At the Creative Machines Lab we are interested in robots that create and are creative. We explore novel autonomous systems that can design and make other machines – automatically. Our work is inspired from biology, as we seek new biological concepts for engineering and new engineering insights into biology
Avatar joins a growing list of visual effects movies that have used USC ICT’s Light Stage technology; others include Spider-Man 2, Spider-Man 3, Superman Returns, King Kong, Hancock, G.I. Joe andThe Curious Case of Benjamin Button.
Although Asimov’s benevolent robots and the Terminator movies’ terrible war machines are still a distant fantasy, researchers across a wide range of disciplines are beginning to work together toward a more modest goal—building virtual humans.
“We don’t give them a manual, we don’t send them home for three weeks to study,” says James Blake, head of the U.S. Army Program Executive Office for Simulation, Training and Instrumentation. “We just put them in the environment, put the device on them, and exercise.”
“We get kids who come in with unrealistic views of the Army because of Call of Duty,” Hill says, referring to Activision Blizzard’s popular video game franchise. “You’re not going to come in here and run around like you’re in a one-man war.”
"You see this [science fiction inspiration] in everything from what scientists decide to invent to what Congress and the military decides to fund," Singer said. "It shapes expectations when people think 'This is what the future is going to be, so we should invest in that today.'"
Les films de guerre américains, comme "La Somme de toutes les peurs", où des terroristes font exploser une bombe nucléaire, font apparaître les liens étroits et renforcés, depuis le 11 septembre, entre l'industrie cinématographique et des autorités soucieuses d'améliorer leur image.
On the occasion of the 30th anniversary of his landmark novel "Neuromancer," CHF favorite William Gibson returns to the Festival. This autumn he’ll celebrate the publication of his latest work, "The Peripheral," a high-tech thriller set partly in a decadent postapocalyptic future. Gibson is joined in conversation by author Carol Anshaw.
Sony Pictures Entertainment CEO Michael Lynton is on the board of trustees of RAND Corporation, an organisation specialising in research and development for the United States military and intelligence sector. The Sony Archives show the flow of contacts and information between these two major US industries, whether it is RAND wanting to invite George Clooney and Kevin Spacey to events, or Lynton offering contact to Valerie Jarrett (a close advisor to Obama) or RAND desiring a partnership with IMAX for digital archiving. With this close tie to the military-industrial complex it is no surprise that Sony reached out to RAND for advice regarding its North Korea film The Interview. RAND provided an analyst specialised in North Korea and suggested Sony reach out to the State Department and the NSA regarding North Korea's complaints about the upcoming film. The Sony documents also show Sony being in possession of a brochure for an NSA-evaluated online cloud security set-up called INTEGRITY.
Microsoft, Google, Apple and other firms have sponsored lecture series in which science fiction writers give talks to employees and then meet privately with developers and research departments. Perhaps nothing better demonstrates the close tie between science fiction and technology today than what is called “design fiction”—imaginative works commissioned by tech companies to model new ideas. Some corporations hire authors to create what-if stories about potentially marketable products.
“I really like design fiction or prototyping fiction,” says novelist Cory Doctorow, whose clients have included Disney and Tesco. “There is nothing weird about a company doing this—commissioning a story about people using a technology to decide if the technology is worth following through on. It’s like an architect creating a virtual fly-through of a building.” Doctorow, who worked in the software industry, has seen both sides of the development process. “I’ve been in engineering discussions in which the argument turned on what it would be like to use the product, and fiction can be a way of getting at that experience.”