Sunspring – by Oscar Sharp
A happy medium between technophobia and Skynet: A short film written by algorithm
2016 | 5 - 10 | Comedy | Sci-Fi | Technology | USA
Science Fiction suggests that man’s attempts to create Artificial Intelligence will probably end badly. Real life proves that we don’t really care. A short film written by an A.I. algorithm seems a happy medium between technophobia and Skynet, and Sunspring is the enjoyably strange result. Ars Technica Videos has premiered the 9-minutes film, which finds Thomas Middleditch (Silicon Valley), Elisabeth Gray and Humphrey Ker braving their way through robotic dialogue.
Their lines are all grammatically correct but occasionally nonsensical, with Ker saying he has to “go to the skull” and Middleditch proclaiming that he’s “not a bright light.” The script was created by uploading hundreds of sci-fi screenplays into an LSTM recurrent neural network, as you do, and seeing what it returned — including the surprisingly emotional monologue from Gray that ends the short. A wealth of information on Sunspring in general and “Benjamin” (as the A.I. itself is named) in particular is available on Ars.
BAFTA-nominated filmmaker and Screen International Star of Tomorrow Oscar Sharp directed the film for the Sci-Fi London Film Festival 48hr Film Challenge and did an admirable job by making reasonable in the final product stage directions like “He is standing in the stars and sitting on the floor”. Well done.
