Swiss director Simon Jacomet, who just premiered his film “The Electric Child” in Locarno, is working on an adaptation of Ted Chiang’s novel “The Life Cycle of Programs.” His novel “Story of Your Life” was the inspiration for Denis Villeneuve’s film “Arrival.”
“It's very clever and complex,” Jacomet said of the 2010 novella. He's also considering a spinoff series, which would take place after the events of “The Electric Child,” but still within the same universe.
“The story might take place after a catastrophic AI event. With series, you have more time — and you can make it more complex. Some shows are more daring than movies.” [these days]”Confirm it.”
Meanwhile, Jacomet is sure to stir up heated debate with his new film, “The Electric Child.” Echoing many of the AI-related conversations taking place at the festival, it features a happy couple, Sonny and Akiko (Elliot Crosset-Hoff and Rila Fukushima), who have just welcomed their first child. Then their world falls apart—their little boy is seriously ill. Sonny, who is already working with a super-intelligent AI, turns to it for help.
“I started thinking about this movie a long time ago — even before ChatGPT came out. Then the whole thing blew up,” Jacomet admitted. diverse.
“It's amazing even to me, how fast the progress is.”
Despite his interest in the new technology and his willingness to enter an art competition at the Ai4 artificial intelligence conference in Las Vegas, he is still “very conflicted” about it, he says.
“I got into programming and I use these things all the time. I love them, especially when I can use them in a technical context, but yeah – I'm also a bit anxious and pessimistic. It's clear that AI is going to take a lot of jobs away and we're not quite ready for that change.”
In “The Electric Child,” the lines between man and his fast-learning creation (played by Sandra Goldberg Camp) become increasingly blurred.
“My film deals with this fear of AI in a big way. It exaggerates it, and it poses the most tragic scenarios. But the interesting question is: How do we put ourselves in a situation like this, as humans?”
“I used to play this video game for a very long time,” he added. “You’re mostly alone and then sometimes you meet another player. I thought it would be interesting to be able to meet the AI in this way. It’s all about human curiosity – we want to get to know ourselves in the machine and discover things about ourselves by interacting with an artificial brain.”
Electric Child was produced by Michela Bini, Aurelius Eisenreich and Jacquemet for 8horses and co-produced by Titus Krejenberg, Raymond van der Kaay, Judith Lichtnickert, Bianca Balbuena and Bradley Liu for unafilm, Revolver Amsterdam, Perron X, Epicmedia Productions, SRF/SRG SSR and CH Media. Sales are handled by Visit Films.
Jacomet said he likes the idea of science fiction that “doesn't rely so heavily on special effects,” but instead plays with metaphysical ideas.
“This movie is kind of realistic, but it gradually goes into the unrealistic side, and you can do that on a very low budget. There's 'Ex Machina' and there's 'Her'.” [in terms of references] “But I was also thinking about Stanislav Lem's books,” he noted.
Lem, the celebrated Polish writer who died in 2006, is still best known as the author of “Solaris,” adapted from the novel by Andrei Tarkovsky and then Steven Soderbergh, who made the film starring George Clooney in 2002.
Aside from Solaris, I read Golem XIV. [which introduced a ‘lecture’ given by a super computer] “‘Robot Fairy Tales’ is important to me because it explores whether machines have feelings,” Jacomet said.
One thing is for sure – his characters do, as they are overcome with grief after hearing the news of their newborn's illness.
“This story was at the heart of the movie from the beginning, even though a lot of people told me it was taboo. If it weren’t for it, the movie would have been very different. A lot of this technology is about our dream of immortality, and that somehow AI could give us immortality — we could live forever, in a simulation. But I’m not sure that’s that desirable.”
