Colossus: The Forbin Project

Oh man, the Golden Age of science fiction movies, just two years after 2001: A Space Odyssey and five years before the start of the Blockbuster era[0] with Jaws (1975) and Star Wars (1977).

I feel like Science Fiction back then was purely understood as psychological concepts and ambiguous desires, mostly questioning the very essence of reality and our human minds. There were intelligences and ambitions in us that felt alien, but weren't extraterrestrial in kind. I always thought of it as if Science Fiction tried to turn any progress from the Age of Enlightenment inside out.

A great gem is also World on a Wire (1973)[1], which takes the concept of a machine controlled intelligence and questioned whether we're living in a simulation and are already influenced by a virtual world.

My favorite quote from Colossus: The Forbin Project, after Dr. Forbin is held hostage by Colossus:

  Colossus:   How many nights a week do you require sex?
  
  Dr. Forbin: Every night.
  
  Colossus:   Not want. Require...
  
  Dr. Forbin: [looks sheepish] Four times.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_on_a_Wire

Readers (who haven't hearof it) might also be interested in a short story (published 1909) by E. M. Forster called "The Machine Stops".

It "predicted technologies and cultural impacts similar to instant messaging, social media, and the Internet." (WPedia)

Apart from a 10-minute UK TV adaptation in 2009, ( https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1451714/ ) text and audiobook versions are widespread.

Back when I worked as a civil engineer I had a coworker named Joe. He was... I think 78. Poor guy didn't save up enough for retirement so he worked a bit part time. He knew the ins and outs of the field better than anyone, but had no idea how to use a computer (he marked up drawings and I put them into CAD). He mentioned this movie to me as AI (gpt) had just become a thing saying "it'll scare the hell out of you", and he recommended I watched it - I'm glad I did! Great guy, always told funny stories - "I was not a great dad but I was a damn wonderful grandpa!"

I rewatched this recently; I think it held up well. It’s probably re-entered the zeitgeist given the recent developments in “AI” and “agents”. So far accidents seem to have destroyed only data, but it’s only a matter of time before some fool hooks up an “AI agent” to a missile.

Much of the film was shot at the Lawrence Hall of Science in the hills above Berkeley, California. This building was probably chosen because of its unique brutalist hexagonal architecture. I spent a bunch of time there as a kid.

Eric Braeden (Forbin) is still alive, but his house in Pacific Palisades burned down in the 2025 fires. :-(

Definitely see this. The 1970s hardware is archaic, but the concept is still relevant.

So is the scale. For the 1980s and 1990s, the huge Colossus system seemed obsolete. The age of the personal desktop computer had arrived.

Now Colossus looks small compared to Amazon's AI training system from 2025.

(No spoilers)

I had 2 main fridge-logic issues which made it very difficult for me to suspend disbelief and limited my enjoyment of the film:

First: Colossus' is only able to implement its plan because the US, and US-aligned nuclear powers, agree to subordinate their entire nuclear arsenals to Colossus' full-authority defence control, with no means of overriding it; and with its computing hardware sealed in an impenetrable fortress (no maintenance access?).

Second: Colossus' plan - and its ultimate actions - assume everyone else on earth is a nuclear-disarmed-rational-actor, all solely interested in not-dying-at-Colossus's-hand - which is an unworkable assumption.

Unfortunately, the story is driven by these 2 points - without either then the film's story would just be yet-another-cliché-movie where the plucky humans beat the advanced AI overlord, the end.

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I still like _Colossus_ because it's "different" to all the other 20th century films with an AI character (c.f. tripe like Will Smith's _I, Robot_ or the Matrix sequels).

Great film, I thought. The ending is quite dark—and then Colossus tells Forbin that he will come to love him…

Turns out it is prescient. The film was based on the first book of a trilogy. You can look up the plot of the following two novels if you want spoilers, but indeed, Forbin does have a reconsideration of Colossus.

I would love to see the whole trilogy filmed.

"5 years of Caltech in 5 minutes" elicited a huge laugh from movie night at Caltech in the 70s.

Rollerball has the central premise that society is outsourcing all decisions to a central computer and everybody just blindly follows, to the point where nobody checks whether it’s functioning properly.

First time I watched it I thought it was beyond far fetched. In the age of LLMs I’m not so sure anymore.

I've been joking at work that the 70's was filled with cautionary tales about AI that we should be listening to.

(Except for Demon Seed. That one jumped the shark - but I did love their rendition of what an AI data center looks like)

Back in the late 90s the Michigan Tech CS labs had 2 preferred machines for students to remote into, Colossus and Guardian.

I always enjoyed the reference as well as this movie’s a kid!

I cottoned onto the film a couple years ago after Ready Player One’s Ernest Cline recommended it on a Weaponized podcast. I like that the exterior facility shots were filmed at Lawrence Hall of Science in Berkeley. In the film context I really would construe it as projecting some sort of Cold-War era “secure government science facility” architectural archetype. When one learns about the career arc of E.O.Lawrence, the stylistic allusion to Cold War science feels all the more fitting. Viz. Lawrence Livermore lab has the reputation today of being the more secure, clandestine lab, while nearby Lawrence Berkeley Lab (LBL) has the reputation of being the stand-up academic science lab that welcomes international academic all-comers. But prior to Lawrence Livermore’s founding (like while Edward Teller was closer to the then Berkeley Rad Lab, now LBL). And so for several years, 1940s to at least the early 1950s, Berkeley Rad Lab would have been possessed of what would become those same Livermore-esque secure spooky Cold War science vibes.

I've always wondered if it was perhaps the inspiration for the novel Neuromancer (2 AI's in different continents plotting to combine with each other to form a global super-intelligence)

Great film, but I think it suffered at the box office because of the klunky title.

A favorite film of mine. I was very happy when a decent quality bluray became available a few years back. I know someone who uses "Warn. There is another system." as an alternative to "Hello, world".

I've wondered if D.F.Jones knew of the British Colossus code breaking system and named his computer that to tweak the security people. They couldn't really object, since Colossus was still a secret. Jones was in the British military and it's not impossible that he knew of the project.

And when that movie played on the Caltech campus in the early 70s, everyone waited for the point when the US and Russian computer started exchanging a private language and one engineer exclaims "That's like five years at Caltech in thirty seconds!" The entire theatre exploded and my ears hurt from the screams.

Also see: Failsafe. An earlier film.

Both seem to be influences of War Games.

Yeah, agent guardrails has been an issue for a long time now :)

fyi: https://telehack.com/

Great film. I would like to see a remake in modern terms

I came to this film late. Somehow, despite being quite active at the time of its release, I never knew of it until a colleague turned me onto it in the 90s.

Watching it with the benefit of 20 years of history, the influence on subsequent films, like Skynet, was obvious.

I loved the film, and think fondly of my departed colleague when it is mentioned, but I can't bear to watch it often. Like Cassandra, sci-fi films keep showing us a path that we should avoid and as a society we keep saying "Oooh! Candy!" and barreling down that path.

I never thought I'd witness a Butlerian revolution but I'm expecting that next.

Anyone made this connection? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_(supercomputer)

I thought US was going to be about how uncanny this is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_(supercomputer)

Reminds me of Alex from "The Bionic Woman" Doomsday Is Tomorrow: Part 2 (TV Episode 1977)

Actually, found it online :)

off topic, but i should mention; this post caused the opposite of a slash-dot-effect.

The torrent now have over 50 seeders from the usual 5.

Thanks, i guess.

This movie is not available as video-on-demand where I live. I could rent it on DVD though. And buy a DVD player.

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This movie is a terrible bore, but the concept and set is awesome.

The GOAT.

Tangential: movies are not necessarily the best medium for cautionary tales about super-intelligence, with their penchant for hiding educated reasoning and their need for showy visual effects that always age poorly but get all the viewer's attention. Writing, on the other hand, can do the trick. The same way American schools have periodic rehearsals for "if a shooter comes," they should have a mandatory exercise to "write your own story that features super-intelligence." It might make the kids think[^1].

[^1]: Even if, or especially if, they let ChatGPT write it.