Transformers -The Movie & Evolution of Machine Intelligence

For many, 2007 was the year that big movies stopped happening. Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Star Trek and the like had stopped or finished their runs. There was supposed to be a lull.

Thankfully, director Michael Bay decided not to listen to what the ‘populous’ was saying, and has created what is looking to be one of the greatest geek movies of all time. To be released this June, Transformers has been gaining momentum week after week, as new trailers (see below) and images are released over the internet, and fan hype continually stoked. It stars Shia LaBeouf as Sam Witwicky, who discovers the map to the Allspark: the source of life for which the heroic Autobots and evil Decepticons wage their war.

So, with the intensity at its height, and the movie just around the corner, we thought that we would take a bit of a deeper look at the movie. To be specific, the science behind the fiction.

Unlike Earth, the home of a variety of organic-based lifeforms, the planet of Cybertron is the homeworld of a race of robots which have the ability to transform into other mechanisms, with each Transformer having its own unique disguise.

Transformers are divided into two separate camps: the good and just Autobots, who are led by Optimus Prime (whose disguise is a red 18-wheel semi truck); and the evil Decepticons, who are led by Megatron (who transforms into a gun; there's a good deal of size-shifting involved with Megatron as well). With fuel supplies (called Energon Cubes) on Cybertron running low, both forces travel through space looking for a new source, which leads them to Earth, which from their perspective in rich in the minerals and chemicals they need. Disguising themselves as cars, airplanes, boats, familiar and commonplace to humans, the Transformers engage in a secret war for control of Earth's bountiful natural resources.

Sound farfetched. It is...but according to no less an authority that Steven Dick, chief historian for NASA, "if, as is often assumed, intelligent life is millions or billions of years old, cultural evolution may have resulted in a "postbiological universe," in which flesh and blood intelligence has been superseded by artificial intelligence. Carnegie Mellon AI pioneer Hans Moravec has famously postulated a postbiological Earth in the next few generations. Given the time scales of the universe, its seems much more likely to have already happened in outer space.

"All of these outcomes, Dick continues, "have implications for human destiny. It may be our destiny to populate the universe, or to interact with its flesh-and-blood intelligence in many forms. Or, in the postbiological universe, we may have to interact with machine intelligence."

But Transformers has taken these scientific possibilities and presented us with a future that many science fiction authors have also jumped upon. Possibly the most famous author to posit a future with robots is Isaac Asimov. One of his most popular works were a series of short stories named the Robot Series. As simply as possible, an artificial intelligence is – at the moment – based around what is termed as ‘automated inference engines’. These AI’s are then divided in to two types of AI; classifiers and controllers.

Classifiers however are further divided in to two separate categories; Convential AI and Computational Intelligence. Without devolving in to a lesson in either, Conventional AI is essentially classified as ‘machine learning’, and is at its heart, the ability to sift through a sizable amount of data and apply reasoning capabilities to reach a conclusion. Computational Intelligence is based around repetitive development, or ‘learning’. CI is the ability to fine-tune ones parameters to reach a conclusion, just as a child would repetitively try and decipher what he would be allowed to get away with, and base his actions accordingly.

The fact of the matter is that as of today, Transformers is a long way in our future. We’re lucky to have a robot that is able to distinguish a necklace from a fern frond. The artificial intelligence within the universe of the Transformers has moved well away from simply science fiction, and evolved to Philosophical Artificial Intelligence. It is not just the ability to determine an outcome from evidence provided, but the belief that within technology, a soul can not only exist, but form. Throughout the comics and cartoon series, issues such as death and birth are often discussed.

So while there exists today a level of artificial intelligence, Transformers is still – thankfully – well within the realm of scientific and philosophical fantasy and fiction -at least on Earth.

Posted by Josh Hill with Casey Kazan.