeply intimate love affair between a lonely man and a synthetic woman that is slowly developing a voice of her own.
Ex Machina
Alex Garland’s Ex Machina is the stuff tech bro wet dreams are made of – and maybe nightmares too. The story begins with programmer grunt Caleb Smith, who wins an office sweepstakes to spend a week with Blue Book CEO Nathan Bateman. After arriving at Bateman’s palatial home, Caleb is introduced to Ava – a woman Bateman keeps locked up in his basement. It’s not a hostage situation (yet) Ava is an AI – Turing tested, and almost Blue Book approved. Nathan wants Caleb to help him determine if Ava is truly conscious – but not in the way that he thinks. What starts as a simple android/human meet cute quickly devolves into a full blown conspiracy as Ava attempts to convince Caleb to help her escape. But is she doing it out of love for Caleb? Hatred for Nathan? Or maybe something even more deeply human and individualistic: the innate desire for freedom. It was good enough for William Wallace, must be good enough for Ava too.
Blank
An underrated artificial diamond in the rough, Natalie Kennedy’s Blank is the story of Claire Rivers, writer who draws a *title drop* blank whenever she sits down to work on her next project. She agrees to go on a writer’s retreat run by an AI, but this isn’t some some summer cabin with ChatGPT booted up on a laptop, this robot expects literary greatness, and due to a catastrophic malfunction, is ready to push Claire to the limit in order to achieve it. It’s essentially Stephen King’s Misery if instead of a Maine-coded writer held captive by Kathy Bates with a sledgehammer, it was the story of a young woman being tormented by an evil android with a slew of creative torture techniques. Maybe artistic greatness really does come from misery and pain? Claire’s gonna have lots of ideas after this ordeal is over.
Blade Runner
Adapted from Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep into the stuff of sci-fi cinema legend, Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner is the story of AI gone rogue. In a dystopian future, a mega-corporation has engineered synthetic people called “replicants,” originally created to supplement the workforce. After gaining self-awareness (as sci-fi AIs are wont to do) the replicants escape into society at large, and it’s up to “blade runners” like Rick Deckard to hunt them down and terminate them. Like Ex Machina, Blade Runner is a film about machines with an innate desire to be free – who are willing to kill for it. Trouble for the replicants is, Deckard is all willing to kill too.
2001: A Space Odyssey
Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is one of the most critically lauded sci-fi films of all time, and one of the most important films ever made. While the rest of us might have gotten a little lost while this heady film explored its heady themes, we were found again with the introduction of HAL 9000 – one of the scariest film antagonists of all time. The robotic poster child for the “evil malfunctioning machine” trope, HAL 9000 lies, manipulates and even kills for the good of the mission – not good for the spaceship crew it manages. The most chilling part of the film is the question of HAL self awareness. Is it truly an unthinking and unfeeling machine following programming? Or is HAL consciousness that, like us, has wants and dreams and fears to die? It’s this unanswered question that gives the film its power. Is Hal misunderstood? Or a master robot gaslighter? Maybe a bit of both.
Moon
Direct by Duncan Jones, Moon stars Sam Rockwell, along with Sam Rockwell, with a supporting cast of Sam Rockwells and a special guest appearance from Sam Rockwell himself. A lone maintenance worker on the moon, Samuel Bell is just about to finish his three year work contract and then he’s free to go home to his family. After crashing a lunar rover, he awakens and overhears a suspicious conversation between GERTY, the facility AI, and his corporate handlers. Sam later discovers the unconscious body of himself at the crash site, and the pair begin to wonder just how real their memories, their families, and their realities really are. It’s an emotionally charged film that subverts the “evil AI” trope – GERTY really is just trying to help, the only way it’s programmed how.
The Matrix
Directed by the Wachowskis, The Matrix isn’t a film – it’s a full blown cultural phenomenon. One of the most groundbreaking movies of all time, the plot follows “chosen one” Neo who discovers that he and everyone he knows are living in a simulation. The ultimate trans allegory, The Matrix is a film about awakenings – realizing that everything you thought you knew about yourself and society is wrong. There are a multitude of AI characters in the film and its later sequels, including the iconic Agent Smith – a renegade program with a personal vendetta against Neo. One of the top ten sci-fi films ever made, The Matrix is as relevant as ever.
WALL-E
An animated dystopian sci-fi romance, Andrew Stanton’s WALL-E is one of Pixar’s most challenging films to date. On an ecologically dead Earth, a lone trash collector robot named WALL-E works tireless to clean up a world destroyed by human greed and neglect. After a meetcute with EVE – robot designed to scan for signs of life – WALL-E short circuits with love. After hitching a ride with EVE back to a spaceship carrying the remnants of the human race, WALL-E discovers a world where mankind has regressed into unhealthy and technologically dependent adult-babies. WALL-E is a film where the robots are more human than humanity itself – by staying plugged in, mankind has disconnected from each other entirely. It’s only robots forming meaningful relationships these days, and robots that will repair humanity’s relationship with the world they left behind.
Metropolis
Featuring one of the oldest depictions of artificial intelligence in film, Fritz Lang’s Mertropolis is a German expressionist classic. Set in a retro-futuristic dystopia, the film follows Freder, the wealthy and indolent son of an oligarch, in his quest to liberate the city’s working class from subterranean squalor. Out of the goodness of his heart? No, in order to impress Maria, a woman he just met. While Maria has been championing the rights of the working class for years, her newfound support from Freder has made the situation for the upper class untenable. In order to sow seeds of destruction, Freder’s father commissions one of his scientists to build a duplicate Maria out of machine parts – to fool and foil the revolution from the inside. Part Bladerunner, part Romeo and Juliet, part Arcane, this sci-fi still holds up almost a century later.
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Sarah Fimm
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