Machine Minds & Digital Neurons

February 2018 Issue

Automation, Moore's Law, the rhetoric of the Singularity, and decades of anticipatory science fiction have prepared us for this technological present. Now, artificial intelligence permeates our lives: ever-present, always listening, evolving and developing day by day. Consumer robotics multiply, drones proliferate, self-driving cars become increasingly plausible, machine learning and neural networks move rapidly from theory to practice. The internet irrevocably changed entertainment, communication, and work, but we may soon be forced to rethink what it means to be human. And so on the brink of massive socio-technological shifts, the films in this issue survey the field: what is happening and how we think about what is happening, real and unreal, desperate and hopeful.