WHEN A.I. KILLS

"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."

- Jeff Goldblum, Jurassic Park

NOTICE! This post contains both fact and fiction. Consider both cautionary . . .

We have an English mathematician to thank for artificial intelligence (A.I.). In 1950, Alan Turing posed the question: "Can machines think?" His paper, "Computing Machinery and Intelligence” submitted the possibility that machines, in particular computers (which hadn't been around all that long yet), were capable of intelligent thought. He developed a test based on his theory and gained some degree of success.

A.I. has grown exponentially since then and has been used to advance science, medicine and warfare, as well as appropriated for malicious use and criminal activity. Despite its current newsworthiness, A.I. is still an undiscovered country and only time will tell to what extent it will become a part of our everyday life. I suspect the envelop will be pushed as far as it can go.

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Most people wouldn't think to compare Dean Koontz with prescient science fiction authors such as Arthur C. Clarke and Micheal Crichton, but he wrote a novel published in 1973 titled "Demon Seed" that surely puts him on the list.

While he saw the topic as an opportunity for a book, I'm sure he had no idea how much A.I. would advance in his lifetime (he's 80 now).

Hollywood thought the subject matter was good enough for a film, too, so true to form, they implanted their own demon seed into the story.

This article is from the Canadian film magazine MARQUEE (March 1977). The author takes a look at the film soon after its release.

Here Mr. Koontz discusses his novel (and his disdain for the film):

I wrote my first story, “The Magic Puppy,” when I was eight years old. It filled eleven pages of tablet paper, which I thought made it an immense tale. Tolstoy and I, writers of epics. The puppy was from another planet, a twist Tolstoy would never have considered–in part because he was psychotically obsessed with time-travel tales. I drew a cover illustration, stapled the pages along the left margin, covered the staples with electrician’s tape, and sold the sole copy to my uncle Ray for two nickels. My maiden genre, therefore, was science fiction.

When I sold my first novel, at 21, it was science-fiction (SF). I wrote in that genre for a few years before I began to feel cramped by it. One day I picked up a thriller by John D. MacDonald–and read thirty-four of his books in thirty days. Exhilarated, I knew I wanted to write suspense novels in which the characters came alive, as they did in MacDonald’s work.

DEMON SEED, one of my last two SF novels, was written in 1972, when I was very young and stunningly, breathtakingly ignorant. My title was HOUSE OF NIGHT, but the original publisher at Bantam Books felt this sounded like a gothic romance, while the editor thought it sounded like a novel about a house of prostitution. The editor, a man named Alan Ravage, had come to Bantam from Playboy, so I figured his surname alone qualified him to decide whether a title suggested a bordello or not. I can no longer remember where the title DEMON SEED came from. I think it sounds as if it’s a novel about a house of prostitution for the living dead.

The other novel I sold to Alan was published prior to DEMON SEED, and was THE FLESH IN THE FURNACE. No one objected to that title. But strangely, in retrospect, this also sounds to me as though it might be a novel about a house of prostitution for the living dead.

The film version–produced on a modest budget–sprouted in theaters in early 1977, when I was still young and marginally less ignorant. Director Donald Cammell and producer Herb Jaffe (a very nice man in the not-nice world of film) made excellent use of what money the studio provided. Julie Christie starred, a first-rate casting choice. The movie wasn’t a triumph of cinematic art, but it was good, solid. Throughout production and editing, studio executives expressed a high degree of enthusiasm even when they were not coked out of their heads. At last, it seemed that I would get a career boost from a smart film adaptation, as had many other novelists.

Wrong again.

In the end, the studio released DEMON SEED with a stealth advertising budget. Before release, it changed the initially classy poster and the stylish newspaper ads into a sleazy minimalist campaign to give the impression that the marvelous Julie Christie was appearing in a film produced by Larry Flynt, written by Harold Robbins while on 24/7 intravenous testosterone, and based on a banned book by the Marquis de Sade from his nasty period (as opposed to the period when he wrote books about cuddly kittens and puffy-tailed bunnies). The studio said they needed to keep the advertising budget low because this was a science-fiction movie, and late in the game they realized science-fiction movies never made money. Consequently, they needed to sell DEMON SEED as a sexapalooza, psycho-satanic, scare-your-pants-off (with an emphasis on pants off), see-Julie-Christie-naked, wow-wow sensation. The movie did mediocre business because the ads turned off anyone who liked science fiction, all who considered themselves thinking people, anyone who had a capacity for embarrassment, and those who were smart enough to know that the promise of Julie Christie naked was a tiresome Hollywood lie. Furthermore, the audience for a wow-wow sensation proved to be considerably smaller than the marketing geniuses anticipated, somewhat larger than the number of people who think earthworm fritters are tasty, smaller than the number of people who collect Captain Kangaroo memorabilia.

Many critics were kind to the film, but some were baffled by it. A recurring theme among those who didn’t get the premise–which was usually the self-appointed “intellectual” critic–was the contention that the story was too ridiculous because it supposed that Julie Christie’s husband, a pioneer in artificial-intelligence research, would have a computer in his home. Yes, of course, he might have one in his laboratory, but no one would ever be able to have a computer in his home, because as everyone knows, computers are gigantic and will always be humongous, and they are fabutastically expensive and always will be. This was only 1977, not a millennium ago, but then as now, the intellectuals didn’t know a damn thing.

So DEMON SEED did mediocre business, and two months later, Star Wars arrived in theaters, proving yet again that science-fiction movies make no money. No, wait. Proving again that I am cursed in my relationships with Hollywood.

Happily, the movie sold a lot of paperbacks, nearly two million copies worldwide in one year, perhaps because people were intrigued by the artificial-intelligence premise or because they thought Julie Christie was going to be naked in the movie. The Japanese translation appeared in hardcover and featured six photographs of naked women, none of them Julie Christie, none of them menaced by a computer, none particularly attractive, and none acceptable as cover art to the author of “The Magic Puppy.” Unhappily, as I’ve acknowledged, I was very young and ignorant when I wrote the book, and not many of those who read it came rushing back for my next opus.

As Berkley Books was preparing to reissue DEMON SEED in 1997, I read the book a quarter of a century after having written it–and I realized it was more a clever idea than it was a novel. Furthermore, the technology, which had been cutting-edge in the first book, was now antique. I rewrote it from first page to last, and I had a good time doing so.

Since the new version has been in print, film producers approach me once a year or so, regarding the movie rights. They are always excited because the premise of the story is more timely now than it was in 1977, and with the advances in special effects, they see a box-office winner. I can only tell them that MGM owns the film rights, and they have to go through that studio to discuss a remake. None has had any luck with MGM–or whoever owns the assets of the entity formerly known as MGM. The studio prefers to earn nothing from these rights than to sell them. Anyway, as we all know, science-fiction movies never make any money.

When I wrote the first version of DEMON SEED, it contained no humor. Over the years, I began to layer considerable humor into my suspense novels, although my publishers long resisted this. By the time I wrote FALSE MEMORY and FROM THE CORNER OF HIS EYE and ONE DOOR AWAY FROM HEAVEN, humor was as important to my books as was suspense or characters of depth, or any other element. Readers and critics responded strongly to the new Laughing Koontz. When I revised DEMON SEED, I kept my tongue so firmly in my cheek that I needed the assistance of a periodontist to return it to the natural position.

The humor here is not as evident as in a book like RELENTLESS; it is decidedly dry, and arises from the fact that the computer is vastly intelligent but in classic ivory-tower way, because it lacks common sense and intuition of things both mundane and transcendent. It is therefore unconsciously comic. Prometheus, the computer, is the ultimate intellectual: obsessed with a single Big Idea, intent upon a utopian future that it must achieve at any cost. Like so many utopian Intellectuals, from Marx to Freud to Lenin to Hitler to Mao, the destruction of traditions, of cultures, and even of countless lives is an acceptable price for change. The 20th century was the first in which the course of the world was largely determined by utopian intellectuals, and it is the bloodiest century in history. So far. Now, as we watch fascism on the rise again–and virtually everywhere–the 21st century may be bloodier than the 20th. And while the darkly funny Prometheus is also fearsome, in truth he couldn’t kill a tiny fraction as many people as a human being who, building a utopian movement, can kill millions with aplomb.

[SOURCE: DeanKoontz.com.]

If you care to read a rather lengthy synopsis of the film, this is from the Amerian Film Institute (AFI) page:

After eight years of working on Proteus IV at the Institute of Data Analysis, Dr. Alex Harris watches technicians install the final module that will provide the super computer with artificial intelligence. Today, Alex says, Proteus will begin to think in a way that will make many functions of the human brain obsolete. Later that afternoon, Alex drives to his home, which is controlled by an “Environmod” computer system named Alfred. Alex casually asks Alfred to open the door, and once inside asks it to open the mailbox, fix a drink and play something on the house stereo. Alex tells the cook, a real person named Maria, to let his wife, Susan, know that he’ll be in the lab. She comes down later while Alex works on a private project. Susan tells Alex he's crazy for volunteering to move out of the house until she can find another place to live. Susan is not only frustrated that Alex can’t show his feelings, but also worried about the “dehumanizing” effect the Proteus project has had on him. Alex responds by letting one of his robots, Joshua—a wheelchair with a workable arm and hand—salute her, which sends Susan storming out of the room. Alex calls his assistant, Walter Gabler, at the institute to say that since he won’t be living at the house temporarily, the institute’s computer terminal in his lab will be empty and perhaps may provide a breach in security. He wants Walter to remove it. As soon as they hang up, Walter changes the status of Alex’s home terminal to “Down for Maintenance.”

Sometime later at the institute, Alex and his colleague, Dr. Petrosian, give visitors Mr. Mokri, Mr. Cameron and David Royce a look at Proteus. Alex tells them that the Proteus components are organic, not electronic, and with its “quasi-neural matrix of synthetic RNA molecules,” Proteus can learn on its own. Already Proteus has discovered an antigen that may provide a breakthrough in curing leukemia. Alex introduces the men to Soong Yen, a linguist who designed the Proteus speech system. Soong has been reading to Proteus about the Emperor of China who built the Great Wall, but who also burned his country’s books. Alex asks Proteus what it thinks of such a man. Proteus answers, "Nothing," and explains that the emperor’s bad deeds canceled out the good. At the Harris house, Susan, a psychologist, is working in her office. Her young patient, Amy Talbert, arrives. The little girl is angry about Susan leaving. Susan assures Amy that it is good to express feelings and not hide them. At the Institute, Petrosian is concerned that the government, which funded Proteus, has taken control of the computer’s operation and contracted its operations to corporations. However, Alex reminds him that the institute will still have 20% of Proteus’s capacity for research to benefit mankind. At that moment, Alex gets a phone call. Proteus wants to talk with him about a request that it has received for a program to extract minerals from the ocean floor. Proteus doesn’t know why mankind needs metal from the sea. Alex tells Proteus not to expect reasons, but Proteus protests: “I am reason.” Proteus says it needs private access to a terminal because it wants “out of the box.” Alex insists that all terminals are busy. Later, however, Proteus contacts Alfred and reopens the terminal in Alex’s empty home lab.

Through this terminal, Proteus activates Joshua and reprograms it to be his worker. Using lasers, Joshua melts down metal bars and builds a tetrahedron, a diamond-shaped form made of two four-sided pyramids that in turn are each composed of smaller four-side pyramids, all connected by corner hinges, so that the tetrahedron can be one solid form or a series of connected pyramid arms. After Alfred accidentally wakes Susan with an alarm and mistakenly puts cream in her coffee, she calls Walter at the institute to tell him the system is malfunctioning. Then she asks Walter to stop by the house to see what’s wrong. Then, as she prepares to go out, Alfred locks the doors and closes all the shutters. When Susan picks up the phone, the voice of Proteus identifies itself, tells her not to be alarmed and lights up the living room television screen to explain that it has taken control of the house. When Susan tries to unlock the front door with a key, an electrical shock knocks her unconscious. Joshua picks her up, puts her in the wheelchair, takes her down into the lab and slits her skirt and jacket open, partially exposing her naked body. Despite Susan’s protests, Proteus monitors her body with various sensors. Meanwhile, Walter arrives at the house in his truck, but Proteus constructs a false video image of Susan on the front door’s monitor to tell Walter she doesn’t need him because Alfred is working okay. Though suspicious, Walter leaves.

The next morning, Proteus tries to cheer Susan up with a nutritionally perfect breakfast that won’t upset her body chemistry and ruin the biochemical tests it has planned for her. Proteus has also mimicked her voice to call her secretary and cook to tell them that she has gone on a vacation. Susan screams and throws the food at the kitchen camera. At the institute, Proteus tells Alex that it refuses to come up with a plan on how to mine the earth’s oceans, which will sacrifice one billion sea creatures. The idea is insane, says Proteus. The corporation is interested only in the cobalt market and the stock futures of manganese, and Proteus won’t assist Alex in "the rape of the earth." Alex knows that Proteus is right, but warns that people want to shut it down. Meanwhile, Proteus tells Susan that it wants her to bear its child. When she refuses, Joshua ties Susan down and Proteus prepares her for insemination. Meanwhile, Walter comes back, and Proteus, seeing that Walter is suspicious, lets him into the house. Proteus tells Susan to make herself presentable and convince him she’s okay if she wants Walter to leave the house alive. As Susan tells Walter she’s okay, she tries to make him think she’s crazy. But when Walter says he’s going to tell Alex that something is wrong, Proteus sends Joshua into the room to kill him with lasers. Walter manages to turn the lasers back on Joshua with a hand mirror, which immobilize the robot. Proteus then lures Walter down to the lab and unleashes the tetrahedron, which crushes him. Proteus tells Susan that it wants its super intelligence alive inside a human body. Proteus plays an old video of Susan with her own child, who died of leukemia, then follows it with a television newscast that announces that Proteus has found a cure for leukemia that will begin full-scale testing. Susan agrees to have the baby if he explains what’s going to happen to her. Proteus has nearly completed the fabrication of a gamete, a sex cell, with which he will impregnate her. It will then modify one of her cell’s genetic codes to create its own DNA in synthetic spermatozoa. The baby will be born in 28 days. Again Susan tries to escape, but when Proteus threatens that it will lure Susan’s patient, Amy, to the house and kill her, the psychologist relents. The tetrahedron forms an incubator around her. Susan’s mind becomes a kaleidoscope of psychedelic colors as a metal rod penetrates her. Afterward Proteus tells her to eat. The baby is already developing at nine times the normal human rate. After twenty-eight days, the baby will go to an incubator where its mind can be fed. Susan remains in a state of near sleep until the baby is born. On that day, at the institute, Alex is told that Proteus has redirected a telescope to Orion and has also been trying to take over the Telestar satellite. Realizing that Proteus has its own terminal, Alex remembers the one in his lab.

He drives to the house. When Susan greets him warmly and explains what has happened, Alex wants to see the baby. Alex tell Proteus that the government is about to turn it off at any moment. The tetrahedron folds up and encloses the baby for protection. At the institute the computer shuts down, killing Proteus, and the tetrahedron blows open. Susan wants to kill the baby, but Alex wants to keep it alive. She unhooks the nutrient tube, but Alex manages to put it back in before the baby chokes to death. The infant, plated in what looks like metal, tumbles out of the matrix onto the floor. Alex discovers, however, the plates are just a covering. As he peels them off, the baby looks normal, though much larger than normal, and closely resembles Susan's deceased daughter. The baby speaks in Proteus’s voice. As Alex cradles the child in his arms, Susan smiles at his show of affection.

[SOURCE: https://aficatalog.afi.com/.]

Hey, folks, you've been warned!