How many times have you said ‘It’s not the end of the world!’ lately? Next time you do, be careful, because there might even be a version of the end of the world happening beyond the walls of the room you’re in. This is what happens to the characters in the British film ‘Shaun of the Dead‘ (2004), directed by Edgar Wright and written by him together with Simon Pegg, who also plays the main role in the film. It’s a slapstick comedy, – which is the only formula in which I could stand a movie with zombies -, a parody and homage to ‘classic’ films of a genre that is far from my comfort zone. Still, I enjoyed and thoroughly enjoyed ‘Shaun of the Dead‘, which was just the right movie for my Halloween night.
Five young Londoners are the heroes of this film. Shaun and Liz are a couple, but Liz seems to have had enough of the lack of ambition and intellectual mediocrity of Shaun, who doesn’t know better than to spend every night at ‘The Winchester’ pub, named after the shotgun hanging above the bar. Dianne and David, a somewhat more ‘normative’ couple and Liz’s roommates encourage her to break up. To top it off, Shaun’s roommate Ed is a goofball incapable of anything other than making bad jokes, playing video games, and lounging on a couch. A kind of end of the world is happening in London, but these TV sitcom-like heroes notice nothing for a couple of days being too absorbed in their own conflicts, and not realizing that the behavior of those around them it’s a different degree of zombification than usual. When people begin to be devoured, their only escape plan is to take refuge in the pub that is the center of their Universe. The Winchester rifle will also play a role.
The themes of the pub as a fundamental institution for his heroes and that of the end of the world will be explored by film director Edgar Wright together with his accomplice, the actor Simon Pegg, and in a film made almost a decade later – ‘The World’s End’. The success (and near-masterpiece rating on IMDB) has several reasons. First of all, the characters in the film are real and familiar. Real and familiar, not necessarily like our neighbors, but certainly like TV sitcom heroes. Each character is well-defined, the pace of the story and the jokes flow freely and there are almost no dead lines in the film. The horror side is treated with humor and an indifference to political correctness that makes any excess acceptable. Even the creatures called zombies are filmed in such a way that they become flags in the comedy slalom and not obstacles to entertainment. The confusion between their world and the ‘real’ one is a nice social commentary. I saw ‘Shaun of the Dead‘ on Halloween night, but I bear witness that it’s a delicious movie any day of the year.
Three of the four films made in the last 11 years by Emmanuelle Bercot have Catherine Deneuve as the star. Bercot is one of those film directors who, being also an actress, knows very well how to highlight the actors who play in her films. I think that they appreciate and enjoy the freedom of expression and the collaboration with a filmmaker who understands their experiences and feelings well. ‘Elle s’en va‘, the first film that brought the two together in 2013 (the title in the English distribution is ‘On My Way‘) is a good proof of the advantages of such collaborations. Catherine Deneuve creates one of her good and consistent roles, and for Bercot this is one of the most successful films of her entire career as a director.
The opening scenes describe one of the most catastrophic days in the life of Bettie, the main heroine of the film. She is in her 60s and lives a secluded life, running together with her mother a family restaurant that is in danger of bankruptcy. The most important memory of her life is participating in a Miss France beauty contest that had taken place some 40 years ago. The sweetheart of her youth is dead, so is the husband she may or may not have loved, and she is just now finding out that her lover has left her for a much younger woman. Nervous, she starts smoking again and gets into the car, driving where the roads take her. Her journey gets on a purpose when her daughter calls asking her to take her 11-year-old grandson to his other grandfather, whom she has never met. Traveling by car from one end of France to the other helps her get to know a world from which she had been cut off, her grandson and ultimately herself.
In ‘Elle s’en va‘ we see two films. One of them is a ‘road movie’ set in ‘Deep France’ seen from the perspective of a woman who chose (or fate chose for her) to spend four decades in an isolated corner of the country. The other is a family drama spanning four generations. I really liked the ‘road movie’ part. Wanting to distance herself from the American or German models of the genre, Emmanuelle Bercot presents a diverse and positive human perspective and landscape. With one exception, Bettie meets good people, even if some are strange, people who jump in to help her rather than rob her, and at no point does she feel threatened as a single woman traveling alone. It is perhaps also a reflection of the other drama he is experiencing, the personal one. Viewers will never find out if her isolation was voluntary, if her relationships failed more because of her own fault or not. Some interesting themes are rather sketched out than developed, such as the repeated failure of women in every generation of the family to live independently, away from or without the men they loved. The scenes of the reunion after many decades of the participants in beauty contests of the last century would deserve a separate film. The ending is far too conventional to be believable. Catherine Deneuve is, of course, amazing. Not only does she seamlessly play the part of a woman ten years her junior, but she does so with sensitivity and depth, filling the screen with beauty and personality, just as she did 50 years before and will do 10 years from later. The role is written for her, the camera follows her from far and near, and the actress enters the role and imposes her persona and personality on her. Here, however, is the problem and perhaps the weakness of the film: Deneuve is so dominant that everything that happens around her character is overshadowed. It is as if we are in the central square of a city in the middle of which a superb statue or fountain absorbs the eyes of the visitors and does not allow them to see the beauty of the surrounding houses.
‘Le diable par la queue‘ (1969) is part of a series of successful films that Philippe de Broca made in the 60s and 70s. Most of them combined comedy with action films, and the casts included some of the best-known actors of the era, which ensured them immediate and constant success with audiences. Revisited half a century or more after release, we can see that many of these films have not only ‘aged beautifully’, but are still enjoyable entertainment for today’s viewers and have something special and interesting to say in addition. This is also the case for ‘Le diable par la queue‘.
The film’s premise might as well be that of a thriller. In a corner of France, a noble family runs a hotel in a semi-ruined castle. They attract their customers in complicity with the local garage and gas station owner, who sabotages the cars of passers-by. Arriving at the castle-hotel, these are greeted by the family composed of counts, countesses, barons and marquises, who ensure a stay full of special services. Things get complicated when one of the customers forced to spend the night at the castle turns out to be a burglar, who had just committed a robbery and tries to leave the area with a hard case bag containing the loot of the heist.
The French love castles and movies set in castles. ‘Le diable par la queue‘ was made at the end of a decade in which several of the successful ‘serious’ films had castles as a setting. This time the romantic vein and social commentary are almost completely replaced by the naughty and sexy humor of many comedies of the same period. Although the film is not a parody, we can guess that Philippe de Broca and his screenwriters had in mind the mentioned French models, but maybe also horror films like ‘Psycho’. The result is very nice. The ladies of the noble family, from the marquise mother of the family played by Madeleine Renaud, the countess daughter (Maria Schell) and the baroness niece (Marthe Keller) flaunt and use their charms with aplomb. We can also see Jean Rochefort, at an age when he was more of a cuckolded husband than a standard of French pronunciation. Of course, however, the bulk of the feast is provided by Yves Montand, in a role in which he makes extensive use of his showmanship talents. A viewing of this film is likely to appeal to spectators looking for nostalgia, as well as to those who just want to be amused by a sparkling comedy.
One of the most useless intellectual exercises, in my opinion, is to compare a book and a movie, even if the movie is inspired by the book or is an adaptation. Literature and cinema are as different arts as dance and painting, for example. Each has its specific materials and means of expression, and comparing two works from different arts, even if they approach the same theme, seems ridiculous to me. ‘Un amour de Swann‘, the 1984 film by Volker Schlöndorff starts from the characters and plots described in the first volumes of the monumental series of novels ‘In search of lost time’ by Marcel Proust. If nothing else, at least the complexity of the Proustian text should be sufficient as an argument to avoid comparisons. ‘Un amour de Swann’ is a period film, adapted for the screen by Volker Schlöndorff, with a screenplay written by Peter Brook among others, which uses characters and settings from Proust’s novels and partly rewrites, for the screen, one of the many story lines in the books. It is a story of obsessive love, of social conventions, of feelings confessed in manners dictated by the social rules and the etiquette of a world that was in its twilight, but was not aware of it. It’s a film that deserves to be judged as a stand-alone work.
Charles Swann, the hero of the film, is a rich bourgeois living in the last decades of the 19th century. He is rich enough to afford to do nothing, to maintain a not very spacious apartment but with an appearance and agglomeration of objects of a museum in Paris, a personal servant and a two-horse carriage. He has access to a high society that is a mixture of bourgeoisie and nobility, although the Jewish origin of his family is not forgotten by those around him. He has all the time in the world to occupy himself and describe in a private diary his own feelings, the center of his self-centered universe. When his best friend introduces him to Odette, a luxury courtesan, falling in love with her puts him in front of difficult dilemmas. First of all, he is terribly jealous and needs to come to terms with the woman’s feelings and his own. Then, he must decide whether to formalize the relationship through marriage. A second social barrier created by his marriage to a former courtesan risks isolating him from the circles of high society in which he revolves. Everything will be played out and decided in one day and especially one night.
Volker Schlöndorff succeeds in recreating on screen the atmosphere of 19th century Parisian finery, with its decadent sophistication, with its masked social prejudices, with its feelings dressed like the characters in corsets and layers of sophisticated fabrics. Every now and then we have, for a fraction of a second, clues to the cruelty of the real world around the heroes: a silhouette in rags on the streets on which the carriages gallop, a look or a word that alludes to the contradictions, exploitation of women, anti-Semitism or homophobia that gnawed at the social edifice that it would collapse at the outbreak of the Great War. The characters, however, are narcissistically concerned with their own feelings, and the conflicts are drowned in the loaded aestheticism of the settings and self-concerns of the big bourgeoisie. Jeremy Irons is the ideal actor for the role of Swann, bringing to the screen a passion that is intended rather unsuccessfully to be controlled by social conventions. Ornella Muti is the beautiful and mysterious Odette, and each of the viewers will have to decide, like Swann, what her true feelings are. Alain Delon is counter-cast as the Baron de Charlus, a rather unusual role for his filmography, but further evidence, in my opinion, that he was a much more complex actor than the one known from his very commercial films. Fanny Ardant is also on screen in the role of the Duchesse de Guermantes, reduced in importance in the story, so that we do not have much opportunity to enjoy her formidable talent. The finale puts events into perspective and concludes a solid, well-acted period film that I greatly enjoyed and that will only disappoint those who insist on making comparisons. For Volker Schlöndorff this film is, I think, another study of a decaying society, one of the main themes of his filmography.
‘Down by Law‘ made in 1986 is Jim Jarmusch‘s third feature film. The previous film, ‘Stranger Than Paradise’ had enjoyed an unexpected success. To a large extent, ‘Down by Law‘ continues the same creative line, taking a classic theme and treating it in a personal manner, ignoring the rules of cinematic genres to focus on the heroes and their relationships, but also on the landscape that surrounds them. Like the previous film and like the vast majority of those that will follow in the film director’s career, it is an independent movie, made outside the system of the great studios. From the creative freedom thus acquired resulted a unique style, then in full formation, which already gave Jarmusch the status of a promising, talented and interesting filmmaker.
The story begins in a New Orleans that looks more like a post-apocalyptic movie landscape. Zack is a pimp whose business isn’t going too well, Jack is a serially fired radio DJ. Separately, Zack and Jack are arrested by the police and thrown into jail on what appear to be framed accusations. The two small thugs convicted of crimes they did not commit meet in the same prison cell, where they will have to put up with each other and find a way to survive together. When they’ve barely gotten used to the situation, appears Roberto, an Italian convicted of murder, though from the looks of it and the way he acts, his worst crime seems to be that he speaks rudimentary English. The ever-optimistic Roberto will not only change the mood in the cell, but also discover a way to escape. The adventure of the three is just beginning.
Director and screenwriter Jim Jarmusch doesn’t seem too concerned about the credibility of what’s being told on screen. Why were Jack and Zack framed for crimes they didn’t commit? How does the escape happen? There are ‘details’ that Jarmusch does not feel obliged to clarify. A story is a story. He seems more concerned with presenting us with the natural and economic setting in which the story takes place, and he does it masterfully, on black and white film and with the help of cinematographer Robby Müller, who shoots terrifically both in New Orleans and in the swamps of Louisiana. John Lurie plays the role of Jack and also composes the music, Tom Waits is Zack, but the show is stolen by Roberto Benigni, already famous at that time in Italy but practically unknown to the American public. His character, with an innocence and a humor that defies the harsh reality in which he finds himself, predicts the hero of his own film ‘La vita è bella’ which he would make 11 years later. Benigni, who had already made three films as a director by that time, admired and learned a lot from Jarmusch. Some fans of the adventure or escapist genres may be displeased. ‘Down by Law‘ is before all a Jim Jarmusch movie.
Since the first scenes of ‘We Live in Time‘, the 2024 film by the Irish director John Crowley, I had a feeling of ‘déjà vu’. After about a quarter of an hour in the movie, I suddenly remembered. Of course, I had seen a similar movie before, a romantic story about a young and handsome man who loves a young and beautiful woman, a story in which the two face hardships because of those around them, in which their love overcomes all obstacles until they are hit by the serious illness that risks taking the life of the young and beautiful heroine. The film – directed by Arthur Hiller – was called ‘Love Story’ and was written by Erich Segal. Released in parallel with the novel of the same name, it enjoyed enormous success. The year was 1970. I was 17 when I saw ‘Love Story’, now I’m 71. How do the two films compare? ‘We Live in Time‘ uses exactly the same romantic melodrama formula and the main characters are very similar in typology. I think what deeply moved me then works well now – a love story written honestly and intelligently and well served by a couple of handsome, talented and well-cast actors.
If the formula, theme and main characters are similar, the narrative structures of the two films are very different. For about two-thirds of ‘We Live in Time‘ the script written by Nick Payne lets viewers witness a sequence of episodes that take place over several years and are presented in seemingly random order, requiring the reconstruction in the mind of spectators of the love story between Tobias and Almut. The meeting between them happens as in the movies: he is almost newly divorced and wanders at dawn on a highway in a hotel bathrobe, she runs over him with a car. The pieces of the puzzle fit together and the picture we reconstruct is that of a love story between two of the nicest and most attractive young people we’ve seen on screens lately. To formalize the relationship in a marriage, to have children or not, to succeed in their respective professions (she is a very talented Michelin-starred chef) – everything is approached with love and humor. When the so often merciless disease strikes, Tobias and Almut will try to deal with it in the same way, but how far can living lives to the fullest postpone the blows of fate? The final part of the film uses linear narrative, building a crescendo towards a somewhat expected ending.
From 1970 to 2024, mainstream cinema had time to accept scenes with nudity and sex only to kind of abandon them in the name of a new yet unwritten code of decency. John Crowley reintroduces them without hesitation, integrates them well into the plot and adds a dramatic childbirth scene. I have nothing but praise for the two actors who play the lead roles with talent and intensity. Andrew Garfield builds the character of a charming and sensitive man, radiating empathy and with a sense of humor present at all times. Florence Pugh is strong and beautiful, and very well embodies the dilemma of the women who succeed in their professions, but for this they must constantly adjust the balance between their professional lives and their feelings. I would have liked the script writer and director to have described her culinary creations in more detail, and not just because I’m a fan of movies with and about food, but it would have given more motivation to the decisions made by the chef character at key moments. I also want to mention the appearance of Lee Braithwaite in a debut role on the screens, with a special physiognomy and expressiveness. ‘We Live in Time‘ proves that well-written and well-made films that express feelings and emotions honestly and authentically have a chance in any era of cinema history.
Americans don’t really use the expression ‘cinema de papa’, invented by critics and French filmmakers followers of the New Wave to define everything that characterizes the film-making ways of previous generations, from which they wanted to move away. It would be about productions filmed mostly in studios, elaborated scenarios which were often adaptations of novels or plays, a style of directing very attentive to detail and relying on the quality of the actors, avoiding improvisations. According to these criteria, ‘Ordinary People‘ (1980) would be a classic example of ‘daddy’s cinema’. It’s also an example that this way of making films can generate remarkable, deep creations with heroes that stay with their viewers long after the screening is over. It was Robert Redford‘s directorial debut and remains to this day one of the best, if not the best, film he directed.
The title is justified from the first scenes. We see the comfortable home of an American couple somewhere near Chicago. The Jarretts are an ordinary family, but we quickly understand that things are not going well, and that this is due to the trauma of losing their elder son in a boating accident. Conrad, the younger brother, has feelings of guilt and is in recovery from a suicide attempt. Calvin, the father, displays a permanent and fake contentment, while Beth, the mother, emotionally represses her feelings, if she has any. The three do not want or cannot communicate with each other. For Conrad the only way to express his thoughts and anguish is through the psychiatric therapy sessions that he attends with Dr. Berger. The teenager’s return to high school studies, friends and the activity of a performance swimmer or the start of an idyll with a girl he meets at church choir rehearsals are constantly threatened by the trauma he cannot leave behind. The family, far from being a refuge, amplifies the anguish through non-communication.
Robert Redford moved to the director’s chair after two decades of acting in which he had become one of the most famous and highest paid stars in Hollywood. Understanding and guiding actors was his strength and his main quality as a filmmaker. All the actors in this film give strong and believable performances and for many of them it is one of the best films of their careers. This is certainly the case of Timothy Hutton who won theAcademy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, as Conrad. The classification is debatable, the teenager Conrad being the main character of the story in my opinion, but the award is justified. Donald Sutherland may apparently seem a miscast, with an atypical role for an actor often ready to go to extremes, but here, he finds resources of sensitivity little explored in other films. Mary Tyler Moore transcends her television star status in the mysterious and complex role of mother incapable of emotions or expressing them. Judd Hirsch takes on the role of Dr. Berger, a key character in a plot that can also be seen as a film advertising and promoting the profession of psychoanalyst. Finally, we have in this film the debut on the big screen of Elizabeth McGovern, young (at the time), talented and sensitive. The psychological depth of the story reminded me at its best moments of Ingmar Bergman. Even if today some dialogues seem a bit long and a bit theatrical, ‘Ordinary People‘ is a smart and deeply moving film that successfully launched Robert Redford as a director and won four Academy Awards, all of which were deserved.
‘Emily the Criminal‘ (2022) is one of the most exciting feature films directorial debuts that I’ve seen in the recent years. As John Patton Ford also wrote the screenplay, my guess is that we’re dealing with a talented filmmaker who has a lot to say and enough time ahead of him, even if this film was made after he crossed the 40-year-old barrier. It’s a seemingly simple story about a modern-day young woman’s slide into crime, which both manages to say a lot about herself and about the world she lives in.
Emily is a graduate of an art school for which she has fallen head over heels in debt. A minor crime left her with a criminal record that makes it difficult for her to find suitable jobs that will allow her to pay the installments. When she can no longer cope financially, she agrees to take part in a credit card fraud scheme. She meets Youcef and becomes more than his accomplice in crime. But with the money comes the risks of getting deeper and deeper into the world of crime. Surprisingly, Emily will find in herself the resources to survive and even succeed in the world of crime, where violence cannot be for a long time avoided.
The screenplay is not perfect, especially towards the end, but John Patton Ford managed to realistically describe the social environment and economic pressure in which his characters live. Present-day Los Angeles is the perfect setting for this personal and crime drama. The quality of the film, however, is primarily given by the superb acting performance of Aubrey Plaza, in the role of the anti-heroine turned unlikely criminal. I had noticed her in a previous film where she stood up brilliantly to Michael Caine. Here she has Theo Rossi as her partner, and although he is also an actor with many qualities and charisma, he seems to be in her shadow here. Looking forward to the next John Patton Ford and Aubrey Plaza movies.
‘The New Year That Never Came‘ tells stories from the last two days of non-freedom for the Romanians. It is, incredibly, the debut feature film – at the age of 50! – by director Bogdan Muresanu. A solid, mature, emotional film and a history lesson for those Romanians – alas, too many – who do not know or have forgotten the past of the communist dictatorship. In my opinion, in the history of Romanian cinema, it is a significant film, as was Lucian Pintilie’s ‘Reconstitution’ from 1970. That one was only the second film of Romania’s most important theater and film director in the second half of 20th century.
The action of “The New Year That Never Came” takes place on December 20 and 21, 1989, at the end of the period of the communist dictatorship. The characters of the film, like most of those who lived those times, have neither the feeling nor the hope that they will get to live the change that will take place soon, the fall of communism that had already happened in almost all the countries of Eastern Europe. Even when foreign radio stations announce the protests that started in Timișoara, nothing seems to budge in Bucharest. The Securitate secret police seems all-powerful, the propaganda machine is in full swing, life full of shortages and dominated by fear continues. A Securitate officer manipulates his informants who surveil the lives of students and intellectuals. He also has a mother who is about to be evicted from the house she had lived in all her life, which will be demolished to make way for grandiose buildings in the new city center. A television crew has to urgently change a tribute film to the dictatorship scheduled for New Year’s Eve, in which an actress who had fled to the West appears in the foreground, in a situation reminiscent of the collection of short films ‘Memories from the Golden Age’ of Mungiu. The replacement actress has a crisis of conscience when she is forced to participate in the show. A family enters a crisis after learning that their eight-year-old boy asked in a letter to the communist version of Santa Claus to see Uncle Nicu dead, ‘because that’s what dad wants’. The son of the television director plans to flee the country with a friend across the Danube, the border with Yugoslavia. In the music of Ravel’s Bolero, the narrative planes alternate, the tension builds, the boiling point approaches. Will the mamaliga (Romanian polenta) explode?
I found the narrative construction excellent. At first, the viewer may be a little confused by the multitude of characters and situations, but quite quickly the common denominator (fear, hope suppressed in struggle with resignation, long-repressed anger) and the connections between the characters become clear. For those who lived through that era, the settings and cinematic style create a sense of immersion in the past. All the actors are formidable, but I can’t help mentioning three names: Iulian Postelnicu (who had major roles in at least three good films I’ve seen in the last year), Adrian Vancica and Nicoleta Hâncu. I found the reconstruction of those last days and hours of the dictatorship impressive, with only one major flaw related to the final scene, that of the rally in Palace Square, where a fictional intervention in the key detail of the start of the protest that changed history leaves room for a revisionist interpretation. Romanian cinema has returned, repeatedly, for 35 years now, to the final years of the dictatorship and even to the days when Romania’s fate changed. Several of the resulting films were memorable. “The New Year That Never Came” is a remarkable creation, which adds to this list at a time when politically motivated revisionism fuels the pseudo-nostalgia of those who have forgotten or who did not know the dictatorship.
Iată o ocazie de a cunoaște câteva dintre inteligențele umane care contribuie la revoluția Inteligenței Artificiale (A.I.). Revista săptămânală TIME a publicat în unul dintre numerele sale recente o listă a numelor și biografiilor celor mai influente 100 de personalități din domeniul AI. Aceste liste publicate periodic, cu o frecvență de obicei anuală, au devenit unul dintre punctele de atracție ale publicației întemeiate cu 101 ani în urma de Henry Luce. Linia aceasta este continuată și extinsă de tânărul editor-șef Sam Jacobs, care se află de un an la cârma respectabilei publicații. Intențiile sale clare sunt de a aduce TIME în secolul XXI prin digitizare, prin lărgirea bazei de cititori și, mai ales, prin adăugarea de teme și formate care să atragă. Printre ele se află noua listă a personalităților A.I., aflată acum la a doua ediție. O dovadă a dinamismului domeniului este și faptul că din cei 100 de experți listați cu un an în urmă, doar 9 și-au păstrat locul în ediția 2024 a listei. Cei 100 sunt împărțiți în patru categorii: lideri, inovatori, gânditori și formatori. Fiecare dintre ei ar merita un articol sau un capitol, dar timpul și spațiul rubricii CHANGE.WORLD nu-mi permit să scriu despre toți. Am ales deci 5 figuri care îmi par dintre cele mai marcante și le voi prezenta mai pe larg cititorilor rubricii. Este, desigur, o selecție subiectivă, dar și semnificativă. Comentariile, adăugirile, corecțiile sunt totdeauna binevenite.
(sursa imaginii: Jay Dixit, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons)
Primul nume pe lista mea este cel al unui Gânditor pe care cititorii rubricii îl cunosc din articole scrise de-a lungul anilor. Ray Kurzweill a împlinit în februarie 76 de ani, dar Google nu pare să aibă vreo intenție să-l scoată la pensie. Kurzweill a fost recrutat acolo în 2012 de către Larry Page, co-fondatorul firmei, într-o poziție cu normă întreagă, pentru a „lucra la noi proiecte care implică învățarea automată și procesarea limbajelor”. Page și Kurzweil au convenit asupra unei descrieri a postului care include o singură propoziție: „pentru a aduce înțelegerea limbajului natural la Google”. Programator de formație, Kurzweil și-a câștigat faima în anii ’70, inventând o interfață revoluționară de print-to-speech care permitea nevăzătorilor să folosească tehnicile de calcul. În anii ’80, a adus o contribuție esențială la variantele timpurii ale software-ului care recunoaște vocea umană și o transformă în text. În cele din urmă, a început să scrie despre ceea ce credea că va influența progresele în informatică și comunicații. Predicțiile sale au devenit faimoase. Bill Gates l-a numit ‘omul care prezice cel mai exact viitorul A.I.’. În 1990, Kurzweil a prezis corect că inteligența artificială îl va învinge pe cel mai bun campion de șah înainte de sfârșitul mileniului și că dispozitivele mobile conectate la o rețea globală de informații vor apărea în deceniul care a urmat. În 1999, el a prognozat că până în 2029 calculatoarele vor egala și depăși inteligența umană în fiecare domeniu. Majoritatea celorlalți experți erau sceptici. Prezicerile sale se aproprie de ceea ce vedem că se întâmplă în realitate, deși anul prezis acum de Kurzweil pentru ceea ce el numește ‘singularitate’ este 2045. Cărțile sale, precum „The Singularity is Near / Singularitatea este aproape”, au devenit texte cvasi-sacre, inspirându-i pe mulți lideri actuali în domeniu. În călătoria mea în Statele Unite, din luna trecută, am cumpărat noua sa carte, cu un nume poate mai ușor de prezis: ‘The Singularity is Nearer / Singularitatea este mai aproape”. Am început să o citesc și voi scrie în detaliu despre ea într-un articol viitor al rubricii. Dintre toate beneficiile, Kurzweil pare cel mai pasionat de perspectiva progreselor medicale bazate pe inteligența artificială. Pentru fiecare an de vârstă, spune el, progresele științifice în cercetarea longevității ne oferă aproximativ patru luni de recuperat. Pe măsură ce progresul științific se accelerează datorită inteligenței artificiale, în cele din urmă vom primi mai mult de 12 luni înapoi în fiecare an, astfel încât, în principiu, oamenii vor trăi pentru totdeauna. Aceasta este ceea ce Kurzweil numește „viteza de evadare a longevității”. Aspiră el la o viață fără de moarte? Se zvonește că ia 80 de pastile pe zi pentru a-și oferi cea mai bună șansă de a folosi acest val tehnologic pentru a scăpa de moarte.
În categoria Liderilor, alegerea mea s-a oprit asupra lui Sam Altman. Născut în 1985, Altman este încă una dintre faimoasele figuri ale lumii hi-tech care a abandonat studiile la o instituție de învățământ prestigioasă (în cazul sau, Universitatea Standford, după doar doi ani de studii). În decembrie 2015, Altman a co-fondat OpenAI, o organizație de cercetare a inteligenței artificiale, alături de figuri notabile precum Elon Musk, Jessica Livingston, Ilya Sutskever și Peter Thiel. OpenAI a fost înființat cu scopul de a promova și dezvolta ‘AI prietenoasă în beneficiul umanității’. Organizația a fost finanțată inițial cu un miliard de dolari de către fondatorii săi și alți investitori, inclusiv Microsoft și Amazon Web Services. Succesul lui ChatGPT l-a adus faimă și avere lui Altman, care ocupă poziția de Chief Executive Officer – CEO. În noiembrie 2023 însă, chiar înainte de sărbătoarea de Thanksgiving, a avut loc un incident bizar. Consiliul nonprofit al OpenAI l-a concediat pe Altman, spunând că a fost incorect cu ei în ceea ce privește siguranța sistemelor. Altman a contraatacat și a revenit la locul de muncă în fruntea firmei în doar câteva zile. Pentru mulți observatori însă, inclusiv pentru unii dintre numeroșii săi aliați din Silicon Valley, evenimentele au pătat reputația impecabilă a lui Altman. În 2024, pe lângă promovarea OpenAI prin mai multe produse noi, inclusiv un asistent vocal, un generator video sintetic și un motor de căutare AI, Altman și-a reluat proiectul de a netezi terenul pentru planurile de viitor ale OpenAI. În februarie, a anunțat că solicita până la 7 trilioane de dolari de la investitori, într-o încercare îndrăzneață de a crea un nou producător de cipuri necesare pentru a construi AI de ultimă oră, căutând să contracareze stăpânirea pieței de către Nvidia. În iulie, a publicat un fel de manifest în Washington Post, susținând că, pentru ca democrațiile să reușească împotriva autoritarismului, trebuie să își îmbunătățească securitatea cibernetică, să investească mai profund în hardware-ul AI și să colaboreze cu China la stabilirea normelor globale pentru implementarea AI. Aventura Altman continuă.
Nu doar Sam Altman este nemulțumit de dominația pieței de semiconductoare AI de către o singură firmă – Nvidia. Concurenții ei din domeniul cipurilor super-performante încearcă să reducă avansul pe care l-a dobândit aceasta. Dintre aceștia, cea mai performantă în ultima vreme este Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), corporație multinațională cu sediul în Santa Clara (la fel ca Nvidia). CEO al acestei companii este Lisa Su, care a intrat în lista revistei TIME la categoria Inovatori. Lisa s-a născut în Taiwan în 1969 și a venit în Statele Unite când era copil, împreună cu părinții săi. A învățat și și-a luat doctoratul la Massachussets Institute of Technology (MIT) și a lucrat la Texas Instruments, divizia de cercetare din IBM (unde a ajuns vice-președintă a secției de semi-conductori) și Freescale, înainte de a deveni, în 2014, CEO la AMD, prima femeie care conduce o mare firmă de semiconductori. Deceniul care s-a scurs de atunci a însemnat o redresare a destinului unei firme care părea să-și fi depășit apogeul. Când a preluat cârma companiei, valoarea unei acțiuni era 3 dolari, în momentul în care scriu acest articol este aproximativ 160 de dolari. Sub conducerea ei, AMD a suferit o schimbare remarcabilă, revitalizându-și gama de produse și recâștigând competitivitatea pe piață față de giganții din industrie precum Intel și Nvidia. Strategia lui Su pentru AMD s-a concentrat pe dezvoltarea de produse de calcul și grafică de înaltă performanță, vizând sectoare precum jocurile, centrele de date și inteligența artificială. Această schimbare semnificativă de profil a necesitat o restructurare a proceselor de proiectare a produselor. Decizia lui Su de a dezvolta parteneriate cu alte companii de tehnologie, inclusiv un acord cu Sony pentru PlayStation 5, a jucat un rol esențial în succesele recente ale AMD. În ultimii ani, AMD a încheiat achiziția de 49 de miliarde de dolari a concurentei Xilinx – cea mai mare afacere de achiziție a unei firme de semiconductori din istorie –, precum și achiziția cu 1,9 miliarde de dolari a companiei de rețele de centre de date Pensando. Lisa Su nu crede că interesul pentru AI este exagerat: „La fiecare 10 ani și ceva, vedem un salt major în tehnologie, fie că a fost Internetul, fie PC-ul, fie telefoanele mobile, sau norii. Cred că AI este mai mare decât toate, în ceea ce privește modul în care ne poate afecta cu adevărat viața de zi cu zi, productivitatea, eficiența economică, cercetarea noastră – și suntem doar la începutul ciclului.” AMD continuă să-și extindă profilul AI prin achiziții, bazându-se pe un concept „AI end-to-end”. În iulie, AMD a declarat că achiziționează cel mai mare laborator de inteligență artificială din Europa, Silo AI, într-o afacere în valoare de aproximativ 665 de milioane de dolari. În august, a anunțat că va cumpăra producătorul de echipamente pentru centre de date AI și cloud computing ZT Systems, pentru aproape 5 miliarde de dolari. Aceste tranzacții intensifică rivalitatea AMD cu Nvidia, care are acum un concurent pe măsură.
Din domeniul infrastructurii hardware, să trecem la cel al aplicațiilor, acolo unde se află expertiza Daphnei Koller, următoarea persoană influentă în AI pe care am ales-o, tot din categoria inovatorilor. Daphna s-a născut în 1968 în Israel și a studiat la Universitatea Ebraică din Ierusalim și la Stanford, unde avea să devină mai târziu profesor și să conducă laboratorul de Inteligență Artificială. În 2011, a fost aleasă membru al Academiei Naționale de Inginerie americană, pentru contribuțiile la reprezentarea, inferența și învățarea în modele probabilistice cu aplicații la robotică, viziune și biologie. În 2018, a întemeiat Insitro, un start-up de cercetare medicală, biotehnologică și farmaceutică, unde a început să aplice intens tehnologiile AI, dar și rezultatele cercetărilor sale precedente. Activitățile Daphnei Koller în domeniul AI se bazează pe o teoremă a probabilității din secolul al XVIII-lea, bazată pe regula Bayes, numită după matematicianul Thomas Bayes. Abordarea stă la baza procesului de transformare a unei ipoteze curente despre un eveniment într-o ipoteză mai precisă bazată pe mai multe dovezi. Insitro folosește instrumente de învățare automată pentru a scana mostre genetice de la persoane cu boli precum ALS (boala Lou Gehrig), cancer și scleroză tuberoasă. Apoi încearcă să identifice mecanismele cauzale pe care cercetătorii umani e posibil să le fi omis. Koller descrie procesele de cercetare de la Insitro ca un mediu de colaborare, în care experți în domenii precum învățarea automată, cercetarea bolilor metabolice și genetica statistică lucrează împreună. Cercetarea Insitro asupra bolii hepatice grase nealcoolice a ajuns la teste pe animale și compania intenționează să ceară autorizația pentru un studiu clinic pentru un medicament uman, în lunile următoare. La șase ani de la întemeierea firmei, Daphne Koller este încântată de progresul făcut de Insitro, dar încearcă să rămână în afara publicității care este atât de răspândită în acest domeniu al tehnologiei.
Selecția mea se încheie cu Ilya Sutskever. Născut în 1986 în fosta Uniune Sovietică, Ilya a emigrat în Israel împreună cu familia sa la vârsta de cinci ani și a copilărit la Ierusalim. Și-a început studiile la Universitatea Deschisă din Israel și și le-a continuat la Universitatea din Toronto, după ce familia lui s-a stabilit, în 2002, în Canada. Este unul dintre experții mondiali în domeniile ‘machine learning’ și ‘deep learning’ și co-fondator al lui OpenAI, unde a ocupat poziția de Chief Scientist. În noiembrie 2023, a fost unul dintre membrii consiliului de administrație al OpenAI care l-au concediat pe CEO-ul Sam Altman; Altman s-a întors o săptămână mai târziu, iar Sutskever și-a dat demisia. Plecarea sa a venit în același timp în care alți angajați axați pe siguranță au plecat cu declarații publice mai pesimiste despre cultura de siguranță la OpenAI, care păreau să sublinieze impresia că ceva fundamental s-a schimbat în companie. Echipei pe care o conducea Sutskever, care avea ca scop dezvoltarea unor metode pentru a face AI-urile avansate controlabile, astfel încât să nu distrugă umanitatea, i s-a promis 20% din puterea de calcul a OpenAI pentru a-și face treaba. Promisiunile nu au fost însă respectate, și prioritățile s-au îndreptat spre alte produse, mai spectaculoase, dar mai puțin sigure, cel puțin după declarațiile celor plecați. În timp ce unii analiști pun sub semnul întrebării viitorul lui Open AI, în iunie 2024, Sutskever a fondat împreună cu Daniel Gross și Daniel Levy o nouă companie, numita Safe Superintelligence, care își propune să construiască AI avansată în afara pieței, pentru a evita să rămână „blocat într-o cursă competitivă de șobolani”. Implicația că OpenAI ar fi blocat într-o astfel de cursă de șobolani este afirmația cea mai critică pe care a făcut-o Sutskever în public despre fosta sa firmă. Safe Superintelligence este a treia companie de inteligență artificială – după OpenAI și Anthropic – care a fost fondată de specialiști din industrie cu convingerea că ar putea construi o inteligență artificială superinteligentă mai sigură decât concurenții lor mai puțin responsabili.
Biografiile fiecăreia dintre cele cinci persoane de influență, ca și ale multor altora de pe lista de 100 a revistei TIME sunt fascinante. Fiecare dintre ei are capacități intelectuale remarcabile, spirit de inițiativă, pasiune și credință în viitorul Inteligenței Artificiale. Nu toți îl văd însă la fel, și nici drumurile deschise de ei nu sunt aceleași. Va fi pasionant să-i urmărim și să vedem unde vor ajunge în anii viitori.
(Articolul a apărut iniţial în revista culturală ‘Literatura de Azi’ – http://literaturadeazi.ro/)
