Few things have dominated both public and specialized discourses as much as AI. Stories of promise and peril are on the front pages of the mass media and the trade presses in virtually every field, from finance to the sciences. In this film series, we'll explore a smattering of stories we tell ourselves about our AI futures, and ask what these stories reveal about ourselves.
This series brings together indie experiments, documentaries, and blockbusters to trace how film grapples with algorithms, automation, data, and the dream of “thinking” machines.
WALL-E is a 2008 American animated romantic science fiction film directed by Andrew Stanton, who co-wrote the screenplay with Jim Reardon, based on a story by Stanton and Pete Docter. Produced by Pixar Animation Studios for Walt Disney Pictures, the film stars the voices of Ben Burtt, Elissa Knight, Jeff Garlin, John Ratzenberger, Kathy Najimy, and Sigourney Weaver, with Fred Willard in a live-action role. The film follows a solitary robot named WALL-E on a future, uninhabitable, deserted Earth in 2805, left to clean up garbage. He is visited by a robot called EVE sent from the starship Axiom, with whom he falls in love and pursues across the galaxy.
Originally published at reilly.nd.edu.