I have been a fan of bbc horizon documentaries in the past, however recently I have been very disappointed by the quality. There seems to be a lot of pseudo and non-science present as of late, also as seen in this documentary they felt they needed to spice things up a bit with controversies which felt forced.
It's a shame really, I was looking forward to a documentary about artificial intelligence and machine-human interface research. Despite a few good interviews which were only partly butchered by poor editing, it fails to deliver. There surely would have been more than enough meat in the subject to fill the 45 minutes. Instead we are treated to disconnected excerpts of Ted "unabomber" Kaczynski which seems to be the default, and poor choice of an point-to-guy when examining anti-industrialization and/or technology. Also an interviewee who just wasn't very fond of the idea of making smart machines seemed simply rather silly in a terminatoresque way. It's not that arguments couldn't possibly be made against AI research or research methods, they just weren't made here. Nor was enough of the actual research and goals shown and examined.
It's a shame really, I was looking forward to a documentary about artificial intelligence and machine-human interface research. Despite a few good interviews which were only partly butchered by poor editing, it fails to deliver. There surely would have been more than enough meat in the subject to fill the 45 minutes. Instead we are treated to disconnected excerpts of Ted "unabomber" Kaczynski which seems to be the default, and poor choice of an point-to-guy when examining anti-industrialization and/or technology. Also an interviewee who just wasn't very fond of the idea of making smart machines seemed simply rather silly in a terminatoresque way. It's not that arguments couldn't possibly be made against AI research or research methods, they just weren't made here. Nor was enough of the actual research and goals shown and examined.
