[Link] “Upload”, a video-conference between a girl and her dead grandfather
I made a video last month, which when I mentioned in another thread someone said I should post as a top level discussion.
It’s just a ten minute zero-budget thing I wrote in which a girl has a video conference with her dead and backed-up-then-uploaded grandfather. Intended as the first in a series, but later episodes will only get produced if donations come. Later episodes talk more about AI’s failures and the political situation with unrest from the living demanding the dead shouldn’t have their jobs etc.
Anyway, watch it here if you like, I’d be happy to hear what y’all think :)
For the sake of avoiding selection bias: I got about 2 or 3 minutes in and turned it off. It’s probably not bad for a zero-budget project, but I still found it almost unwatchable. The most significant problem seemed to be the graphics for the grandfather, which—while perhaps a reasonable choice in terms of conveying information about the nature of the situation—are rather painful to parse. I suspect that captions would have helped, too, though I’ll admit I didn’t check to see if there were any.
I’ll reiterate that I really enjoyed it. At first I was off-put by the lo-fi effects and slightly awkward acting, and anticipated it being embarrassingly hokey, based on past experience with similar projects in the past. But after a minute, I realized the writing was actually quite competent and furthermore was very “watchable”, and the effects became… endearing, along with the slight awkwardness, which became more like genuineness.
What in the world is that floaty revolving head behind the grandfather?
That’s the vPre. It’s the virtual version of me that looks after my websites and things. An early attempt to “upload” myself as it goes. He lives at my homepage, http://dalliance.net/ and mostly just recites my twitter stream, with a search function. :)
The special effects for the grandpa are weird.
I find it hard to believe anyone but an extreme fundamentalist would believe that an upload doesn’t have a soul after talking to one. People would think that uploading is impossible because of the lack of a soul. Show them that uploading is possible, and they’ll believe the guy has a soul. Split the upload a few times and they’ll probably believe the soul goes back in time to fill all the bodies, or just fills them all at once, or something like that.
Of course, there will still probably be plenty against the idea of uploading. After all, what’s the point of heaven if you never die?
Also, why can’t he hug her? Can he not afford to rent an android body?
Anyway, it was a good video.
Thanks.
Didn’t there used to be plenty of people who said blacks people don’t have souls, for instance? The whole concept is so nebulous as to be practically meaningless.
One of the later scripts talks about him inventing that android-body type machine, or at least helping develop it.
But they’ve already been invented.
Well, ish. Certainly no interface between uploaded consciousness and the (still very crude) motor-control and perception systems of such androids.
There are robots that look like humans, but if you want an upload to experience it as a human body, you would want it to be structured like a human body on the inside too, e.g. by having the same set of muscles.
If you want them to experience it as a human body, just add software that makes it feel like they’re moving muscles that aren’t really there. Also, if you can find the right part of the brain to mess with, make them incapable of noticing something’s wrong with their body.
Besides, pneumatic motors are tiny. It’s not that hard to add more. Granted, they’d have to carry around a compressed air tank or air compressor if they want to walk around a lot, but that’s not going to be a problem if you just want to hug your grand-daughter.
(silly comment retracted)