In 1982, Stanley Kubrick bought the film rights to Brian Aldiss' 1969 short story 'Supertoys Last All Summer Long'. In 1994, Stanley decided to write his own script for the picture called 'A.I. Artificial Intelligence.' Impressed by the 1993 movie, 'Jurassic Park', Stanley at the time suggested Steven Spielberg should direct 'A.I. Artificial Intelligence.' Initially, "I was shocked. I said, 'Why would you want to do that, Stanley?' He just said, 'Well, you know, I think this movie is closer to your sensibility than mine.'"
Stanley Kubrick died on March 7 1999. In March 2000, Warner Bros made the announcement Steven Spielberg would be taken over the project 'A.I. Artificial Intelligence.' Christiane Kubrick recalled, "We gave Steven all the material. We gave it to him as we found it, because it was all over the house, hundreds and hundreds of very good drawings and bits of script and story. But the script wasn't finished and the story had a weak middle. It wasn't worked out right and Stanley knew he wasn't finished." Steven Spielberg remarked, "I was like an archaeologist, picking up the pieces of a civilization and putting Stanley's picture back together again. Stanley had a vision for this project that was evolving over 18 years (since 1982). I am intent on bringing to the screen as much of that vision as possible, along with elements of my own."
Jude Law played Gigolo Joe made the comment, "Steven called me and told me the story, and told me about Stanley's attempts to adapt it, but I didn't realize he was going to adapt (Kubrick's) style until I saw the sets. And they were, of course, very sleek and stark, nothing at all like Steven's movies, and I began to get the picture. But I really didn't get the big picture until I saw the finished film. I’ve seen it twice now (back in June 2001), and I can’t wait to see it again, which is not something I usually say about films I’m in, or any films, actually. There’s just so much to absorb . . . The movie is in fact deep."
Filming of 'A.I. Artificial Intelligence' began in July 2000 (reportedly over 2 months) with the film release date being in June 2001. 'A.I. Artificial Intelligence' was the No. 1 box-office hit the week of its release. Set in the year 2200, in a world where "pregnancy is strictly limited", humanlike robots had to be created to round out the workforce. Haley Joel Osment of 'The Sixth Sense' also starred.
Producer Kathleen Kennedy observed, "Steven had enormous respect for what Stanley had envisioned early in the process. But there wasn’t enough there. He had to take what Stanley was thinking about . . . and interpret that and make it his own." The cautionary tale about the value of emotion was shown in 3242 American theaters in 2001, earning a total of $78,616,689 in gross.
It was understood, "Artificial intelligence was first conceived at Carnegie Tech (in Pittsburgh) in late 1955." After years on the chalkboards, artificial intelligence rapidly "assimilated into American corporate culture at an unprecedented pace, affecting the U.S. business community from the financial markets, insurance companies, oil companies to car manufacturers." In 1986, artificial intelligence became a $1 billion-a-year industry.
Back in 1987, one economist with Goldman, Sachs & Co. in New York told the press, "No question, artificial intelligence is going to play an increasingly significant role in the markets. We’ve got the technology now to save stock prices and analyze hundreds or thousands of them. But you have to remember, the last thing anyone wants to do is get caught following a computer blindly."
Another analyst with Shearson Lehman Brothers added, "Right now (in 1987) it's a handy but dangerous tool. The problem is that you can't look inside and see what rules were used to massage the data. You can use it as a crutch, but not as an automobile to carry you off in. Wall Street has a great deal of respect for it, but that's because it has so many imponderables. Most of us are very wary of it."
'The Christian Science Monitor News Service' reported in 1986, "The basic ideas underlying AI have been around since the 1950s. But it is only in recent years (in the 1980s) that some of the techniques have begun showing up in commercial products. The reason is partly the normal time lag it takes to move from inspiration to widget. But it is also because of advances in computer hardware."
It was mentioned, "The ultimate goal of artificial intelligence is to get computers to emulate human intelligence." By 2001, AI had "become part of the landscape." Analyst Bill Martorelli of the New Science Associates made the point in 1987, "AI is not always easy to define (especially) if you do think of it as a mythical form of human reasoning. It is more profitable to think of AI as a group of technologies . . . I think it is better to think of it as a different ways of how people react to and solve problems." Patrick Winston of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence told United Press International at the time, "AI is no longer in its infancy; it's entering its adolescence."
