Killer artificial intelligence returns in ‘Alien: Covenant’

LOS ANGELES — Modern movie culture would have you believe artificial intelligence is out to kill us all. “Prometheus” director Ridley Scott, who further explores the cunning side of artificial intelligence in his new “Alien: Covenant,” says, “If you’re going to use something that’s smarter than you are, that’s when it starts to get dangerous.” It’s been a running theme through Scott’s three films set in the “Alien” universe, dating back to the 1979 original in which Sigourney Weaver battles not only an alien killing machine but also Ash, an android who views his human crewmates as expendable. Musk, an early investor in the development of AI, told Vanity Fair earlier this year that he worries the technology could ultimately “produce something evil by accident,” such as “a fleet of artificial intelligence-enhanced robots capable of destroying mankind.” But astrophysicist, author and film fan Neil deGrasse Tyson said he believes there’s nothing to worry about. Tyson noted that human beings have been inventing machines to replace human labor since the days of the Industrial Revolution, and computers have succeeded in outsmarting people since before Watson beat Ken Jennings at “Jeopardy!” In movies, artificially intelligent beings might look human, but most real-life robots don’t, he said. “Because the human form is not very good at anything, so why have it look human?” An exception would be “sex robots,” he said, adding rhetorically, “Is this robot going to take over the world?” For Scott, the possibility of evil artificial intelligence comes back to the question of the creator: Who is doing the creating, and for what purpose?