Here are the 10 best films About A.I..
Written by a human.
Because we’re still good for something.
10. A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001)
Stanley Kubrick worked on A.I. Artificial Intelligence for two decades, inspired by the Brian Aldiss short story “Supertoys Last All Summer Long.”
When Kubrick died in 1999, Steven Spielberg took over. Spielberg’s film tells the story of David (Haley Joel Osment), a mecha who dreams of being a real boy — one of the films many nods to the story of Pinocchio.
9. The Artifice Girl (2023)
Filmmaker Franklin Ritch creates a DIY sci-fi masterpiece that imagines a computer genius (Ritch) who creates a child (Tatum Matthews) to lure and capture terrible people on the internet. But when the A.I. girl achieves sentience, dizzying ethical questions come into play.
Do we really think The Artifice Girl, produced on a shoestring budget with a handful of actors, is better Steven Spielberg’s A.I.? Honestly, yes.
And Rotten Tomatoes does, too.
8. Her (2013)
A moving film that reflects the insidious ways technology seduces us.
The golden voice of artificial intelligence entity Scarlett Johansson provides comfort and companionship to lonely Theodore (Joaquin Phoenix).
But he soon realizes he’s not as special as he seems.
7. M3gan (2023)
This very fun horror movie from earlier this year seems absurd on the surface — a killer A.I. doll, really? But it’s not really about killer A.I. dolls.
It’s about the temptation for parents to farm out the job of caring for their children to various technological temptations, from talking dolls to TV to tablets.
Why is there a 3 in M3gan’s name? We don’t know. We just love the loopy weirdness of this modern horror classic.
6. Black Mirror: ‘San Junipero’ (2016)
OK, it’s not a movie, but this standalone TV episode as good as any movie, so we’re including it. “San Junipero” is one of the rare depictions of artificial intelligence that isn’t dystopian.
It takes place in a world where A.I. is so prevalent that no one even thinks of it as A.I.
But we’re not sure what else you’d call an ultra-realistic ’80s nostalgia simulation where people go when they (spoiler alert, if you haven’t seen this beautiful episode) die.
5. RoboCop (1987)
Perhaps the single most persuasive argument against the use of artificial intelligence in policing comes in the scene when the ED-209, the “enforcement droid” designed for “urban pacification,” gives a little demonstration of its supposed policing skills… and utterly annihilates a corporate suit volunteering to play an “arrest subject.”
The subject, Mr. Kinney, is given a gun to point at ED-209, which then politely orders him to drop the weapon — and gives him 20 seconds to comply. He does! He really does. But a growling ED-209 doesn’t see Mr. Kinney drop the gun, and goes way overboard in its handling of the situation.
Though RoboCop is first-rate satire, it also includes a little hope: RoboCop himself (Peter Weller) is a hero who uses technology, but is human at his core.
4. Blade Runner (1982)
This 1982 Ridley Scott film, starring Harrison Ford as the replicant-hunter Deckard, was years ahead of its time in imagining the thing we all fear today: a world where artificial intelligence beings are indistinguishable from humans.
In Blade Runner, based on the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, even the replicants don’t always know they’re replicants.
It’s a gorgeous neo-noir and one of the most imitated films ever made.
3. The Matrix (1999)
In the The Matrix, the Wachowskis’ magnificent predictor of our modern world, millions of people live online fantasies as their physical bodies languish in goo.
That sounds about right.
Whether it’s scarier than the scenario in the top film on our list is a matter of opinion.
2. The Terminator (1984)
James Cameron’s The Terminator has become endlessly parodied, and has spawned some bad sequels, which make it easy to forget that the original is absolutely brilliant, and terrifying.
Terminator 2, of course, is the only great Terminator sequel, and one of the best sequels of all time.
But the best film about A.I. remains…
1. 2001 (1968)
We begin and end with Kubrick, to whom everyone making or watching films about A.I. owes a tremendous debt. 2001 is about a space mission assisted by a computer called HAL (its name is cleverly derived from the letters that precede those in IBM). Things start well, until HAL reveals its own agenda and Dr. David “Dave” Bowman decides to shut it down.
In addition to anticipating the threats posed by A.I., 2001 also envisions a future in which we can perhaps attain a kind of immortality through digital encapsulations of ourselves. Or at least that’s our interpretation. It’s also visually stunning, gloriously ambitious, and eerily beautiful in a way only humanity can be.
Main image: Sean Young in Blade Runner. Warner Bros.