ChatGPU in 1957

2023-02-11

ChatGPT has been all over the tech news for the last couple of months. Well, imagine by surprise when I recently watched this 1957 movie that features ChatGPT

In the movie Bunny Watson (Katherine Hepburn) runs the research department of some corporation. Other divisions call the research department anytime they need info like "Give me 5 interesting facts about Kenya?". Or "Who is the head of India and what is their title?". The research department gives you the answers or if they don't know, they will go research them and get back to you.

Richard Sumner (Spencer Tracy) is a computer engineer who's been hired to install a computer that will give these types of answers. Once they turn it on it works exactly like ChatGPT. You ask it a question in English and it gives you a few sentences worth of answer.

That pretty much the exact experience of using ChatGPT was in this 66+ year old move and that I happened to watch it in December 2022 around the time ChatGPT came out was a really interesting coincidence.

I'm a fan of several Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy movies but I can't fully recommend this one. Still, others loved it more than me so if you want to watch it it's available on Amazon.


Also, There's a few famous, good, relatively recent AI movies, "Her", "Ex Machina". Some people consider The Matrix an AI movie though it's arguably more fantasy. The base of the Terminator movies is about AI trying to kill humans.

But, if you've never seen it, my favorite AI movie of all time is still

"Colossus: The Forbin Project"

I was going to post a link to the trailer but IMO all of the trailers have too many spoilers. Not that you can't imagine what will happen based solely on the premise. The United States government designs the most powerful computer ever, to run the nation's defenses. What could possibly go wrong? Still, there are a few twists the trailer spoils so avoid it and JUST WATCH THE MOVIE!. It's only 1hr and 40 minutes and it's pretty taut all the way though.

Sadly I don't know where to recommend watching it. It's not on Amazon Prime.

ATM it is here on Vimeo and here on the Archive. I have to believe both are illegal uploads since it's a movie owned by Universal but apparently ATM there is no other way to watch it except to buy a DVD/Blu-Ray and a player. (I don't even own one anymore)

Some of my favorite images from any movie ever are of the size of the computer in the opening scenes.

Note: If you're the type of person that will laugh at the 1970s computers and because of that ridicule the movie then you're missing out.. For me, I grew up in the 70s and learned on computer with slow 30 characters per second (300 baud) text only displays and teletype terminals. The fact that the computers don't look like modern computers doesn't detract from the movie in any way IMO but if you lack the imagination to go there then it's not for you.

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