The Terminator – Movie

I’ve watched the movie, The Terminator, several times since I was a kid, and I never get tired of it. It’s packed with top notch action, catch phrases, suspense and thrills, that is sure to blow you away.

Sure, the plot kind of confuses you. Two cyborgs are sent back in time with two conflicting missions: one to kill and the other to save John Connor. John Connor is supposed to be the leader of the human resistance against the machines in the year 2020, after machines would have gained consciousness and rebelled against humans.

And that brings us to a very important aspect of the plot: how realistic is it? Can machines ever gain consciousness? Can robots one day rule the world? Sure, man is advancing technology at such a rapid pace that you start to ponder the possibility of such an event.

Today, I was sitting down at the lounge of the Takutu Hotel when The Terminator, Part 3, started. At that time, I was about to leave, but the movie glued me to the seat. I was bound to stay there for the next two hours looking at this action packed, sci-fi movie.

Naturally, the receptionist and I engaged in talks about the plot. “But that could never happen”, he ventured. “Machines gaining consciousness”.

“Don’t be so sure,” I told him. “Nothing is impossible, especially not something like this.”

Then I ventured to him the story of the telephone. “Two hundred years ago, if someone told you that you could whisper into a device and someone on the other side of the world would hear you, and respond, what would think? It’s impossible?”

Most likely. But it seems like with technology, nothing is impossible. Phones and computers are already becoming “smarter” than humans. Sometimes, you would be typing on your computer and it says “do you mean xxx” and you realize that the computer’s suggestion was right; and on many occasions, human eyes would not have been so sharp.

Today, there are robots that work assembly lines, paint walls, make furniture and program other machines. Mankind is pushing the limits of artificial technology, and the idea that machines would one day gain consciousness and turn against man is not as “fantasy-like” as many people may think.

Don’t get me wrong. I know how crazy that sounds, but at the rate technology is advancing, it seems like anything is possible. So what do you think? Do you think that artificial “intelligence” could one day, somehow, gain consciousness?