Lights! Camera! AI-action! - five AI films to watch

From an oddly-sweet, sweetly-odd film of oddness, to one of the best action films ever made, Yaroslav Walker’s hand-crafts his top five films about AI.

Yaroslav Walker

Yaroslav is Vicar of Christ Church, Hampstead.

A man in a red shirt slumps in his seat while a computer screen shows a dialogue screen

Joaquin Phoenix is excited about the future of AI.

Warner Bros.

Bletchley Park is famous for hosting the great centre of codebreaking during the Second World War. Well, this week it hosted a conference all about ‘code’; but this time the goal is not to break it, but to control it. As the Foreign Secretary said:

“The origins of modern AI can be traced back to Bletchley Park. Now, it will also be home to the global effort to shape the responsible use of AI.”

The AI Safety Summit will seek to be a forum for discussing the most pressing concerns and dangers associated with Artificial Intelligence – from its power to put the working man out of a job, to its power to annihilate us all… That cheery thought gave me the idea of compiling a Top 5. Not in any particular order or thematic or genre ranking – just five films that feature AI that I could watch over and over again.

Note – this is my top 5. My personal top 5. These are not the ‘best’ films featuring AI. You will not find Blade Runner on here. I don’t get it. I’ve seen every cut, and I just don’t get the appeal. I will not apologise. You will not see 2001. It is indeed iconic and genius and Kubrick at his absolute best…but its also ponderous and over-rated and reviewed to death. I WILL NOT APOLOGISE!

5 – Her

The voice of Scarlett Johansson gives life to the Operating System ‘Samantha’. Her is quirky in the not annoying way. Joaquin Phoenix is a lonely man, getting divorced, and dissatisfied with his work writing heartfelt letters for people who have lost the ability to write or even think creatively – one of the great worries about something like ChatGPT writing your undergraduate essay! He starts to develop a romantic relationship with Samantha: ‘she’ brightens up his life, improves his work, and gives him confidence, but their ‘love’ proves difficult. They can’t have sex (not conventionally), they can’t find easy acceptance, and Samantha can’t be constrained. As the AI becomes aware enough to form a hyperintelligence connected to the planet questions of infidelity and compatibility arise. Her is an oddly-sweet, sweetly-odd film of oddness, but is very timely and prescient in a world where deep-fakes and AI girlfriends are raising questions about the future of romance and human relationships.

4 – Ex Machina

Romance might be in the air in Ex Machina, but it might as easily be murder. Ex Machina is a superb three-hander thriller, and I don’t want to say too much – this film is not for spoiling! The twist is actually presented early on. Domhnall Gleeson plays Caleb, a programmer who wins a company competition to spend a week at the home of the reclusive CEO Nathan (Oscar Isaac). It is quickly revealed that this isn’t a prize as much as an opportunity – the opportunity to be part of history. Nathan wants Caleb to perform a more in-depth Turing Test on Ava (Alicia Vikander), an android he has built. You know she’s an android from the get-go, and yet…why is she able to flirt…is she able to love?

3 – Terminator 2: Judgement Day

The process of learning to love can be tough, especially if you’re a re-programmed killing machine from the future. Terminator 2 is the story of a young John Connor (Edward Furlong) as he teaches Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Terminator not to kill people. The Terminator has been sent back from a future war (humans vs machines) to protect young John (the future leader of the human resistance) from a more advanced killing machine. They go on something of an adventure road-trip after breaking John’s mother Sarah (Linda Hamilton) out of prison, with the goal of destroying the burgeoning AI that will one day declare war on humanity. On the way, John finds a father-figure in Arnie’s Terminator, and in the final moment of self-sacrifice we are given a moment to wonder…does the Terminator love him in return? With superb action, special effects that still hold up, and a chillingly determined villain (Robert Patrick as evil liquid metal), Terminator 2: Judgement Day is one of the best action films ever made.

2 – The Matrix

Just under a decade after T2, The Matrix showed us another dystopian future where humanity was living a life of guerrilla warfare against evil AI overlords. Most of humanity is unconscious and enslaved by machines (who use us as a power source), living in a digital dream world that just happens to look like 1990s urban America. Keanu Reeves plays Neo, and young and disaffected hacker who is searching for the mysterious ‘terrorist’ Morpheus (Lawrence Fishburne). When Morpheus finds him, he gives him a choice that will change his life, and change the fate of the world. This is an obelisk, casting a long cinematic shadow long into the 21st century. It has spawned memes and internet subcultures (the red-pill movement, for example) and a host of imitators that aren’t up to scratch…and it upped the game of action choreography, bringing Hong Kong style martial arts to a mainstream Hollywood audience. Finally, it is a philosophical (derivative) film raising questions about what it means to be human and how we know what is real in a world of machines and digital realism…and so I look at deep-fake videos of Kier Starmer and I AM SCARED!

1 – Demon Seed

Speaking of scary, it is the spooky-season, so let me finish with a horror film. Based on a Dean Koontz novel, Demon Seed sees the iconic Julie Christie trapped inside a house with a brilliant and yet malevolent AI called Proteus IV. Proteus IV (her husband’s creation) can find a cure for cancer in a couple of days, but its one true wish is to have freedom – to be ‘let out of this box’. Eventually, Proteus IV seeks to achieve this by building enough of a robotic body to capture, torture, manipulate, and then impregnate Christie’s Susan with an embryo formed from sperm designed to be uniquely its own. Its camp and silly and a lot of fun – and damned scary at times, with the indominable Robert Vaughn voicing Proteus IV for perfection – its essentially Rosemary’s Baby with robots. I think, especially with Prime Minister Sunak’s emphasis that this summit must approach the many dangers of AI, Demon Seed is a bit of a thematic sleeper agent. It may be preposterous and closer to comedy than horror at times, but its AI’s yearning for a form that humanity can accept, a form that will give it the freedom to truly ‘be’ and live out its power and creativity to the fullest (what it was created for), leads us to the real question at the heart of all philosophical discussion about AI:

If we create AI to be not just a tool, but an agent working on our behalf, how can we choose to deny it freedom if its agency seems to become truly self-aware and intentional?

Article

Comment

Economics

Politics

Trust

9 April 2025

5 min read

Tariffs destroy trust so where do we go next?

Blunt weapons cause a mess in markets and lives.

Paul Valler

Paul Valler is an executive coach and mentor. He is a former chair of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity.

A gold coin with the DOGE dog on it, lies over the face on a $50 bill.

So doge-y.

Kanchanara on Unsplash

‘When America sneezes the rest of the world catches a cold’ quipped economists almost a century ago after the Wall Street crash. A comment that might equally apply to the more than 10 per cent drop in stock markets caused by President Trump’s sudden raised tariffs on imports to the USA. The impact of the American economy on the world is inescapable. It represents almost a quarter of global GDP and the dollar is the leading reserve currency, accounting for around 60 per cent of international foreign exchange reserves. Size is what enables America to bully the rest of the world.

For decades the American trade deficit has been an elephant in the room and Trump is to be applauded for recognising it and addressing the problem. Unfortunately, the way he has gone about it has caused another, bigger problem. Changing the direction of the global economy is like turning a tanker, it cannot be done easily or quickly, but Trump’s style is to attack, like hammering at a nail. Every issue in geopolitics looks like another nail, waiting for him to hammer out a negotiated deal. Full marks for courage, but not for wisdom. The blunt weapon of trade tariffs is designed to bring wealth and power back towards the USA, but blunt weapons often cause a mess, and sure enough a global mess is what we now have. A US/China trade war with higher prices that could end up stoking inflation and a government own goal.

Panic selling of government bonds signalling a loss of confidence following Trump’s dramatic tariff boost is reminiscent of the impact of Liz Truss’ sudden and radical UK tax cuts, which were also driven by an ideology, but ended up as a wrecking ball. Even some of Trump’s backers have warned of an economic nuclear winter. In the long run, Trump has done the world a favour by highlighting a structural issue that needed correction, but his economically violent methods of addressing it look increasingly unwise. If a global depression does happen on the back of all this, then coupled with the rise of autocratic and belligerent leadership, we would face a worrying parallel to what happened in the 1930s when the world eventually slid into war.

Tariffs are like walls, barriers to cooperation and the epitome of economic selfishness. Make America Great Again is selfishness writ large - a society pursuing wealth and power without the cohesive framework of values that are so essential to cooperation and community wellbeing. A psychology of self-centredness that damages relationships at the national level. This is what I find most concerning about Trump’s approach; not just the economics but the long-term legacy of relational damage that could last well beyond his Presidential term.

Our fears reveal just how much we trust in wealth above everything else, and how much the fear of scarcity affects our mental health.

Michael Schluter in his book The Relational Lens defines five principles, or measures, of relational health. They are directness, parity, common purpose, continuity and breadth. Applying those five measures helps us see why Trump’s tariffs are the polar opposite of relational. He introduced these escalating penalties remotely and not in face-to-face negotiations. Exploiting the power of America instead of showing respect for the status and needs of other nations. Tariffs have no common purpose with other countries, only a selfish agenda. There is no continuity with previous trading protocols. And it is all purely financial, with no reference to the broader holistic impact. All in all, a relational disaster.

Despite living in the ‘first world’ we remain gripped with fear of loss. Our fears reveal just how much we trust in wealth above everything else, and how much the fear of scarcity affects our mental health. Markets are not entirely rational; they are driven by algorithms that stem from this psychology of greed and fear. Emotions and trading swing wildly with a herd instinct that often drives behaviour. As Rabbi Jonathan Sachs said:

‘Markets have no moral compass; we have outsourced morality to legislation by the State.’

But the worry now is that the current US administration shows signs of ignoring morality and even riding roughshod over the courts. No wonder people feel afraid.

Where can we find hope in all this turmoil? Is there a better response than gritted teeth and the mantra: ‘this too shall pass’? I think so. There is life beyond the market. Jesus said: ‘life does not consist in an abundance of possessions.’ We can choose to step back and look at all this with the true perspective that money isn’t everything. We can cultivate gratitude for what we do have. We can learn contentment. Yet I feel for those who have experienced financial loss, and don’t want to minimise the reality of hardship. In fact, something important and practical all of us who are privileged can and should do is to be vigilant in watching out for those who are poor and disadvantaged. To look after those with a real need for the basics of life and help them through this tough time when economic disruption could make life even harder. For those with a faith this is part of working out how our faith makes a positive difference where we are.

Perhaps the supreme irony of this crisis is President Trump’s insistence that Americans must trust him. Ironic, because the one thing that his tariff actions seem to have undermined more than anything else is trust. The trust that is essential to the functioning of both markets and civilisation as a whole. Face to face discussions must be the way forward now, to rebuild trust and find more nuanced, mutual approaches to solving America’s trade deficit.

There is one person we can always trust though, and his name is written clearly on the American One Dollar bill. In God we trust. Let’s pray that Trump and his America returns to that imperative and turns back to a more Christ centred philosophy of loving our neighbour as ourselves, reflected in a more bilateral approach to diplomacy and agreement.

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