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Comment by apples_oranges | Hacker News Reader

I believe advances in AI will make the core plot idea of the film obsolete. It is a good movie, but even the most genetically perfect human will probably not have a fraction of the intelligence of AI. He will be, relatively speaking, a mere dummy like the rest of us. Thus the future as shown in this film will not happen.

However, good sci-fi is actually always about the present. And the movie has a lot of interesting things to say about the human condition in the late 1990s and now.

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The elite in Gattaca weren't genetically perfect (i.e. the upper echelon of a race born by natural chance), they were genetically engineered. There's a big difference here. Humans are biological computers. There's no reason we can't be made like computers too, with features added that give us the same advantages as silicon machines. In fact it's more likely that silicon machines will become more like us, due to the density, three-dimensionality, power efficiency, and antifragility of our wetware, which is the product of eight billion years of natural selection rather than a century of industrialization. So I think Gattaca is entirely plausible, although it wouldn't surprise me if the oppression ends up happening in the complete opposite direction, where the genetically engineered superior creatures aren't granted human status and instead used as a slave caste by the faith births who wield their unfairly inherited wealth and power.

I am not so sure of that future. I do believe that AI will have incredible capabilities. I also think the human race would destroy the planet trying to maintain control. We will do everything possible to make AI a slave to our wills, up to and including genetically engineering ourselves to brain-computer interface with and dominate AIs if that’s what it takes.

I understand the established narrative is that AI will zoom past us and subjugate us before we even realize it. I saw we would never go down without a fight and our survival and domination instinct is more powerful than any machine.

From what I remember the film didn't focus on intelligence. The main character suffers from genetic disorders that affect his health and lifespan, plus discrimination based on his 'invalid' status. All of that is still very relevant regardless of any progress with AGI.

IQ was mentioned a couple times in the film, and the main character was shown studying very hard to keep up with his job. The fact that it wasn't the sole focus of the selection program was a consequence of the whole society wanting to do it. It wasn't a bunch of super-nerds doing something weird, the idea was that every part of our society's conception of achievement and "human quality" had been folded in to the nightmare, which made it inescapable.

Fair enough, but health and fitness are not just for sport and culture. It's practical; you don't want your astronauts to have medical emergencies in space. Similarly, if you put resources into training them you'd rather they didn't die at 30 due to poor genetics.

If any new tech threatens to render the premise obsolete, it's robotics. Not sending humans to space in the first place avoids the issue of selecting astronauts at all.

Well, you have to be open to a little symbolism in films. "Astronaut" is a universally recognized symbol of someone who is fit and highly educated, and who had passed a lot of tests to gain access to an esteemed position.

Totally agree, the actual theme of the film is pretty timeless. I was just entertaining the "obsolescence" debate

The wealthiest classes in the world will select their kids to be genetically superior to others in many ways.

A 'natural' human will be so inferior to these people that they can only exist in subclass

That is the message of the movie.

> perfect human will probably not have a fraction of the intelligence of AI.

Yes.. but he will still be operational even when the electricity is interrupted, which will make him look light years ahead of the AI. The "AI" will always have this problem. Until it gets a body and an internal power source it won't match our capabilities, and even then, most likely.. it will start to share some of our vulnerabilities and common ends.

As if AI would somehow be unconstrained from the limits of physical engineering.

An AGI will very quickly understand how to create a body and self-sustaining solar or nuclear energy source for itself, far more independent than our needs of water, food, oxygen, and warmth.

What are you basing this on?

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