WarGames

Hi, for this entry I’m going to talk about a 1983 movie directed by John Badham called WarGames. The story told in the movie is in the times of the cold war. Basically, there is a gifted and very skilled kid (talking about computers) who were able to hack the US Government defense computer. That computer was expected to be capable of analyzing and taking decisions, kind of machine learning, because, over time, it was learning. The genius kid, David Lightman, just wanted to enter to that computer just to play games, in this case, “Global Thermonuclear War”. The game started and, in order to stop the arrival of the 3rth World War, David and the creator stopped the machine.

I had never seen this movie before, actually just heard about it one time in the novel we’re reading for this class (Ready Player One). This movie surprised me, despite the fact that I saw it 40 years approximately after its release. A computer capable of learning by itself and by the time? and also capable of starting a world war? Nowadays machine learning is a field that is growing, and each time used more, but in a specific way or with a specific goal or field. I got really impressed that for so many years we have already thought about that and wanting a computer to learn from us or to learn by itself, facts and failures, but I think that those goals are driving us our own failure or even destruction.

At the end of the movie, it was emphasized that there are games, things or wars impossible to win and that was the only thing that a computer cannot understand. “Sometimes the only way to win is no playing at all”. I really agree with that message because people and computers competitiveness and avarice are what is going to end with us. 

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