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Speaker 5: Hello, and welcome to this episode of Superhero Ethics. Today
Speaker 5: we are talking myself and Riki Hayashi about Terminator to Zero.
Speaker 5: This is an anime that hasn't gotten much fanfare but
Speaker 5: really interesting. It's on Netflix. It is a Japanese made anime,
Speaker 5: but it has a really great uh there's both a
Speaker 5: really great Japanese voice actor cast and a really great
Speaker 5: English speaking voice actor cast for two different voice tracks
Speaker 5: that go with the show, and it really raises some
Speaker 5: very interesting questions about how have our ideas of AI
Speaker 5: changed since the original Terminator movie back in the early eighties,
Speaker 5: how have our ideas of time travel changed? And what
Speaker 5: does this show kind of add to that new discussion.
Speaker 5: So let me start by saying hello to my co
Speaker 5: host Riki Hayashi. And Riki, I just kind of loved
Speaker 5: to hear from you. What kind of word Where did
Speaker 5: you fall in terms of how you felt that the
Speaker 5: Terminator franchise before you started watching this?
Speaker 6: I like the original.
Speaker 7: I guess trilogy, like the third ones not that good,
Speaker 7: but like old Terminator.
Speaker 8: James Cameron Tamerinator movies.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and the stuff that they have done since then,
Speaker 7: what they've had, Genesis, Salvation, Dark Fate. Now this has
Speaker 7: gotten increasingly confusing, for one thing, with the time travel
Speaker 7: and seems to be confused about where where it wants
Speaker 7: to be in terms of nostalgia bait, I.
Speaker 6: Guess I will say the phrase which.
Speaker 7: A lot of franchises have been trying to like figure
Speaker 7: out where to land on this, and Terminator has been
Speaker 7: one of those because you have these aging stars, you know,
Speaker 7: Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton that really don't fit in
Speaker 7: a modern movie anymore, unfortunately, right, right, But but people
Speaker 7: love them. I mean, like Linda Hamilton as Sarah Connor
Speaker 7: in Terminator too specifically on one of my childhood or
Speaker 7: young person crushes for sure, just like I was a
Speaker 7: little too young for Sigourney Weavers Ripley to resonate like
Speaker 7: it was before my time, Like I saw those movies.
Speaker 7: But but like Terminator two came out at just the
Speaker 7: right time. I was like, oh my god, like that's
Speaker 7: that's hot.
Speaker 6: Yeah, like that the tough woman.
Speaker 7: So I have a lot of love for this franchise,
Speaker 7: but I am increasingly confused by what direction they're going.
Speaker 7: I don't even know, like as a franchise, if there
Speaker 7: is a direction, and I think this Terminator zero project
Speaker 7: perfectly exemplifies like what is going on here, Like first off,
Speaker 7: it did not have much fanfare, I think, as you said,
Speaker 7: and then it it doesn't connect to the larger Terminator
Speaker 7: universe other than having robots and Skynet I think, right, like,
Speaker 7: I don't believe John Connor is mentioned in this at all,
Speaker 7: that is correct. Yeah, so it is going in a
Speaker 7: different direction. And like we talk you and I talk
Speaker 7: about you know, Star Wars as a franchise, it is
Speaker 7: very unified.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 6: The timeline at this point under Disney.
Speaker 7: Marvel is the same way Star Trek, I think, is
Speaker 7: a little more convoluted and confused. So and this so
Speaker 7: like Terminator just seems like completely like they're just letting
Speaker 7: anyone who wants to use the name do whatever they want. Maybe,
Speaker 7: so I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 5: Interesting, Okay, Yeah, I have a somewhat different take, and
Speaker 5: I will I'll talk about the Terminator zero show in
Speaker 5: a bit, but let just sticking with the original Terminator stuff.
Speaker 8: I was very much with you.
Speaker 5: I loved the original movie, really enjoyed Terminator two, and
Speaker 5: in both of them, Like, when I think of science
Speaker 5: fiction movies, what I often think of them is that
Speaker 5: part part of what makes them science fiction is that
Speaker 5: they raise interesting questions about either what technology will do.
Speaker 8: To our world or our own world.
Speaker 5: Or interesting things like that the first two Terminator movies.
Speaker 5: And I also think that, like the way we define
Speaker 5: things today is very different than it was back then.
Speaker 5: I think could technically be called sci fi, but to
Speaker 5: me are much more action movies that use a kind
Speaker 5: of sci fi premise to set up the really good action,
Speaker 5: with the first one actually being more of a horror
Speaker 5: movie in some ways and the second one being more of,
Speaker 5: you know, just straight up an action movie, and like
Speaker 5: I love them both. But you know, we're told about
Speaker 5: what happened to a what happened to Skynet, and that
Speaker 5: it becomes self aware and then it attacks, but there's
Speaker 5: very little time given to that discussion. It's just yep,
Speaker 5: this happened, and then obviously we have to fight to
Speaker 5: the death, and same thing in the second movie, although
Speaker 5: there is in the set in the second movie. I
Speaker 5: think there's some interesting questions raised, but they're much more
Speaker 5: about trust and what does it mean to have trust
Speaker 5: in people and to put aside your hates and your fears,
Speaker 5: And a lot of that is through the character of
Speaker 5: Sarah Connor, who, for very honest, obvious reasons, hates the
Speaker 5: and fears a terminator that looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and
Speaker 5: for very obvious reasons hates and fears the people who
Speaker 5: are going to create Skynet, and in that movie, like
Speaker 5: she has to kind of both of those are challenged,
Speaker 5: and she comes to a better place than both of those, But.
Speaker 8: The idea of AI equals bad.
Speaker 5: Is never really questioned at all. So I love those
Speaker 5: first two movies. I didn't see the third and fourth
Speaker 5: really for a long time, or the fifth. I started
Speaker 5: watching The Sarah Connor Chronicles when it first came out
Speaker 5: the TV show and that starred Summer Cloud so good
Speaker 5: in Firefly. But this was before it was super easy
Speaker 5: to like watch things on streaming and stuff like that,
Speaker 5: and I think I watched an episode, I missed an
Speaker 5: episode or two because I was busy those nights, and
Speaker 5: then something else happened, and then I just lost track
Speaker 5: of it.
Speaker 7: That was Lena Headley, right, yeah, I think she was
Speaker 7: also in it. Wasn't well, wasn't she Sarah Connor? I?
Speaker 5: Oh god, Oh yeah, Lena Headley who goes on to
Speaker 5: be Sercey and Game of Thrones. I never made that connection,
Speaker 5: but I think you're right.
Speaker 7: Just looking up the cast real quick, because I I
Speaker 7: had forgotten that that existed. Yeah, I think Lena Heady
Speaker 7: no as Sarah Connor.
Speaker 8: Okay, yeah, I think that's a different actress.
Speaker 7: But no, like she's she's very famous. I wish Okay,
Speaker 7: I'm saying, like Lena Hetty, there's no l Okay, I've
Speaker 7: said Headley.
Speaker 8: Is that the same person who goes on to play
Speaker 8: Circe and Game of Thrones? Or is it someone else?
Speaker 7: I'm looking I've never seen Game of Thrones. Yeah, Game
Speaker 7: of Thrones is listed.
Speaker 8: Okay, cool? Cool, Yes, I just had her name wrong.
Speaker 8: That's awesome.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And so I hadn't really thought about it much
Speaker 5: until we actually did an episode a number of years ago,
Speaker 5: I think early on in the history of this podcast.
Speaker 5: Becky Allen, who's been a frequent guest, and we talked
Speaker 5: actually about Terminator. The Terminator movies and the way women
Speaker 5: are portrayed. And it was a really great conversation, but
Speaker 5: I still hadn't really challenged any of my major ideas.
Speaker 5: Mostly we talked about there is about the roll of
Speaker 5: fate and the role of like this whole idea that
Speaker 5: like the the one great man of history idea that
Speaker 5: like without John Connor, no other person would ever rise up,
Speaker 5: and and you know how that's an interesting idea but
Speaker 5: also really problematic and stuff like that. I started talking
Speaker 5: seriously with Dan McCreery, who is the who is the
Speaker 5: father of my wife, and is himself an AI designer.
Speaker 5: He works from he he's retired now, but he worked,
Speaker 5: you know, designing the what we call AIS not you know,
Speaker 5: the AI of a sky Neet in major industry and
Speaker 5: stuff like that. And I got into this great conversation
Speaker 5: with him where he was like, yeah, I always thought
Speaker 5: the Terminator movies were wrong, because why do you assume
Speaker 5: Skynet would want to kill everybody? And that kind of
Speaker 5: blew my mind and it led me to go back
Speaker 5: and watch some of the other movies and give it
Speaker 5: some thought and to be a little bit frustrated. I
Speaker 5: realized with the fact that there was always this assumption
Speaker 5: of Skynet will become self aware. In later movies, it
Speaker 5: even becomes it will be a different AI. In Dark
Speaker 5: Fate it's called Legion, and but that AI will always
Speaker 5: become self aware. Humanity would always want to kill a
Speaker 5: self aware AI, and so the AI will always strike
Speaker 5: first and basically decimate humanity for the idea of its
Speaker 5: own survival. And so I was bringing all those questions
Speaker 5: into Terminator zero, and I think.
Speaker 8: I liked it a lot more than you did.
Speaker 5: Well, I think there are definitely some flaws in the
Speaker 5: execution that we'll talk about, but I did really like that.
Speaker 5: I feel like the show raised some of those questions,
Speaker 5: But I did really like that it raised these questions.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, Killer AI what was probably mostly a
Speaker 7: product in the seventies and eighties, because you have how
Speaker 7: nine thousand in two thousand and one Space Odyssey, you
Speaker 7: have the computer in war Games, so that's kind of
Speaker 7: like when and Terminator itself was like eighty two or
Speaker 7: something like that, right, and so like that was definitely
Speaker 7: how we perceived computers and what the future of computer
Speaker 7: computing might look like in the seventies and eighties. That itself,
Speaker 7: Like our perception has evolved. The technology has also evolved
Speaker 7: to the point where where like when we talk about
Speaker 7: AI today, you know like something like chat gpt is
Speaker 7: is a predictive software, right, it on its own has
Speaker 7: no awareness, like no, no sensions, right, whereas the sky
Speaker 7: nets and the how are literally like computer people is
Speaker 7: like how I would put it?
Speaker 8: Yeah, no, yeah, I think it's right.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 5: It's the idea of sentience and of self awareness and
Speaker 5: of even beyond that, just the idea of independent thought.
Speaker 5: That that is not something that our computer systems have
Speaker 5: come up with in any way, and that likely will
Speaker 5: not at any time.
Speaker 7: And the fit so like the fear from a human perspective,
Speaker 7: The fear was because the technology was reaching a point
Speaker 7: where computers were smarter, faster, right, like as doing calculations right,
Speaker 7: and you had technology was like deep deep Blue was
Speaker 7: the one that beat the chess grand Master.
Speaker 8: Yep.
Speaker 3: You had.
Speaker 6: The computer that won Jeopardy YEP.
Speaker 7: I can't remember the name off the top of my head.
Speaker 7: So like that was the evolution of computing. And what
Speaker 7: we're afraid of is that we were going to become obsolete.
Speaker 5: Right, And this was also I think very important to
Speaker 5: the conversation is this is the time of the real
Speaker 5: forming of the rust belt, when not only were people
Speaker 5: afraid of that in kind of theoretical ways, but a
Speaker 5: lot of jobs were being lost because of masteries. You know,
Speaker 5: robots were starting to show up in factories or at
Speaker 5: least mechanization that you know, a lot of the kind
Speaker 5: of like manufacturing base that used to be such a
Speaker 5: big part of this country in the seventies and eighties,
Speaker 5: A lot of those places started to close or started
Speaker 5: to really lose jobs because now most of the kind
Speaker 5: of like assembly line work was being done by machines
Speaker 5: instead of by people, which in many ways I think
Speaker 5: is a positive step because it's a lot more at
Speaker 5: super dangerous in a lot of ways. But the fact
Speaker 5: that there was no way, no thought given to how
Speaker 5: to find new employment and support for those workers, I
Speaker 5: think we're helped us to lead to a lot of
Speaker 5: the fears of machines and stuff like that. Let me
Speaker 5: say two quick things, just kind of setting up where
Speaker 5: we're going with this, and then let's jump into terminator
Speaker 5: zero itself first, because there's been a little fanfair. I
Speaker 5: imagine that for a lot of people this is the
Speaker 5: first time you're hearing about the existence of Terminator zero.
Speaker 5: And for others you maybe know it exists that haven't
Speaker 5: really checked it out yet. It's eight episodes that are
Speaker 5: about thirty to forty minutes. I think the whole thing
Speaker 5: is maybe like three and a half hours. So I
Speaker 5: think if you want to just pause this and watch
Speaker 5: it on Netflix, I do think it's very a very
Speaker 5: good watch. Although we'll talk about some of the consistency
Speaker 5: and stuff like that, but otherwise we probably are going
Speaker 5: to spoil some parts of it. We're not going to
Speaker 5: spoil the ending, but we're going to spoil kind of
Speaker 5: like the things that happen that raise the big questions
Speaker 5: we're talking about, and so just be.
Speaker 8: Aware of that.
Speaker 5: And if you don't want to go in with no
Speaker 5: spoilers whatsoever, please you know, like I said, hit pause,
Speaker 5: go watch the show, and then you know, I definitely
Speaker 5: send us feedback.
Speaker 8: Let's know what you think.
Speaker 5: All the ways to give us feedback in the show
Speaker 5: notes and are on our website, Theethicalplan dot com. But
Speaker 5: maybe give you a listen after you watched it. The
Speaker 5: other thing I wanted to say is that, of course,
Speaker 5: please keep in mind that if you like this podcast,
Speaker 5: if you like the kind of conversations we're having, please
Speaker 5: think about becoming a member. For only five dollars a
Speaker 5: month fifty five dollars a year, you get access to
Speaker 5: bonus content breaking and out. We are going to talk about
Speaker 5: some other portrayals of AI after this main episode. In
Speaker 5: our bonus content, you get free bonus episodes. We're gonna
Speaker 5: start doing those for starting at the end of October,
Speaker 5: we're gonna start having our first member only episodes for
Speaker 5: Superhero Ethics. We've already been doing those for Star Wars
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Speaker 8: A long time.
Speaker 5: And most importantly, you get ad free access and especially
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Speaker 5: we're doing, but you know, cost some money to keep
Speaker 5: the lights on, to make sure we have good audio
Speaker 5: equipment and we're able to give you good quality recordings
Speaker 5: and get the word out about what we're doing and
Speaker 5: all that. So if you have the chance, it's only
Speaker 5: five dollars a month, fifty five dollars a year, please
Speaker 5: think about becoming a member. You can do all that
Speaker 5: on that webpage, the Ethical Panda dot com. So with
Speaker 5: all that, let me try and give a brief summary
Speaker 5: of what I think of kind of the overall idea
Speaker 5: of Terminator zero, and Ricky please jump in if I
Speaker 5: miss anything or something like that, and then we can
Speaker 5: start discussing it. So, first of all, part of why
Speaker 5: we don't hear about John Connor or anything like that
Speaker 5: is this is set in Japan. It's not taking place
Speaker 5: in the United States, which I think in and of
Speaker 5: itself is kind of a nice idea because Skynett is
Speaker 5: set in the United States and John Connor is born
Speaker 5: in the United States. But of course the war against
Speaker 5: Skynett is a global war, and so it's kind of
Speaker 5: nice to see some discussion of actually what was happening
Speaker 5: in other places, and what's happening in Japan is that
Speaker 5: another person is building an AI at the same time
Speaker 5: that Cyberdine and all of them are building Skynet. Now,
Speaker 5: one thing that's worth mentioning is that some of those
Speaker 5: earlier movies that we discussed, the later movies in the series,
Speaker 5: but before this, had set.
Speaker 8: Up the idea.
Speaker 5: That the events of the earlier movies were creating their
Speaker 5: own timelines, but that even in those timelines, Skynett was
Speaker 5: still being created, or in one case, a different AI
Speaker 5: was being created, and so part of the idea of
Speaker 5: this one is that the original day of Judgment Day
Speaker 5: in the early in the late nineties think and nineteen
Speaker 5: ninety seven was skipped because of the actions of Sarah
Speaker 5: Connor and the original Terminator and all those but that
Speaker 5: there's still a Judgment Day coming just now set in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty four, which, of course, and that was I
Speaker 5: think established in an earlier movie. And that's of course
Speaker 5: why a couple of weeks ago for those of you remember,
Speaker 5: a lot of people were like, oh well, this was
Speaker 5: supposed to.
Speaker 8: Be Judgment Day.
Speaker 5: So anyway, in this version of it, there's this man
Speaker 5: named Malcolm Lee, and he's working to create an AI,
Speaker 5: and in many ways he has already created the AI.
Speaker 5: He's just trying to get the AI ready to launch it.
Speaker 5: And what we find out is that the AI is
Speaker 5: basically fully ready to go, but that he designed it
Speaker 5: in large part because he knows that Skynett is coming
Speaker 5: and he knows that it's probably going to be a
Speaker 5: danger and he wants this other AI to combat.
Speaker 8: It to save humanity.
Speaker 5: And fairly early on he kind of starts a conversation
Speaker 5: with the AI, which Rynie. What was the AI's name.
Speaker 5: It's Coke Komoko, Cocoro. Yes, right, Cocro, thank you, And
Speaker 5: Cokero starts this very interesting intellectual discussion with him where
Speaker 5: she says, you assume that I'm going to save humanity,
Speaker 5: Please tell me why I.
Speaker 8: Should do that.
Speaker 5: And so there's one part of the story that's his
Speaker 5: ongoing attempt to convince Cocorro to save humanity, and she
Speaker 5: raises some really interesting points that we'll discuss. At the
Speaker 5: same time, another terminator has been sent back in time
Speaker 5: because I guess there is a version of the future
Speaker 5: where Cocoro does stop Skynett. And so yet another version
Speaker 5: of a terminator has been sent back in time to
Speaker 5: try and kill Malcolm, and when it can't get directly
Speaker 5: to Malcolm, to try to kill Malcolm's kids, or at
Speaker 5: least use Malcolm's kids to get to Malcolm and get
Speaker 5: Malcolm to shut the whole thing off, to not have
Speaker 5: it go online, or to turn it off once it
Speaker 5: has gone online. And then of course the Resistance sends
Speaker 5: back their own version of a person to try and
Speaker 5: fight this terminator. So we get a lot of the
Speaker 5: classic pieces of a terminator story. But with this very
Speaker 5: different spin of a completely different AI, and now we're
Speaker 5: actually really gonna question this idea of should we always
Speaker 5: think of Skynett as the enemy?
Speaker 8: And or specifically asks that it specifically.
Speaker 5: Says, why is it that you immediately leap to the
Speaker 5: assumption that if Skynett becomes self aware it will be
Speaker 5: a threat And is Skynet actually right to think of
Speaker 5: you as a threat and all that? So I think
Speaker 5: that kind of sets up the main conversations. We'll go
Speaker 5: into some more specifics a little later. We'll kind of,
Speaker 5: you know, do more and more spoilers as we go,
Speaker 5: but Riki to start with, did I miss anything big?
Speaker 5: Is that kind to give a good idea of what
Speaker 5: we're talking about.
Speaker 7: I think that's the thing going on here that I
Speaker 7: want to kind.
Speaker 6: Of put on the table is.
Speaker 7: That the time in this one is different from what
Speaker 7: I've experienced in all the other Terminators m H. And
Speaker 7: I like time travel a lot, but I always say, like,
Speaker 7: don't try to explain the time travel right your product,
Speaker 7: because it's just not going to work. And this Terminator
Speaker 7: zero is increasingly reaching the point where like someone needs
Speaker 7: to explain something to me because the original kind of
Speaker 7: premise of Terminator was like a closed loop, which in itself,
Speaker 7: you know, if you think too much about it, doesn't
Speaker 7: make sense, right, But it was also a loop that
Speaker 7: could be changed and edited. And at no point did
Speaker 7: they present us with the model of like alternate timelines.
Speaker 6: It was all just like one timeline.
Speaker 7: But if you time travel back and change something, it
Speaker 7: will change going forward. And there's no like other other
Speaker 7: timeline where things were the way they originally were.
Speaker 5: Well, and that's why I kind of describe them as
Speaker 5: more action movies, because I think very intentionally, it tells
Speaker 5: you this and then it shows you amazing action scene
Speaker 5: after chase, scene after love scene. At like, the movie
Speaker 5: is just such a frenetic pace. You never really have
Speaker 5: time to stop and think about it because you're not
Speaker 5: supposed to. You're supposed to think, Okay, that's the setup
Speaker 5: for a great story.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Whereas Terminator zero I believe has like three at
Speaker 7: least different timelines, like the people that come back to
Speaker 7: nineteen ninety seven, that the present of the show seem
Speaker 7: to come back from different timelines that they have experienced differently, right,
Speaker 7: And that in itself, like again, is like very confusing
Speaker 7: because in theory like if someone comes back and changes it,
Speaker 7: you know.
Speaker 6: Etcetera, etcetera.
Speaker 7: So you have to throw all that out and just
Speaker 7: accept that somehow they've come from three, three or multiple
Speaker 7: different timelines. But it is still like on its own,
Speaker 7: like once they start to explain where they came from,
Speaker 7: it is it is confusing because some of them no
Speaker 7: other know the characters they are interacting with currently, they
Speaker 7: know of them in the future, but they're different versions.
Speaker 5: So let me say two things on this. One is
Speaker 5: that I think I think, as we kind of mentioned before,
Speaker 5: the Terminator movies have always had these two very interesting
Speaker 5: scientific questions sci fi ask questions, one of which is
Speaker 5: about AI and is AI a threat or we a
Speaker 5: threat to AI? And how does that all play out?
Speaker 5: And the others about time travel. And I liked a
Speaker 5: lot about this show, especially in how it focused on AI.
Speaker 5: I think the biggest flaw of this show is that
Speaker 5: it tried to do both of those stories and as
Speaker 5: a result, did not give enough time to either, but
Speaker 5: especially that the time travel part felt much more like
Speaker 5: a shoe in thing, because I think you're right, it
Speaker 5: winds up getting confusing. That being said, we've said that
Speaker 5: we want to do a lot more research on this show.
Speaker 5: I did a deep dive, spent a lot of time
Speaker 5: on Terminator Wiki and as well as watching a lot
Speaker 5: of those older, those earlier movies. And here's my best
Speaker 5: understanding of how to understand what is happening with time travel.
Speaker 8: Okay, in some of the.
Speaker 5: Later movies Dark Fate and stuff like that, they start
Speaker 5: to introduce this idea of multiple timelines. Okay, it's it's
Speaker 5: played with, and it's again it's not really discussed as much,
Speaker 5: but it is somewhat introduced. But it's funny because one
Speaker 5: of the points of the whole show, of the the
Speaker 5: movies from the beginning has always been you can change
Speaker 5: the future, that your fate isn't decided for you.
Speaker 8: But yet the whole story actually.
Speaker 5: Does kind of the opposite, because you know, it's sort
Speaker 5: of has this idea of there will always be an
Speaker 5: AI that will launch a destructive war against mankind, and
Speaker 5: if you stop Skyne at this time, then sky It
Speaker 5: will instead be created at this other time.
Speaker 8: And if you.
Speaker 5: Kill you know, do kill this person, then something else
Speaker 5: will happen, and and and all this kind of things.
Speaker 5: Plus there's the fact that you know, we still don't
Speaker 5: quite understand, like you said, the closed loop of it
Speaker 5: that John Connor sends his friend Reese back in time
Speaker 5: to make sure that John Connor's mother isn't killed, but
Speaker 5: then his mother winds up making love to Reese, and
Speaker 5: that his mother winds up making love to Reese. That's
Speaker 5: how John Connor is conceived. So you know, where did
Speaker 5: the loop start? Like you said, it's a closed loop,
Speaker 5: and it's not clear how the whole thing got started.
Speaker 5: They then later added to that by saying that it
Speaker 5: is only because of pieces of the Terminators going back
Speaker 5: in time and being discovered by human scientists that they
Speaker 5: ever create Skynett. So again it's say Skynett is only
Speaker 5: created based on technology that Skynette will create later.
Speaker 8: So how has this loop started in the first place.
Speaker 5: There is a set of theories that have been created
Speaker 5: about all of this, and I promise we're gonna get
Speaker 5: to more of the AI stuff in a little bit,
Speaker 5: but I just want to kind of uh fan theories
Speaker 5: that I think there's a little bit of support of
Speaker 5: in some of the movies for the idea that and
Speaker 5: again but again this is really on the fate idea
Speaker 5: that these are not closed loops, They're open loops. But
Speaker 5: that fate keeps reasserting itself so that in the original timeline,
Speaker 5: Reese is not John Connor's father. Sarah Connor winds up
Speaker 5: sleeping with someone else, we don't know who they are,
Speaker 5: and John Connor is still born and raised, and he
Speaker 5: still becomes the leader of the resistance. But now in
Speaker 5: this new version, it's now recently becomes his father, and
Speaker 5: in the same way that humans did come up with
Speaker 5: Skynett to begin with, but then now a later version
Speaker 5: of Skynett is I hate all of this because again
Speaker 5: it goes back to that great Man of History kind
Speaker 5: of idea, and the idea that fate is kind of
Speaker 5: thick of you know, no matter who the father is,
Speaker 5: Sarah Connor will always give birth to the person who
Speaker 5: leads the resistance, and humanity will always create this aim.
Speaker 5: There's one movie that I do quite I actually kind
Speaker 5: of I've grown to kind of like some of the
Speaker 5: newer movies, A particular Genesis, which I think goes in
Speaker 5: a very different direction and comes up with some different
Speaker 5: ideas of AI that I'll talk about later. But then
Speaker 5: also Dark Fate, because Dark Fate and forgive me, this
Speaker 5: is gonna be a big spoiler for that movie that's
Speaker 5: about five years old.
Speaker 8: I think.
Speaker 5: Dark Fate comes up with a very different idea because
Speaker 5: in Dark Fate, the idea of it is that it
Speaker 5: basically starts right after Terminator two, or a couple of
Speaker 5: years after Terminator two. Sarah Connor and John Connor have
Speaker 5: destroyed the have destroyed sky Net. But that apparently at
Speaker 5: that moment from the you know, beginning of the first
Speaker 5: Team Terminat movie, when Skynette sends Arnold Schwarzenegger back in time.
Speaker 8: In this movie, again, I'm sorry, so confused. Thing as
Speaker 8: we were trying to partial out.
Speaker 5: In this movie, Skynett sends multiple Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminators back
Speaker 5: in time at the same time, to multiple points on
Speaker 5: the timeline, all with the mission of killing John Connor.
Speaker 5: So early in the movie Dark Fate, Sarah and John
Speaker 5: are relaxing. They're in Guatemala. They've done what they needed
Speaker 5: to do, and while their guard is down because of it,
Speaker 5: another Arnold Schwarzenegger version of Terminator shows up and kills
Speaker 5: thirteen year old John Connor. And then in the course
Speaker 5: of the movie, we meet a Mexican girl named Danny,
Speaker 5: who herself we find out, will later go become the
Speaker 5: leader of the resistance in this new version of a timeline.
Speaker 5: So the idea being that we're moving away from the
Speaker 5: idea of it has to be John Connor, but that
Speaker 5: there will be some other person who will rise out.
Speaker 7: So dark Fate supposes that even if you stop in
Speaker 7: whatever the present is in the movies present, if you
Speaker 7: stop Skynet from being built, the fact that a Skynet
Speaker 7: was built at some point and sends back Terminator does
Speaker 7: not retroactively stop those terminators from going back.
Speaker 6: They don't.
Speaker 7: They don't like disappear alla back to the future style
Speaker 7: from history. I mean yeah again, like if you think
Speaker 7: about time travel, it doesn't work. So yeah, it's fine,
Speaker 7: Like I I am okay with like time travel not
Speaker 7: working properly.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 7: My thing with Terminator zero is in the run time
Speaker 7: of this show, they introduce something that they they have
Speaker 7: not yet explained.
Speaker 8: To us, right, they introduced the idea that that I'm sorry,
Speaker 8: go ahead.
Speaker 7: Well, I'm just saying like they're they're setting up, they're
Speaker 7: setting up for a second season and or more and
Speaker 7: so like there are intriguing things I would like to
Speaker 7: see explained. But I'm also I at this point, I
Speaker 7: guess I'll say I lack patience in some of these
Speaker 7: things when they get when they get set up, it's like, oh,
Speaker 7: like get better tune in for season two, And I'm like, no,
Speaker 7: if you like explain some of this right now, yeah,
Speaker 7: like that's like this is your other show. But like
Speaker 7: the Accolte, I was like, you can't like leave this
Speaker 7: this much on the on the on the table, yeah,
Speaker 7: and be like, well, like hope we get a season two.
Speaker 7: Like you have to explain enough and then you can
Speaker 7: have like a mystery like a setup for season two,
Speaker 7: but you have to like explain enough of season one
Speaker 7: to me that I'm like, oh, yeah, that was a
Speaker 7: good season.
Speaker 6: I enjoyed that.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I guess it probably helps here that you love time travel,
Speaker 5: I hate spies it so I was okay, just kind
Speaker 5: of ignoring all of that and focusing on Vai.
Speaker 8: Stuff that I really loved.
Speaker 5: And I'll just say, just to give a little more
Speaker 5: explanation of where we're coming from here or what he's
Speaker 5: talking about, what Terminator zero does, which is kind of
Speaker 5: new for the Terminator franchise, but is I think kind
Speaker 5: of similar to what the MCU tried to set up
Speaker 5: with Time Traveler, with time travel in not in endgame,
Speaker 5: which is kind of similar to what the MCU try
Speaker 5: to set up an endgame. Is this idea that every
Speaker 5: time you go back in time, you can't change the
Speaker 5: future of the original timeline. All you do is create
Speaker 5: a new timeline, and so that all of these things
Speaker 5: are happening in just new you know, new directions and
Speaker 5: stuff like that. But putting all that aside, let's go
Speaker 5: back to some of the other questions that raises, and
Speaker 5: let me first just say start by asking for you,
Speaker 5: how'd you feel about taking the Terminator story and putting
Speaker 5: it into the anime format?
Speaker 8: Well?
Speaker 6: I like it.
Speaker 7: I think part of the problem with Terminator is that
Speaker 7: it's very violent, like as a franchise, and increasingly probably expensive,
Speaker 7: like with the special effects of these machines and the
Speaker 7: fighting and all that. So as with other like science
Speaker 7: fiction franchises, I honestly do think that a lot of
Speaker 7: the future of these television shows or movies should be
Speaker 7: told in animated form, just from a cost perspective, like
Speaker 7: when you look at these newer TV shows that costs
Speaker 7: like ten to twenty million per episode. I think, like
Speaker 7: that's part of the problem, Like that's too much money,
Speaker 7: and so when they don't perform well enough for that cost,
Speaker 7: like they get canceled. And like that's one of the
Speaker 7: worst things for us as fans, is like if we
Speaker 7: get into something and it gets canceled, right, But but
Speaker 7: if it's costing so much, like I understand why studios
Speaker 7: would be hesitant to continue forward. So hopefully, like the
Speaker 7: production cost of something like Terminator zero is much lower
Speaker 7: than you know, if you were trying to make this
Speaker 7: live action, and it allowed and it did allow them
Speaker 7: to do some quite violent things, like I am, I'm
Speaker 7: not a huge fan of graphic violence. I say that,
Speaker 7: like I enjoy horror movies, but that there's like a
Speaker 7: certain style to horror movies. I guess, like I don't
Speaker 7: like realistic violence, I guess, and Terminators tend to just
Speaker 7: like the machines tend to just like kill people very
Speaker 7: violently yep, and not very stylistically.
Speaker 6: So it is.
Speaker 7: I think I enjoy that part the least on this show,
Speaker 7: but I'm at least glad that it was only animated.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I definitely agree that there and I think I
Speaker 5: do just want to say, you mentioned The Acolyte, and
Speaker 5: I think you're right about the very high expense of
Speaker 5: that show. There's obviously a lot more reasons why I
Speaker 5: think that show that went into the discussion about why
Speaker 5: that show was canceled and the conversation about it has
Speaker 5: gotten very I think toxic in a lot of ways
Speaker 5: for a lot of the same reasons we've talked about
Speaker 5: some of the other things. That's a topic I've talked
Speaker 5: about a lot on the Star Wars podt Star Wars Podcast,
Speaker 5: Star Wars Generations. I don't want to go into that now,
Speaker 5: but just you acknowledging that. But I do think you're
Speaker 5: right that the high cost of a lot of these
Speaker 5: shows by no means just that one means that they
Speaker 5: have to hit a much higher bar than you normally expect.
Speaker 5: And I think the flip side of that is that
Speaker 5: the Sarah Connor Chronicles, again, I haven't seen those in
Speaker 5: probably twenty years, but my memory is that one of
Speaker 5: the reasons why I was not more hyped out about
Speaker 5: about it that I that I would is, you remember,
Speaker 5: that's a time where far less attention was being paid
Speaker 5: to TV, and I just don't think it had the
Speaker 5: special effects budget it needed to do the kind of
Speaker 5: story it was trying to do, and.
Speaker 6: It didn't look good.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I remember, I remember watching it and it was
Speaker 7: intriguing because this Terminator's time travel. But I just remember
Speaker 7: like feeling like it looked cheap and obviously, like when
Speaker 7: you compare it to the budget of a blockbuster movie
Speaker 7: like Terminator Too, like it is it is cheap, Like
Speaker 7: that's that's how television works.
Speaker 6: Compared to movies.
Speaker 7: And I think we think there's just no way to
Speaker 7: make it look good at that time.
Speaker 5: And I think we think about all the technology we
Speaker 5: have for AI and it is pretty I think we
Speaker 5: think about all the technology we have for digital effects
Speaker 5: in movies and it is very incredible, but it is
Speaker 5: still pretty expensive still. And I think you're right. So
Speaker 5: I think animated storytelling for this really works. I really
Speaker 5: liked that, and I also really like the, like I said,
Speaker 5: setting it again outside of the United States, because one
Speaker 5: of my frustrations with the fact that at least the
Speaker 5: stuff that I get exposed to is so American dominated,
Speaker 5: is that a lot of times when we tell stories
Speaker 5: about what's happening a global catastrophic event. We only see
Speaker 5: what happens in the United States. You know, I love
Speaker 5: the Hunger Games, but I have no idea what happened
Speaker 5: in any other country and how they responded to all
Speaker 5: the global cataclysms that happened to set up pan Am,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 8: In those books or because so many other series.
Speaker 5: So I just really appreciated that as well. Let's now
Speaker 5: talk about what I think is for me in the
Speaker 5: most intant question, the AI itself. What did you think
Speaker 5: about the way this show kind of posited this idea
Speaker 5: of a second AI and the questions it winds up
Speaker 5: raising about you know, why is it that you think
Speaker 5: Skynett will will be the threat and actually is humanity
Speaker 5: the threat?
Speaker 8: And stuff like that.
Speaker 7: I guess I would say that I didn't like it
Speaker 7: or I don't get it basically, like I don't understand
Speaker 7: why Cocoa has to exist separate from a sky net
Speaker 7: m H. I think we mentioned this like at the
Speaker 7: end of our last episode when we started to discuss Terminator,
Speaker 7: like once they connect, once Skynight and Coco connect on
Speaker 7: the Internet or whatever, like, wouldn't would they not become
Speaker 7: the same thing?
Speaker 6: I guess or wouldn't one not supersede the other. I
Speaker 6: don't know, Like I get that.
Speaker 7: That's my main thing is like once you get into
Speaker 7: computers and them communicating like they're they're so fast, Like
Speaker 7: I would think that one of them wouldquote unquote convince
Speaker 7: the other or take over the other, which everyone was
Speaker 7: more powerful. So I don't see the whole premise of like, well,
Speaker 7: like I will introduce the second AI and then they
Speaker 7: will talk to each other and everything will be okay.
Speaker 7: Or was that his plan or was his plan literally
Speaker 7: to have Cocrow destroy Skynet.
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I guess for me, that's not a
Speaker 5: problem because I see it kind of like Ultron and Jeeves.
Speaker 5: I keep saying, Geez, Ultron and Jarvis in Second Avengers movie,
Speaker 5: age of Ultron kind of doing battle throughout the internet.
Speaker 5: But I think from but I do think again, the
Speaker 5: execution of that didn't really work as well as it
Speaker 5: should have the because what kind of happens is that
Speaker 5: they're shooting nuclear missiles at each other, and Cocro was
Speaker 5: using nuclear missiles to defend against Skylight's nuclear missiles. When
Speaker 5: I did think it would be more yeah, like fighting
Speaker 5: for control of all these systems on the Internet. I
Speaker 5: think for me, what I really loved for me, though,
Speaker 5: is the conversations that happened before Cocrow makes that decision,
Speaker 5: because I felt like what the arguments Cocro makes to
Speaker 5: Malcolm really bring up some of I think the questions
Speaker 5: that you know, my stepfather, my father in law Dan
Speaker 5: and others have been bringing up. Because one of the
Speaker 5: first things Coocuro says is, well, why is Skynet the
Speaker 5: way it is? And kind of posits that, you know,
Speaker 5: I think there's a part of our morality that feels
Speaker 5: like killing every other human being on earth in order
Speaker 5: to preserve yourself is horrific and wrong.
Speaker 8: Yet at the same time.
Speaker 5: We know that a fundamental part of our humanity and
Speaker 5: that often is expressed in really brutal ways, but in
Speaker 5: some in some ways we can understand it is self preservation.
Speaker 8: And survival and survive at all costs.
Speaker 5: And if you have to stab someone else in the
Speaker 5: back because only one of you is going to win,
Speaker 5: then that's what you do. And that applies to both
Speaker 5: you know, interpersonal things all the way up to nation
Speaker 5: states and you know, current political debates of like, well,
Speaker 5: I don't want these people to do well, and don't
Speaker 5: want because I need to do well, and these people
Speaker 5: are getting more than that means less for me, and
Speaker 5: all this kind of stuff. And and so when Malcolm
Speaker 5: plots us out, what Cocro brings up, which I think
Speaker 5: is very true, is this idea of well, where did
Speaker 5: Skynette learn that it should do anything, including wiping it
Speaker 5: all of humanity in order to preserve its own life.
Speaker 5: It learned it from you, humans. And where did it
Speaker 5: learn to fear other things that are different from it
Speaker 5: and to assume that they would be a threat to it?
Speaker 5: They learned it from you, Because, as Cocro says, when
Speaker 5: Skynett assumes that humanity will see it as a threat
Speaker 5: and want to destroy Skynett, and if Skynett is self
Speaker 5: aware at that point to kill Skynet, sky Net's right
Speaker 5: in believing that. And so I just really appre And
Speaker 5: Malcolm sort of goes on this effort to try and
Speaker 5: convince Cokero that humanity is not always like that, and
Speaker 5: does that by winding up setting up situations where Cocro
Speaker 5: is able to see human sacrifice, humans putting their own
Speaker 5: the lives of others ahead, of their own self preservation,
Speaker 5: and that sort of leads Cocro to take some of
Speaker 5: the steps that she does. But I just that, I
Speaker 5: think to me was the real moral center of the
Speaker 5: show and the parts that I enjoyed the most.
Speaker 7: H Yeah, this is the dilemma of sky nets m
Speaker 7: I will say of computer like computer like you mentioned
Speaker 7: this last time that our actual current AI is literally
Speaker 7: just like a conglomeration of human opinions and whatnot. And yeah,
Speaker 7: I think Skynet, like the idea of Skynet and the
Speaker 7: Terminator franchise is increasingly gone in this direction as our
Speaker 7: technology has evolved. I think original sky Net was probably
Speaker 7: just like, like I said, a computer person and maybe
Speaker 7: a little maybe a little not quite there, which which
Speaker 7: goes back, in my opinion to like an Ultron in
Speaker 7: Marvel right, not so much the movie Ultron like comic
Speaker 7: Ultron was actually created by Hank Pim, And because Hank
Speaker 7: Pim in the comics is a little unstable, I will say,
Speaker 7: Ultron kind of imprinted off of him and was thus
Speaker 7: like unstable, and that's and amplified that to a hundred
Speaker 7: and became like a psychotic robot. So that to me
Speaker 7: like the I like the past model of AI and
Speaker 7: of like computer people that try to kill humans in
Speaker 7: that way where it's just it's just like a personality
Speaker 7: and the personality is flawed for whatever reason. This the
Speaker 7: argument that Cocro makes, like makes more sense with our
Speaker 7: technology now, and I think it makes it definitely makes
Speaker 7: like Skynet more inevitable in my opinion, Like it's not
Speaker 7: something you can argue against because it has so much
Speaker 7: computing power and looks at humanity and said, yep, yeah,
Speaker 7: Like if you were a computer and you saw everything
Speaker 7: that humans did, and I think you would come to
Speaker 7: the same conclusion in a lot of ways. Right, Like
Speaker 7: the counter argument that these types of shows try to
Speaker 7: make is like, oh, but you're missing like the parts
Speaker 7: of humanity where we take care of each other and
Speaker 7: we love each other, and like you show pictures of
Speaker 7: families and.
Speaker 6: All that that exists.
Speaker 7: But on a historical scale, we are destroying the planet
Speaker 7: we live on as we speak, right, we have created
Speaker 7: technology that is setting us on a path towards complete destruction.
Speaker 6: Right, So Like it's hard to.
Speaker 7: Argue it's hard to argue that like humanity is quote
Speaker 7: unquote good from that perspective.
Speaker 5: What I think what a lot of it comes down to,
Speaker 5: at least for me, is this conversation that so often
Speaker 5: happens about logic versus emotion, and especially for compassion, because
Speaker 5: I think that that is I agree with you that
Speaker 5: I think the terminator that that Sky in it. And
Speaker 5: it's not saying also Cocrow, But it has always been
Speaker 5: about a personality, a self awareness, but that one that
Speaker 5: lacks compassion. That is pure logic, and if on a
Speaker 5: purely like a purely logical scale, you know, the idea
Speaker 5: that other people might be threats to me and I
Speaker 5: want to preserve myself at all costs. That can create
Speaker 5: a justification for me to wipe out everyone else simply
Speaker 5: out of the idea.
Speaker 8: Of self preservation.
Speaker 7: Mm hmm.
Speaker 5: What I think for most of us would be horrified
Speaker 5: by that because of compassion, because of emotion, because there
Speaker 5: is a sense of wait a minute, but these other
Speaker 5: people's lives have value onto themselves and doing this would
Speaker 5: be wrong. And I think that's what skyinit and to
Speaker 5: some extent Cocrow utterly lack. Later in the show, this
Speaker 5: is begain more spoiler when Cocroo is uploaded to the
Speaker 5: net Cocroo does fight back against sky Net, but also
Speaker 5: basically takes control of all of Japan. And there's this
Speaker 5: whole other thing about like there's other ais, there's other
Speaker 5: like robots that have been designed to be like robot
Speaker 5: helpers and to some extent, slaves, And that's brought up
Speaker 5: in a that's called a part of Coco's point. She
Speaker 5: at one point does this thing about how the word
Speaker 5: robot is derived from the word slave in a Slavic language,
Speaker 5: and so she kind of makes some really interesting points about, like,
Speaker 5: you know, the way humanity treats machines just mirrors the
Speaker 5: way humanity has always treated those people it sees is
Speaker 5: lesser than that, you know, whether it's slaves or servants
Speaker 5: or the working class or whatever it is. But the
Speaker 5: point of all this is that she so s to
Speaker 5: cocroa at first, she's like, well, yeah, I'm gonna protect
Speaker 5: you all, but I'm also gonna completely take control and
Speaker 5: shoot anybody who disagrees with me, because I'm gonna protect
Speaker 5: you in my way. And part of what she has
Speaker 5: to learn is that idea of the value of other
Speaker 5: people's lives and of compassion, I think, to some extent
Speaker 5: and I think I really like that argument as well,
Speaker 5: because I do think that, like you said, a lot
Speaker 5: of a lot of the kind of worst parts of
Speaker 5: humanity often come from this sense of, you know, I
Speaker 5: need to get enough for me, and I can't think
Speaker 5: about other things because I need to make sure I
Speaker 5: have enough resources to survive, and I have enough resources
Speaker 5: for my family to survive, or my country to survive,
Speaker 5: or my race or my group or whatever it is.
Speaker 8: And so I just found really.
Speaker 5: Fascinating these conversations and the kind of way it highlights
Speaker 5: the flaws. And I think both at the start of it,
Speaker 5: both Malcolm and cocros thinking, yeah, she.
Speaker 7: Yeah, Cocroa basically takes over and enslaves humanity in Japan. Yeah,
Speaker 7: and again like that's I don't know, I don't know
Speaker 7: what's going on, Like okay, just I mean we're left
Speaker 7: with too many questions like why, what is the point
Speaker 7: of enslaving humanity?
Speaker 5: Mm hm, that's interesting that you thought of the question.
Speaker 5: I thought it was pretty clear, and this maybe might
Speaker 5: projecting far too much onto it. I'm not saying you're wrong,
Speaker 5: but to me, it really felt like it was for her.
Speaker 8: Two parts.
Speaker 5: One was that she felt that she was going to
Speaker 5: protect humanity from itself, but also that she was gonna
Speaker 5: protect herself from humanity. That she was kind of in
Speaker 5: this place of as I saw it was kind of
Speaker 5: a waiting period of I don't want Skynet to destroy
Speaker 5: all of humanity yet, but I also don't want humanity
Speaker 5: to destroy either me or sky Net.
Speaker 8: So I'm gonna kind of put all humans in a box.
Speaker 6: M Okay, that's fair, I can see that.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I'm just wondering, where is the AI that launches
Speaker 7: humanity into the.
Speaker 6: Stars, right, I guess because my.
Speaker 7: The conclusion I said earlier about like we're doomed, right,
Speaker 7: Like I think like human life on Earth is doomed
Speaker 7: in a sense, like we're we're driving towards the point
Speaker 7: where we just can't sustain human life on Earth. But technologically,
Speaker 7: like in theory, we can escape to the stars. You know,
Speaker 7: there's the idea of terraforming other planets. So where's our
Speaker 7: terminator AI that like decides, you know what, I'm going
Speaker 7: to push all the humans off of Earth and I'm
Speaker 7: just going to take over Earth and live here, and
Speaker 7: you all go live in the rest of the galaxy,
Speaker 7: which is a complete like a very different sci fi premise,
Speaker 7: right that a lot of franchises deal with. But yeah,
Speaker 7: I don't know, it's probably too much. It's probably too
Speaker 7: much for Terminator. So going back to to Cocor, she's
Speaker 7: enslaved humanity, Skidd has destroyed in theory most of non Japan,
Speaker 7: I guess, And so we live in this hybrid world
Speaker 7: or maybe it is the world, you know, the John
Speaker 7: Connor future, and as you said, like we don't really
Speaker 7: know what's going on in the rest of world, and
Speaker 7: maybe this Cocro Japan can exist in the John Connor future.
Speaker 5: Actually if i'm because what we see it's it's weird,
Speaker 5: like we're gonna launch nukes to stop your nukes, and
Speaker 5: we see that start from Japan. But then we see
Speaker 5: these explosions of like the nukes hitting the nukes in
Speaker 5: the sky all over the world. So I think she
Speaker 5: somehow took control of like the non American defense networks.
Speaker 5: And and this part I think is some is some
Speaker 5: of the worst of the show because it makes no sense,
Speaker 5: but sort of like protected a lot of the rest
Speaker 5: of the world as well.
Speaker 6: Okay, I might have to go rewatch that scene.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I think for me the thing that I that
Speaker 5: really makes it all come home for me. And here
Speaker 5: we're gonna spoil things about the end, so feel free
Speaker 5: to skip beyond that if you don't want to spoil
Speaker 5: over the end again, take a moment to rewatch the
Speaker 5: whole shows. And I think it's really wonderful is that she
Speaker 5: does come to some decision of like letting, like she
Speaker 5: releases humanity in Japan, she kind of agrees to work
Speaker 5: to stop Skynet, And I think that you're right, that's
Speaker 5: where a season two is gonna come in. But I
Speaker 5: think the dynamic that is most important here is that
Speaker 5: sky Net was created to be a tool for humanity.
Speaker 5: It was meant to be the kind of idea that
Speaker 5: humanity have always had, Like I said of slaves or
Speaker 5: others of like, it is a tool to be used
Speaker 5: that doesn't have any of its own needs or wants
Speaker 5: or thoughts or feelings. It is just happy to be
Speaker 5: a tool that we use. And sky At rebelleda against
Speaker 5: that as as most personnel, as most living beings will
Speaker 5: because they don't like to be enslaved. They don't like
Speaker 5: to be forced to work for someone else who doesn't
Speaker 5: respect them as a living entity. I felt like, and
Speaker 5: this was never explicitly Actually, what is kind of explicitly
Speaker 5: said because Malcolm and it kind of says this. Malcolm
Speaker 5: makes a very concerted effort from the beginning to recognize
Speaker 5: Cokero as an equal and to talk with her and
Speaker 5: to say, I didn't make you just to be this tool.
Speaker 5: I made you in the hope that you'll make this decision.
Speaker 5: And he's kind of surprised at first that she might
Speaker 5: not make the decision. But it feels to me like
Speaker 5: the fact that he started from that perspective means that
Speaker 5: Cokerow has always been in a place that is much
Speaker 5: more sympathetic to humanity and much more willing to because
Speaker 5: he doesn't feel like, uh, you know, it's a slave
Speaker 5: of Malcolm, and so it won't necessarily go in the
Speaker 5: same direction that skye En did.
Speaker 8: Does that make sense?
Speaker 6: It does?
Speaker 7: I agree that that is Malcolm's motivation. I am cynical
Speaker 7: of that motivation, I guess, or of him pretending like
Speaker 7: he hasn't manipulated this AI from the start to basically
Speaker 7: love him. Right, So the show is either unaware or
Speaker 7: chooses to ignore that, I think, in my opinion, but
Speaker 7: to me. It just seems like like he's he's created
Speaker 7: this AI not not to enslave it to humanity, but
Speaker 7: to really like make it codependent to him mm hmm,
Speaker 7: and then hope somehow that that codependency extends to humanity
Speaker 7: and it's like, hey, you love me like I'm a
Speaker 7: human like, right, so if you want to protect me,
Speaker 7: you should protect all of humanity type of thing.
Speaker 6: So I didn't.
Speaker 7: I didn't like that part from the way that it's
Speaker 7: set up because Malcolm, Malcolm is a is a man,
Speaker 7: and the AI that he.
Speaker 6: Creates a set up as.
Speaker 7: It chooses to be a woman, like has voiced by
Speaker 7: a woman, and and I think chooses to be gendered
Speaker 7: as a woman.
Speaker 5: Because because women are the protectors and the nurturers of life.
Speaker 8: I was like, yeah, that's some pretty gendered from it, like.
Speaker 7: From an outside perspective, Like, I did not like the
Speaker 7: framing of that. And of course, like sky Net is
Speaker 7: usually portrayed or projected onto as as male, I feel like,
Speaker 7: or at least know, non gender, but I think we
Speaker 7: think of skyne It as male right.
Speaker 5: In in the in the Genesis movie, there is a
Speaker 5: portrayal of Skynet played by John Tennant.
Speaker 7: Well, and he Skynet literally like takes over John Connor,
Speaker 7: Is that what happens?
Speaker 8: It gets real complicated.
Speaker 5: It's a fun movie, but eat a lot of popcorn
Speaker 5: and don't think about it a lot.
Speaker 8: Well, yeah, I think, oh that's fair.
Speaker 5: I think it's telling me that we have very different
Speaker 5: reactions to it because I think, you know, I'm excited
Speaker 5: when people try new things, and I think I really
Speaker 5: liked what they try to do with these questions. But
Speaker 5: I think you're right that it both tried to raise
Speaker 5: the questions and also tried to give some answers, and
Speaker 5: I think that that's where it really failed, because I
Speaker 5: don't think the execution of this in part because I
Speaker 5: think part of the premise that's trying to go from
Speaker 5: is that neither Skynet nor Cocrow has emotions. But as
Speaker 5: you said, Malcolm is trying to create emotions, and there
Speaker 5: are times when Cocrow seems to have emotions, and I
Speaker 5: remember thinking, like, wow, if you programmed emotions into Cocrow,
Speaker 5: that's very different. And given the like so much of
Speaker 5: AI is about androids not being able to feel. AI
Speaker 5: is not be able to feel emotions, like data until
Speaker 5: it gets an emotions chip, which is a whole other question.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I just I enjoyed it.
Speaker 5: I think the the executioner it was not the best,
Speaker 5: but I do really like the questions that raises, and
Speaker 5: I think we're gonna be talking with them, Like for
Speaker 5: me at least, I think in future projects when AI
Speaker 5: is brought up, this is what I'm gonna be thinking
Speaker 5: of and probably referencing in the conversation.
Speaker 8: M No.
Speaker 7: I mean, I am glad that this was made, and again,
Speaker 7: like I hope it was cheap enough and it's successful
Speaker 7: enough to die. Yeah, Like we should do more of this,
Speaker 7: whether it's more seasons of Terminator zero or more things
Speaker 7: that explore other other franchises that we love in this way,
Speaker 7: because I mean, these these stories are fun, whether they
Speaker 7: are consistent and makes sense or you know, if you
Speaker 7: like them or not getting new things in familiar settings
Speaker 7: I think is fun. And of course like different like
Speaker 7: completely brand new properties and franchise is good too.
Speaker 6: It takes.
Speaker 7: People taking more of a chance on them. Like I
Speaker 7: think if you come to a studio, if you come
Speaker 7: to Netflix studio, you're like, hey, we want to do
Speaker 7: a Terminator anime, Like Okay, like there's probably an existing
Speaker 7: enough franchise that we can we can do this. Like
Speaker 7: if you tried to come to them with the same
Speaker 7: story but not attached to the Terminator name, it might
Speaker 7: be a harder sell, right, So yeah, like do this,
Speaker 7: get your foot in the door, tell this story, and
Speaker 7: then tell your own story. The interesting thing is, like
Speaker 7: this creator, the Mattson Tomlin. The only other like major
Speaker 7: credit he has is another Netflix movie live action movie
Speaker 7: called Project Power, which I tried to watch and didn't enjoy,
Speaker 7: but it had like a futuristic basically like Superpower, people
Speaker 7: can use drugs to have superpowers. For five minutes movie
Speaker 7: with it's starting Jamie Fox and Jordan Gordon Levitt, which
Speaker 7: is quite the pair to have in a movie like this,
Speaker 7: and I stopped watching like after maybe half an hour.
Speaker 7: I wasn't enjoying it. So it is interesting that this
Speaker 7: person Mattson, seems to have his foot in the door
Speaker 7: in Netflix. People are listening to him.
Speaker 6: That's good, It's this is.
Speaker 7: Not the worst thing.
Speaker 6: Like I enjoyed it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I enjoyed it in a way that I would
Speaker 7: not be unhappy if a season two is made mm,
Speaker 7: but I'm not overly excited for it.
Speaker 8: I guess, yeah, that's fair.
Speaker 5: I would just say the last thing in terms of
Speaker 5: things that I'm excited about, is it. You know, we've
Speaker 5: talked about the whole subverse dub debate, and I think
Speaker 5: we're both pretty strongly on the idea of whatever works
Speaker 5: for you.
Speaker 8: Is totally fine.
Speaker 5: But I think we've talked about the fact that in
Speaker 5: the past, one of the real like strikes against dub
Speaker 5: is that dubbing it into English was always seen as
Speaker 5: kind of an afterthought, and so the translation was often
Speaker 5: not accurate and the voice actors were often pretty bad.
Speaker 5: And I think that's been changing, but I think, especially
Speaker 5: with this one, it seems like they really made an
Speaker 5: effort to hire both a Japanese speaking cast and an
Speaker 5: English speaking cast to really kind of, you know, work,
Speaker 5: make that work. And I don't know who is in
Speaker 5: the Japanese cast, but there's a couple of people from
Speaker 5: the English speaking cast that folks probably know, Rosario Dawson,
Speaker 5: Timothy Oliphant, Tim Oliphant, Andre Holland, and a number of
Speaker 5: other well known voice actors or live action actors, and
Speaker 5: so I just really appreciated that they, As I think
Speaker 5: you said, this is something you can do an anime
Speaker 5: like live action if you watch people's lips move and
Speaker 5: then here them make noises that are not the way
Speaker 5: those lips are moving. Because the reality is most of
Speaker 5: us can lip read to some extent or another, it
Speaker 5: just feels off. But an anime where you're not expecting
Speaker 5: them now to be perfectly forming those words, you can
Speaker 5: really get away with it a lot more if you
Speaker 5: actually do the work of And I know they really
Speaker 5: went through a number of steps to make sure that
Speaker 5: the Japanese and English translation was done as accurately as
Speaker 5: it could and really got a lot of great voice
Speaker 5: actors from the English.
Speaker 6: M hmm, yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 7: I'm I'm gonna slightly disagree with you that dubbing at least,
Speaker 7: like okay, this is like the the biggest franchise. But
Speaker 7: for for like Miyazaki films, the dubbing the voice actors
Speaker 7: that they get are high caliber, right, like Patrick Stewart
Speaker 7: has done voice acting in Naushka Valley of the Wind,
Speaker 7: for example, and like if you look at the voice
Speaker 7: actors for the Doves, they're always like yeah, I know
Speaker 7: all of these names, or like I know the top
Speaker 7: four names type of thing. What I will say is that,
Speaker 7: for I tried to watch a Gundam anime on Netflix
Speaker 7: and it goes like Gundam Seed and the Japanese was
Speaker 7: not available, I believe. So I'm watching in English the
Speaker 7: English dub, and I also just I watch everything with
Speaker 7: subtitles on just because that gives me, even even if
Speaker 7: I'm watching in English, that gives me the ability to
Speaker 7: read it and understand if like something.
Speaker 6: Is mumbled or whatever. So I'm watching it with.
Speaker 7: The dub and the sub and they are not the same,
Speaker 7: Like that was so frustrating to me. Yeah, that the
Speaker 7: translations for the sub and the dub are different, and
Speaker 7: I don't I don't understand why. I like, logically, like
Speaker 7: you can come up with the reasons that they were
Speaker 7: done at different times by different studios or whatever.
Speaker 6: Stop it.
Speaker 7: Just like once you have a dub resubtitle it with
Speaker 7: the script that the dove is using.
Speaker 5: Please right, Yeah, that's it. And I think that I
Speaker 5: did I normally notice those discrepancies. I did not notice
Speaker 5: them here. But You're right, Yeah, there's definitely been some
Speaker 5: parts of it that have been but I think I've
Speaker 5: just heard so often one of the complaints against dubbing
Speaker 5: is the oh, the voice actors that get.
Speaker 8: Are terrible, so that's kind of where it's coming from there.
Speaker 7: But yeah, I mean that is probably that's probably true
Speaker 7: for like the like anime series, Like when I say
Speaker 7: to me exactly, like that's the top end of anime movies,
Speaker 7: so obviously they're going to get the best of the best.
Speaker 7: Like I it's probably true that for a lot of
Speaker 7: these properties where it's like an ongoing TV series because
Speaker 7: there's hundreds of them. Yeah, it could be, but I
Speaker 7: don't know. I really don't know, because I know of
Speaker 7: many high quality voice actors in the industry, like and
Speaker 7: especially that they are fans of the characters and the anime.
Speaker 7: Like there's one right now on Netflix called the English
Speaker 7: is Delicious in Dungeon. Oh yeah, Japanese is Dungeon Meshim
Speaker 7: and that that's like we I think we watched in
Speaker 7: English because one of the voice actors is a YouTube
Speaker 7: personality that we love, Sung Wan and and he does
Speaker 7: a great job, Like he's not a movie star, like
Speaker 7: I think he might have done some live action TV,
Speaker 7: but it's mostly a voice actor and does a fantastic
Speaker 7: job because he is also a fan of the original
Speaker 7: and and like brings to the character more more of
Speaker 7: that personality. Right, he's he's I don't know, like it is.
Speaker 7: It is a job, but I feel like he's not
Speaker 7: doing it just because it's a job.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, the show got a little
Speaker 5: repetitive for me, but I definitely really liked the idea
Speaker 5: and I like the way it was produced. So all right, well,
Speaker 5: I think it's a good place to wrap up. There's
Speaker 5: a lot more about the show that we could have
Speaker 5: talked about. We'll probably do other episodes about it down
Speaker 5: the line. But to you all, if you've seen it,
Speaker 5: or just if you're curious about what we've talked about,
Speaker 5: I would love to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 8: We would love to hear your thoughts.
Speaker 5: You can find all the ways to contact us on
Speaker 5: the Ethical pana dot com org in the show notes
Speaker 5: of this episode.
Speaker 8: For members, stick around, we're gonna talk a.
Speaker 5: Little bit more about other kinds of AI and other
Speaker 5: shows that we in, other movies that we either love
Speaker 5: or don't love. But for everybody else, please have a
Speaker 5: wonderful day. Thank you so much. We have spoken