A.I., short for Artificial Intelligence (thank you Steven Spielberg), makes for some of the most interesting characters in science fiction. They’re powerful, emotionless, and often menacing and bent on humanity’s destruction. But regardless of their motivations, we love them anyway. So getting ready for this weekend’s release of Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, we wanted to know: How soon are the robots taking over, and how do they take their coffee?

(Image property of Marvel/Disney)

We spoke with Nathan Sturtevant, Assistant Professor of Computer Science at The University of Denver, about what the future of AI might look like.

Nathan: There are a couple views of what’s going to happen next [in artificial intelligence research]. One view, a number of futurists would propose, is that AI is going to take off in the next 10 to 20 years and we’re going to be some kind of secondary species on earth and our phones and computers will all be smarter than us. I don’t think that’s the broadest view in the scientific community. Perhaps a broader view is in 100 years or so we might have intelligent computers. But we’re not so close to this happening. Or it might not happen at all. Artificial intelligence is growing in its capabilities and in many areas that it was historically bad, its becoming significantly better. But predicting the future is notoriously hard to do.

There is a question of, if we just build a computer that’s as powerful as the brain and connect it up similar to the brain does, some magic is going to occur and it will suddenly be intelligent. That’s not going to happen in the short term. There’s very little worry [in the artificial intelligence community] that it’s going to become sentient.

So good news, Ultron isn’t taking over anytime soon. Bad news is, when they do they’re going to be really good at it. So what might this new robot AI paradise look like? Are humans being turned into batteries? Will they launch us into deep space? Drop nukes on us? Is there any good AI that can save us?

To get a sense of what the future might have in store for us poor humans, we took at look at our favorite AIs in fiction. For … you know … research.

Skynet – The Terminator series

This one’s got it out for humanity. The military A.I. used its newfound self-awareness not for good, but as a reason to drop nuclear bombs on anything human. In fact, it hates humans so much that it sends robots back in time in order to kill them. This A.I. seriously hates us, but we love it.

The Red Queen – Resident Evil

Creepy little girls in zombie movies are creepy enough, until you make them a homicidal A.I. that says things like “you’re all going to die down here” in this super creepy English accent. (photo)

V’Ger – Star Trek: The Motion Picture

V’Ger was originally Voyager 6, a NASA probe that was lost in space, but recovered by a race of machines and was upgraded by them. V’Ger eventually evolved to become self-aware, began focusing on philosophical question it couldn’t answer, and ultimately causing destruction across the galaxy. Way to go, NASA.

Master Control Program – Tron

What began as a simple chess program soon grew and took control of the virtual world of Tron, forcing programs and former heart-throbs Jeff Bridges into gladiatorial games against each other. Much like Sauron, MCP is all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful, and a constant manipulative threat.

The Machines – The Matrix trilogy

While they certainly grew to become more than just a single artificial intelligence, The Machines started as one A.I. program. The Machines dominated the human race, nearly bringing them to extinction, and created a mental prison that turned slaves into energy while they never knew the wiser. That’s messed up, man. (photo)

The Borg – Star Trek franchise

The Borg are a pseudo-species of cyborgs, but while they are large in number, there is no such thing as individuality in the Borg. They are linked together as a collective to work together as a single artificial intelligence bent not on destruction, but on assimilating other species to their own collective. They even have a catchphrase, “resistance is futile.” (photo)

GLaDOS – Portal

A sentient, sarcastic, and menacing super-computer that acts as the antagonist for the game Portal. GLaDOS constantly puts the player into several life-threatening puzzle trials, all while subtly digging at your confidence with witty quips and insults. (photo)

That’s a lot of evil AI! Is there any hope for us measly humans? Can they be trained to do good? Or is their no hope for us left? 

Nathan: There are areas where artificial intelligence can have a positive impact, like speech recognition, which has been very hard for computers. Or image processing. Suddenly we are seeing gains in image recognition that were not thought possible 20 – 30 years go. The computer can look at an image and say, this is a person throwing a Frisbee, and it seems like there’s a lot of cognition that is required to say that. But all of these algorithms have been designed and implemented by human beings. We are just taking advantage of the computing power. 

Which raises an interesting question of where does intelligence come from? 

We don’t just turn on a computer and it suddenly builds an operating system, or Microsoft Word. Programmers have built this software and put their intelligence into it. There’s one thing that I think will happen. 

We’re starting to build computers that can simulate human faces. Were going to give an illusion of intelligence, so you look at the computer or robot and it will give you human expression and play on our human emotions. And we’re going to treat it as if its an intelligent robot, even if its simply a well understood algorithm.

And not all AI’s in fiction are hell bent on destroying the human race. Sometimes their even voiced by Kevin Spacey! Which is exact opposite of human annihilation. And who could forget our personal favorite, JARVIS.

HAL 9000 - 2001: A Space Oddessy

It may not be the most violent or most personable A.I. in film history, but when people think of a sinister A.I. bent on human destruction, they think of HAL 9000. This A.I. is in charge of overseeing the spaceship Discovery One and watches its crew through a bright red, unblinking eye, and speaks in a calm tone no matter how dangerous or dire the situation is. If there was ever an A.I. you didn’t want to run into in an alley, this is the one. (photo)

GERTY 3000 – Moon

Played by Kevin Spacey, this A.I. partially communicates through emoticon, about as close to emotion as an A.I. can get. Acting as a kind of anti-HAL 9000, GERTY 3000 helps our protagonist Sam Rockwell in his lonely mission on the moon.

J.A.R.V.I.S. – Iron Man

Without J.A.R.V.I.S., Iron Man would be just a lonely rich guy who doesn’t help anybody with anything. Loyal, sarcastic, and incredibly helpful when it comes to fighting off space aliens, J.A.R.V.I.S. is everything Siri wishes she could be. (photo)

After all that, I feel like I could use some reassurance. We asked the Professor what the leading minds in Denver/Colorado were experimenting with in the field of artificial intelligence and thankfully it was far less sinister than Matrix machines and HAL 9000.

Nathan: There are a number of schools in [Colorado] with researchers working on different AI programs. Mohammad Mahoor [at the University of Denver] is working on artificially intelligent robots that help autistic children recognize emotions. And there are a lot of our grads and undergrads who are using artificial intelligence to help robots navigate and move about the world. My work focuses on problem solving and game playing, but researchers are going in a lot of different directions with AI.

Now that’s more like it!