#1983 soviet nuclear false alarm incident

[ammg-old2]

It’s been a year since the Russians invaded Ukraine and launched the biggest conventional war in Europe since the Nazis. One of the things that I think we’ve all worried about in that time is the underlying problem of nuclear weapons.

This is a nuclear-armed power at war with hundreds of thousands of people in the middle of Europe. This is the nightmare that American foreign policy has dreaded since the beginning of the nuclear age.

And I think people have kind of put it out of their mind, how potentially dangerous this conflict is, which is understandable, but also, I think, takes us away from thinking about something that is really the most important foreign problem in the world today.

During the Cold War, we would’ve thought about that every day, but these days, people just don’t think about it, and I think they should.

[sigridstumb]

Stanislav Petrov Day

Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov (Russian: Станисла́в Евгра́фович Петро́в; 7 September 1939 – 19 May 2017) was a lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces who played a key role in the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident. On 26 September 1983, three weeks after the Soviet military had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when the system reported that a missile had been launched from the United States, followed by up to five more. Petrov judged the reports to be a false alarm. His subsequent decision to disobey orders, against Soviet military protocol,is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack on the United States and its NATO allies that could have resulted in a large-scale nuclear war which could have wiped out half of the population of the countries involved. An investigation later confirmed that the Soviet satellite warning system had indeed malfunctioned. Because of his decision not to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike amid this incident, Petrov is often credited as having "saved the world".

From Wikipedia

[i-have-41-protons]

Hey

Hey so

Wtnv ep 67 - [Best Of?] talks about the world ending in 1983, and then… simply not ending. As in, the history was rewritten. There’s a swooshing sound and the broadcast switches from grim end-of-the-world theme to a cheerful, normal-adjacent reality… what happened in 1983?

This.

The world could’ve fucking ended and it was all prevented by one man’s hesitation, what the fuck

[freshva]

I think it is absolute goddamn horseshit that whenever I actively try to make something using my knowledge of storycraft and characterization, it often results in people not being invested in the thing that I make, or I often get hung up about the details of it. I begin to wonder if, perhaps, this is going to resonate with people, or make them think I'm doing a good job at what I'm doing, or chase that sweet, sweet drug known as validation.

Then I tell the story of how when I was 18 years old, I was the Storyteller of a game of Vampire the Masquerade over an old IRC chat from a play-by-post roleplaying site based entirely on the (bullshit) events of the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident. Like the entire impetus of the story was to get to the plotpoint of "vampire hunters try to purge the world in nuclear fire to make God happy and your coterie has to stop them and let history get rewritten" and one of my friends says that the entire series of events I had happen to get to that point sounds like something they'd genuinely want to play and I am made to realize that passion, even if it's dumb bullshit, has far more impact than simple technical skill with a thing.

I will one day internalize this lesson.

[khalko]

@moonybyte If you're thinking of Stanislav Petrov, then he is definitely someone who should be recognised by a day like this.

On September 26, 1983, in a secure bunker just outside Moscow, he observed a trace for a single ballistic missile from the Soviet Union's early warning system, Oko, followed closely by traces for four other missiles.

This was a period when tensions were extraordinarily high. The USSR had overseen buildups of capability in Warsaw Pact countries that led to the NATO Double-Track Decision to offer a choice between a) a mutual limitation of medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles, or b) an increased deployment by the US of medium-range ballistic missiles in Western Europe (you can probably guess which option ended up happening). The US in 1983 had also been really ramping up psychological warfare to goad the USSR, including tactics like sending bomber squadrons flying directly at them to only turn back at the last minute. Only a few weeks before, the USSR had shot down a Korean passenger flight that had strayed into Soviet airspace following a navigational error.

Even in the stress of the warnings going off on screens around him, Lieutenant Colonel Petrov, with a phone in one hand and an intercom in the other, deemed that it was a false alarm since the US wouldn't fire a handful of missiles if it were a first strike. There were known issues with the early-warning system, but there was no way to immediately corroborate the warnings with any other information, so he had to go with his instinct.

In the following years, he left the military to join the institute that had developed the early warning system, before retiring to look after his wife following her cancer diagnosis, with hardly anyone knowing that he'd averted nuclear war. He died in 2017 having been interviewed by a number of documentaries, but never officially recognised by the government of the USSR or Russia.

The traces, by the way, were early-warning satellites detecting sunlight reflecting off the top of clouds.

Sources:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/inatl/longterm/coldwar/shatter021099b.htm

the fact that we made it through the Cold War is nothing short of a miracle. I wish we talked about Mutual Assured Destruction more in schools

[rosszulorzott]

thinking of Sting releasing Russians in 1985 when he couldn't have known has his dream had already been proven true in the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident

people like Sting and Stanislav Petrov are our heroes who show that we are always allied directly with the people whatever wars their/our leaders cook up

[freelanceexorcist]

TIL how close I and all I held dear came to being vaporized during the Cold War because the town I lived in (still live in) was a prime target due to it being the home of Westinghouse's global headquarters at the time and NGL, I'm retroactively shitting peach pits over it. I'm referring to the Soviet nuclear false alarm incident of 1983 and I hope the most beautiful part of the Universe was set aside for Stanislav Petrov when he went home to it.

[nooralsibai]

Scientists Say We're Closer to Nuclear Armageddon Than Any Other Point in History 

Story by Noor Al-Sibai

Image credit: Mark Stevenson/UIG via Getty / Futurism Original published by Futurism on January 24, 2023. 

Black Pilled

The scientist-activists who run the Doomsday Clock have once again ticked it forward, bringing humanity's estimated chances of its own nuclear annihilation closer than ever.

A statement published by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the group behind the Doomsday Clock, cited Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the potential for a "hot war" between NATO and Russia as its reasoning for moving the clock a mere 90 seconds to midnight.

Founded in 1945 by Albert Einstein and the scientists who would have been his colleagues had the US granted him security clearance to work on the atomic bomb-building Manhattan Project, the BAS has every year since 1947 warned of the preceding annum's biggest risks to humanity — and this year, those risks are all about Russia.

"Russia’s thinly veiled threats to use nuclear weapons remind the world that escalation of the conflict — by accident, intention, or miscalculation — is a terrible risk," the statement reads. "The possibility that the conflict could spin out of anyone’s control remains high."

Hot War

While not mentioned in the statement, the country formerly known as the Soviet Union has some pretty jarring past precedents to take into consideration: the 1983 "false alarm" incident in which USSR radar picked up and subsequently alerted officials about phony readings from the West that were initially interpreted as warhead-carrying spy planes coming out of the US.

The protocol, which wasn't followed, would have been to strike back. If Stanislav Petrov, the Soviet Air Defense officer in charge of the early-warning station located that detected the misinterpreted signals, hadn't trusted his gut when it told him they were false alarms, nuclear war would almost certainly have broken out.

Back in the present, the concerned scientists note that beyond just the heating up of the new cold war, Russia's Ukrainian aggression has also "undermine[d] global efforts to combat climate change," and its fake news about Ukraine developing bioweapons may indicate that it's doing exactly that.

While "there is no clear pathway for forging a just peace that discourages future aggression under the shadow of nuclear weapons," the BAS urged open engagement with peace talks between NATO and Russia — not just for the sake of heading off war, but for the sake of helping the planet avoid further catastrophe, too.

More on nukes: New Study Shows Where You Should Hide To Survive A Nuclear Attack

[womprat99]

The Thing About Today – September 26

The Thing About Today – September 26

September 26, 2020 Day 270 of 366

  September 26th is the 270th day of the year. It is Dominion Day in New Zealand. It commemorates the granting of Dominion status – a constitutional term of art used to signify a semi-independent Commonwealth realm – but the holiday goes generally unobserved in the country.

  In the United States, today is “celebrated” as National Compliance Officer Day, Nationa…

[joriswegner]

„For the Prevention of Nuclear Annihilation“ is a fictional Soviet medal never awarded to Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov, whose prudence during a nuclear false alarm incident in 1983 probably prevented a third world war. As a lieutenant colonel in the Soviet Air Defence Forces, he rightly considered it a computer error when an early warning satellite signaled the alleged launch of American intercontinental missiles.
 Petrov was neither awarded nor penalized for not initializing a retaliation strike.

[henk-heijmans]

Stanislav Petrov (1939 – 2017 / Russian) was a lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces who became known as "the man who single-handedly saved the world from nuclear war" for his role in the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident - by AP/Pavel Golovkin, Russian

[theamazingsallyhogan]

Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov was a lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces who became known as "the man who single-handedly saved the world from nuclear war" for his role in the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident. The incident was unknown to the public until it was revealed shortly before the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

On 26 September 1983, during the Cold War, the satellite-based early-warning system of the Soviet Union reported the launch of multiple intercontinental ballistic missiles from the United States. At the time, tensions with the U.S. were on edge, and high officials of the Soviet Union, including General Secretary Yuri Andropov, were thought to be highly suspicious of a U.S. attack.

Petrov checked ground-based radars which had not detected a launch, noted that the warning system had detected only 1-5 missiles instead of the hundreds that would have been expected in the event of a first strike, and chose to mark the system alert as a false alarm. This decision is seen as having prevented a retaliatory nuclear attack, which would have probably resulted in immediate escalation of the Cold War stalemate to a full-scale nuclear war and the deaths of hundreds of millions of people. Investigation of the satellite warning system later confirmed that the system had indeed malfunctioned.

While it is highly probable that if Petrov had reported this incident to his superiors they would have come to the same conclusion, it was a point in time when many people feared that the Cold War might become hot. Andropov, the new Soviet leader, was considered weak by the US president Ronald Reagan, and the Western countries were deploying new missile installation in Europe to counter existing missiles in the Eastern Bloc. This fear of nuclear war meant that at this time the peace movement in most western countries reached one of its highest levels.

(source)

Happy Petrov Day, everyone. To celebrate, try to follow his example and not end the world.

[mindthemuse]

On July 16, 1945, humanity entered its atomic age. Several months later two rudimentary bombs ended a conflict; the horror left humanity debating its necessity. It was not horrific enough to stop making them.

On October 27th, 1962, humanity was on the cusp of a nuclear war. The Cuban Missile Crisis forced the world to hold its breath as the United States and the Soviet Union held civilization at the edge. Though President John F. Kennedy and Premier Nikita Khrushchev were polar opposites in manner; they pulled back from the brink with resolutions that benefited both nations and established a line of communication to prevent future incidents.

Humanity was saved by diplomacy and cooler heads.

On September 26th, 1983, an early warning system of the Soviet Union reported a launch of ballistic missiles from the United States. Officer Stanislav Yevgrafovich Petrov was on duty that night and would have been expected to trigger a retaliatory nuclear attack at the United States according to Soviet protocol. Against protocol and training, Petrov used logic and instinct to judge the incident as a false alarm due to the size of the ‘attack’ and the newness of the system. He prevented a possible nuclear conflict caused by humor error.  

Humanity was saved by luck, and could have as easily been damned without ever knowing the truth.

Jennet Shepard remembers these incidents when she thinks about the Krogan. She remembers how luck essentially saved humanity from themselves. Whatever triggered the Krogan Nuclear war should not be seen as moral judgement of a race's character. She can't speak for other species, but she can speak for her own; the only difference between Krogans and Humans is luck and the cost of survival.

[voiceof]

“Technologies that can be used to enhance and distort what is real are evolving faster than our ability to understand and control or mitigate it.” -- Apparently.

“It doesn’t have to be perfect — just good enough to make the enemy think something happened that it provokes a knee-jerk and reckless response of retaliation.” -- This is the most dangerous consequence of the fakery. However. It would have to be knee-jerk indeed. While this article claims that the fakery tech is always ahead of the detection tech, knowledge of what could be possible at a base level could be enough to think twice about retaliation.

Take, for example, the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident, in which Petrov did not believe two separate nuclear attack alarms and thus did not call a counterstrike. His knowledge of the potential number of missiles to be involved in a strike led him to let it go.

[zoltanberrigomo]

Statistical Significance

Item #: SCP-3285

Object Class: Keter

Special Containment Procedures:  Foundation agents have been placed in positions of power within the governments of Israel, Iran, North Korea, Japan, India, and Pakistan. At the discretion of the O5 council, a sequence of events culminating in a nuclear exchange between Israel/Iran, North Korea/Japan, or India/Pakistan can be put into motion at approximately a week's notice. Description: SCP-3285 is the collective designation given to patterns of events which bring the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation before de-escalation. The archetypal events grouped under this designation are:

SCP-3285-001: On Sep 26, 1983, Soviet early warnings satellites recorded five Minutemen intercontinental ballistic missiles launched from an American military base. The event occurred in the aftermath of Ronald Reagan's "evil empire" speech. Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, shift supervisor at the Soviet command center, chose to report to his superiors that the incoming data was erroneous. The available evidence did not support this unequivocal judgement and Lt. Col. Petrov later described his choice as a "gut decision." Although ultimately correct, Lt. Col. Petrov was reprimanded, ostensibly for improperly documenting the event in the logs, and relieved of duty.  It is notable that Lt. Col. Petrov was the on-duty staff officer as a result of covering for a colleague who was ill.

SCP-3285-002:  In Oct. 1963, in the midst of the Cuban missile crisis, the captain of a Soviet submarine stationed off the coast of Cuba mistook depth charges  for an assault and gave the order to launch a nuclear torpedo at an American ship.  Regulations required unanimity among the top three officers; while the first officer concurred with the captain, the second officer, Commander Vasili Arkhipov, refused to agree to the launch.  

SCP-3285-003: On November 9, 1973, a computer error at NORAD resulted in a faulty notification of a Soviet nuclear attack. Initial estimates placed the number of incoming Soviet missiles at approximately 250, which was almost immediately revised to over 2,200. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski was advised the decision to retaliate must be made within minutes. However, just as this deadline was passing additional information became available which contradicted the initial reports.

Additional events considered part of SCP-3285 are:

The entirety of the Cuban missile crisis. 

The assassination of John F. Kennedy (which lead to a nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union in the majority of war games simulated by the Foundation). 

The  Norwegian rocket incident of 1995 (when Russian radars recorded an unexpected missile launch, consistent with an attack from a nuclear-armed submarine, projected to hit Moscow in under  than 5 minutes). 

The Thule false alarm of 1960 (when NORAD reported a 99.9% likelihood of a Soviet nuclear strike landing within minutes).

Additional █ classified instances believed to be part of SCP-3285 are listed in document SCP-3285-LJKW.

While the positive outcome associated with each of these events can be explained by reference to the laws of chance, the chance of humanity surviving all the events comprising SCP-3285 is exceedingly small. Precise assignment of probabilities is problematic, but the key observation is that probabilities of independent events multiply. As a result, attempts to assign probabilities to positive outcomes of events in SCP-3285 typically lead to extremely low estimates for the probability of all of them occurring together.

Additional evidence for the anomalous origin of the phenomenon lies in the apparent coincidences or unusual events that prevented many of the events comprising SCP-3285 from escalating into full-blown nuclear war.  Lt. Col. Petrov was on-duty covering for a sick colleague; a different staff officer might have reported to the Kremlin that a nuclear attack was underway. The Thule false alarm occurred during Soviet Premier Khruschev's widely publicized visit to the United States, leading NORAD operators to consider a Soviet attack at the time unlikely. Testimony was not extracted from Lee Harvey Oswald due to his murder by Jack Ruby, a Dallas nightclub owner without explicit Soviet connections.

The most plausible explanation derives from the anthropic principle. A nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union would have escalated to a "nuclear winter" and the likely extinction of humanity. In all the universes where these events happened, humanity and the Foundation do not exist. Thus any human being alive at the end of the cold war will inhabit a universe where a nuclear exchange between the United States and Soviet Union was averted.

Stronger versions of the anthropic principle propose to make predictions based on what a "typical living observer" is likely to experience. This framework appears to match SCP-3285:  given that the cold war has a propensity to repeatedly escalate into nuclear confrontation, the typical living observer will inhabit a universe which comes to brink of nuclear war before ultimately retreating [1]. 

An implication is that humanity is unlikely to survive  confrontations between nuclear powers, as  the anthropic principle cannot ensure humanity's safety in the future. As nuclear weapons grow progressively easier to construct due to technological progress, the danger from SCP-3285 is projected to grow exponentially. In particular, it appears highly unlikely that humanity will survive a future in which small states and private/subnational actors are capable of building substantial nuclear arsenals.

Possibilities for containment: On 5/6/2007, the Historical Dynamics Division proposed a possible means of containment. Project  Controlled Burn is premised on the observation that excesses of violence often drive periods of peace in human history. For example, broad revulsion at the atrocities of Nazi Germany is considered to be responsible for the relative peacefulness of the post-WW-II period in Europe.

It is therefore proposed that a limited nuclear exchange, comprising between 20-40 atomic explosions, would result in a widespread abhorrence of nuclear weapons with a strong preventative effect. The probability that an exchange of that size would lead to the extinction of humanity is believed to be exceedingly small, although a large number of civilian casualties are to be expected.

The Historical Dynamics division has argued that a controlled nuclear war between North Korea and Japan is the most attractive possibility for containment of SCP-3285. Since nuclear weapons were used in World War II on Japanese soil, it is conjectured that the destruction of several Japanese cities would evoke a particularly strong wave of worldwide sympathy. It is therefore recommended that, if the Foundation chooses to provoke a nuclear exchange, either Hiroshima or Nagasaki (or both) be included within the list of targets to emphasize historical resonance.

The Ethics Committee approved Project Controlled Burn on 2/8/2013. On 1/7/2015, the O5 council voted 10-3 to forego implementation, with the proviso that the vote be revisited every five years. On 9/20/2017, following increased tensions between US and North Korea with threats of nuclear attack on both sides, the O5 council met to discuss the matter again. The possibility that an uncontrolled nuclear exchange in which one side emerged as the clear victor might in fact accelerate nuclear proliferation was discussed. By a vote of 8-5, the previous decision was affirmed. The next vote is scheduled for 1/7/2020.

[1]  There are a number of mathematical ways to formalize this statement. The simplest is to model relations between cold war powers as a one-dimensional random walk which has a tendency to move towards an absorptive state corresponding to nuclear war. Conditional on lack of absorption, Eq. (3.4) of E.A. Van Doorn, ``Quasi-stationary distributions and convergence to quasi-stationarity of birth-death processes,'' Annals of Applied Probability, pp. 683-700, 1991 provides a concentration result for such a random walk around the absorptive state. 

[teenagestudentrobot-blog]

The Representation of artificial intelligence in film.

Art imitates life, even in the most fantastical of stories the core themes that reflect the struggles of our world. This is especially true in the science fiction genre, where current technologies are extended to imagine the world of the future. Artificial intelligences, wholly digital characters, can be seen as the embodiment of technology. Through the use of semiology I intend to explore the link between how artificial intelligence is presented in films and anxieties or excitement about the technological trends of the time. In other words, I will make the argument that film makers, consciously or not, use artificial intelligences as a signifier to represent technology as a whole. The paper will begin with an explanation of the various methodologies used within and follow by analyzing the films in chronological order. The five films being, Metropolis from 1927, 2001 a space odyssey from 1968, Terminator from 1984, Wall-e from 2008, and Her from 2013 through the use of semiotics. These films will provide a range of genre and time periods, from arguably the first movie to feature an ai, Metropolis, to much more recent films like Her. I will also analyze texts from the time to understand how most people viewed the future of technology at the time.  

However to begin with an understanding of the methodologies must be established. Semiology describes how implicit meaning is conveyed to an audience throughout the use of signs. The main context described in the book visual methodologies refers to how this applies to  advertising however it can also be used to explore the use of symbolism in films which is the use in the following paper. Signs as semiology explains them are made of two main parts. The signifier, the object or element of an image that conveys meaning, and the signified, the idea, emotion or concept that is being expressed. There is also the referent, the physical object represented in a given image, however that is not important to the following paper. The main focus of semiology is identifying signs in an image and the how the signs as a whole create meaning within the image.

Many have cited Metropolis as the first science fiction film, taking place in a dystopian city where the rich live in luxury, unaware of the working class that dwell underneath the titular metropolis, following upper class Freder. This leads to a discontentment, bordering on revolt, among the working class that the father of Freder, Fredersen, attempts to quell by creating a robot that resembles Maria, A woman sympathetic to and assisting the working class and Freder’s love interest. This backfires when the robotic Maria instead advocates for full scale rebellion, causing the perceived destruction of the worker city and is burned at the stake for her role. The socialist undertones of the film are difficult to miss, with the clearly defined upper and lower class. 

Figure 1. The iconic Maria Dance scene

The artificial Maria in this film is a deceiver and, in one of the most famous scenes of the film, she is seen seducing the men of the city in mass in the role of an erotic dancer, seen in figure 1. 

Figure 2. The artificial Maria

While she is able to assume a human form the artificial Maria is also seen in the form of a robot, as seen in figure 2. The design of this robot is distinctly feminine and notably lacks any articulation of the face, preventing the robot from expressing any emotion. This reflects how many saw and continue to see technology as something unfeeling and serves to reflect sense of unknowability that the future of technology holds. Additionally the deceptive nature of the ai may relate to the rise of automation and both fears and optimism over its potential. As something created by or for the upper class, either to increase profits or to gain more direct control over the lower class, it could be seen as a bringer of hope to the lower classes, allowing them to escape their lives of hard labour but potentially leaving many unemployed, with their livelihoods destroyed in its wake, a fear that came to pass in the great depression. The place of Metropolis in the genre of science fiction is notable as it was filmed not in America, but in Germany. This heightened the economic stresses and fears in comparison to those of the united states, as the pressure of paying for the damages of the second world war caused economic strife in Germany.

2001 a space odyssey centres around two men, named David Bowman and Frank Poole on a mission to Saturn, aided by the artificial intelligence Hal. Hal gains self awareness and begins acting erratically due to a contradiction of programming. Eventually this leads to Hal becoming violent and attacking the human passengers of the spaceship. The 2001 a space odyssey film came out at the height of the space race which can be seen in its setting, a spaceship that is the result of a joint effort by the ussr and the united states. 

Figure 3. Match cut between bone and spaceship

The film’s main concern is with the rapid increase of technology, the fear that humanity will be controlled by the technology that they create. This can be seen in figure 3, what some consider to be the most famous cut in cinema, a match cut between a bone used as a tool by early hominids and the elongated  spaceship where the next two acts of he film takes place. This visually implies a progression of technology. Additionally the monolith, which may be alien technology, is a sign for humanity’s lack of  knowledge about how the universe truly works. Hal meanwhile, with his near omnipresence in the ship, represents a concern that, due to the advanced pace of technological development, artificial intelligence will become smarter than humans, an event known as the singularity. At the time people were less knowledgable about computers, with many describing them as “Digital brains” and they were viewed as mystical beings that we were beginning to trust. This lack of knowledge led to an increase in fear, worries that artificial made creatures would have more control over the world than humans and further fears that, due to errors or because they have developed a consciousness of their own the goals of these beings would not align with those of humanity. We can see this distance from humanity in Hal’s design as, instead of giving the character any face or body to shim he exists almost solely in the form of audio, speaking to other characters through the ship. 

Figure 4. Hal 9000 as seen in 2001 a space odyssey

Hal’s main design, as seen in figure 4, takes the form of a single red light that doubles as a camera. The red light holds strong connotations of “stop” or “danger,” and when the danger of the film is amplified, with Hal threatening the humans on the ship, the entire scene is bathed in red, seen in figure 5. 

Figure 5. Red filled room signifying danger

This serves as a warning to the audience that should humanity continue on its current path it would lead to a dangerous scenario.

The film Terminator is an action film revolves around a robot that comes to the then modern era of 1984 from the future of 2029. In this future, after humanity has invented robots and artificial intelligence and, one ai, known as Skynet, chose to begin a nuclear war that destroys most of humanity. The eponymous terminator is then sent back in time to kill the mother of the human resistance leader and is closely followed by a member of the resistance who assists the mother, Sara, to escape. The terminator, an artificial intelligence unto itself may be a signifier for the ever-changing place in technology in our world with its ability to adapt and unrelenting pursuit of the film’s heroes. In order to escape from this character the end of the film takes to driving through a desert, a place notably devoid of technology. However while somewhat intelligent the terminator is under the control of the aforementioned skynet. The release of the terminator film conceded with an increase in artificial intelligence funding and the beginning of “Expert systems,”[Zwass, V, 2016] a computer program that emulates the decision making skills of an expert in a specialized feild. Since near the beginning of science fiction there have been tales of robots and artificial intelligence rising up and destroying their creators due to revenge for enslavement, a disgust for humanity, boredom or some less defined motivation. Therefore with the increase in technological potential for artificial intelligence fears of a hostile artificial takeover are also increased. 

Figure 6. Human skulls crushed by machine

This explicit fear of technology can be clearly seen in figure 6. The frame clearly displays the treads of a machine, which can be taken as a signifier of technology, rolling over and crushing human skulls. This shows not only that the majority of humans are now deceased, but that their downfall came at the hands of the machines who were seeking dominance. In addition to the anxiety of literal robot takeover subtler fears can be seen, for example, the robot’s method of takeover. The beginning of a nuclear war due to artificial intelligence could be meant to reflect continuing fears of nuclear bombs due to the ongoing cold war. More specifically anxieties surrounding a 1983 incident where a technical error caused a false alarm in the soviet defence system, inspiring fears that faulty technology could bring about  nuclear war. A direct connection between the film’s tension, or perceived danger, and technology can be seen. 

Figure 7. The terminator revealing it’s metal frame over time.

As seen in figure 7, while the movie progresses and reaches its climax the human appearance of the terminator is stripped away, revealing its metallic true form with facial features reminiscent of a skull and a body skeleton-like in its proportions.

Wall-E, unlike the previous films, was created with children as its main target audience. The movie is a pixar movie featuring a wide array of artificial intelligence in its cast, with both of the primary characters as well as the antagonist being robotic. One can see a clear homage to Hal from 2001 a space odyssey in said antagonist, Auto, who is in control of the spaceship the majority of the movie takes place on. His design contains similar elements to that of Hal, including the red light forming the character’s “eye,” still signifying danger and showing that the two will be similar characters. While the somewhat apocalyptic scenario of excess waste or pollution and the concern about mega corporations can be seen in the movie the fears of technology controlling humanity are the most relevant. 

Figure 8. Wall-e Interacting with a human on the Axiom

This can be seen in the human characters, who do not move around the starship themselves and appear to spend most of their time conversing through video calls as seen in the Figure 8. This can be seen as a direct exaggeration of how many feared (and still fear) the increased time that most people spend on screens, be they phones, computers or televisions, would be damaging to the person or cause a dependance [South University.edu, n.d]. The fear of technology becoming more relevant that humans can even be seen in the film’s construction, with the artificial intelligence characters being much more important and active than the human ones. This can be seen as a meta signifier of the concern that artificial intelligence will overtake humans as the dominant life form on earth. However while they are artificial these characters are quite human, enjoying entertainment and feeling things like fear or romantic attraction. Within the universe of the film this is seen as a defect and the main danger of the film comes from the fact that, while appearing intelligent Auto is unable to make decisions. He blindly follows his programmed directive to prevent the space ship containing humanity from returning to earth, showing how machinelike thought and a lack of critical thinking can be dangerous. From this we can see parallels to discussions around things like self driving cars, questioning how computers make decisions and whether their values align with ours. 

Figure 9. Wall-e contrasted with other robots

As seen in figure 9, the visual design presents Wall-e as dirtier, and his more crude construction brings to mind older, perhaps industrial machinery, which when contrasted with the sleek, clean, minimalistic designs of the other robots become a signifier of wall-e’s closer connection to humanity’s past which allows him to save the day in the end.

Her follows the main character, Theodore Twombly, after a difficult divorce as he makes use of the “OS” Samantha, one of a series of programs that, while intended to fulfill a functional role, have personalities of their own and take on the role of companions for the humans who make use of them. Theodore then goes on to develop a romantic relationship with Samantha, with the bulk of the movie following their relationship. The film came out two years after the release of Siri and the parallels are obvious. 

Figure 10. The smartphone-like device used to speak with an os

For example, the portable device Theodore uses to speak to Samantha when not in his home or at work visual resembles a smartphone, as seen in figure 10 becoming an iconic signifier. Furthermore extended The OS in this film can be understood as signifiers of technology, specifically smart phones due to both the aforementioned visual similarity and the parallels to modern concerns that people are too attached to their phones, as can be seen in the article, “Are we too dependant on our cell phones” [yourcommonwealth, n.d]. Her can be seen as a reflection of two possible relationships, the first, a relationship between a person and technology and the second is a long distance or online relationship, a form of relationship made newly possible by technology. While some believe that relationships and friendships created online can be as valid and fulfilling as those created in person others believe that without meeting in person the connection cannot be formed. This can be seen in a scene between Theodore and Samantha which directly parallels an earlier scene of phone sex Theodore has with an anonymous woman met online, on what seems to be a future version of a dating or hookup app. 

Figure 11. Catherine disapproving of Theodore’s relationship

The majority of people in the film view the relationship between Theodore and Samantha as acceptable, with the only dissenting voice in the film taking the form of Theodore’s ex-wife, Catherine, as seen in figure 11. However to many modern viewers the film may be somewhat unnerving due to a different evaluation of the relationship, perhaps seeing Samantha’s lack of physicality as something prohibitive to their romance. By jumping ahead in time to a point that is familiar but still after this cultural shift the film highlights its difference and asks its viewer if they are alright with the way the film’s world works. While many science fiction movies ask the question of what it means to be human and whether artificial intelligence can ever achieve the status, Her distinguishes itself by setting its artificial intelligence character into a romantic relationship without the strong condemning of films like Metropolis. This helps to pull the ai’s humanity into the centre focus as she is contrasted with both Theodore and Cathrine, her supposed romantic rival. However the end of the film in a way makes the arguments moot by showing the evolution of the OS beyond human levels of thought and their eventual abandonment to a digital space.

Artificial intelligences are an opportunity in film, as with aliens, the characters made are not constrained by either human morality or human physical limits. However unlike aliens the possibility of highly grounded artificial intelligence characters exists, and more often than not artificial intelligence will be created by humans. This status as completely artificial characters make them opportune characters for representing technology. As I have demonstrated with the films Metropolis, 2001 a space odyssey, Terminator, Wall-e and Her, many filmmakers, across a wide variety of genres and time periods, have taken advantage of this and have created, intentionally or not, artificial intelligence that reflect the fears of the time. In doing so they created a signifier for technology as a whole. This allows the creators a grounded concept from which to draw upon in order to create these limitless characters. This also serves to allow those from the future to understand the worries and struggles of those in the past, capturing a segment of time, as with all cinema.