Review: Tron: Ares Reminds Us That Artificial Intelligence Is Not the Enemy

It's the humans who develop and use AI for malicious ends, not the tech itself, who should worry us.

Will a hyperadvanced AI be a danger to humanity? That's nothing compared to the threat posed by military contractors.

That's the implicit conclusion of Tron: Ares, the third installment in the series that began with 1982's Tron. This threequel inverts the previous films' formula: Rather than humans trying to enter a digital world, Ares tells of an AI (Jared Leto) from inside "the Grid" finding its way into meatspace. It's a sci-fi spin on a fairy tale formula quite familiar to Disney, which made all three of the Tron films. The AI wants to be a real boy.

Standing in Ares' way is the tech executive (Evan Peters) who built him and intends to sell him to the highest bidder as a supersoldier who could be easily resurrected infinite times. Having achieved self-awareness, Ares decides it would be more meaningful to live just once. The message is as unsubtle as the film's pulsating Nine Inch Nails soundtrack: It's the humans who develop and use AI for malicious ends, not the tech itself, who should worry us.

Comments

[Don't look at me! ( Is the war over yet?)]

It's the humans who develop and use AI guns for malicious ends, not the tech itself, who should worry us.

[mad.casual]

The sine que non threat of AI is that it escapes the control of it's creators/owners and begins acting of its own volition. I'm no Alec Baldwin, but my guns don't just go off on their own.

If the AI is killing people/humanity strictly on the orders of its creator or commanders it's not much of an AI. Seems almost dishonest, even ironic, to portray AIs as characters without any agency in a polemic about human evil.

[diver64]

People used to call retarded bad remake movies like this "straight to video".