AI Secret Hidden in Ari Aster's 'Eddington': Unraveling the Enigma of an AI Easter Egg
In the gripping movie "Eddington", directed by Ari Aster, the theme revolves around our troubled relationship with technology. Set against the backdrop of a small town in Texas during the COVID-19 pandemic, the story unfolds around a controversial installation of a new data center named SolidGoldMagikarp.
This data center, a physical manifestation of the internet's dominance over the characters' lives, is named after a rogue word, possibly referencing the impact of technology on society and a warning of future developments. The triumphant dark force in the movie is none other than the internet itself, with the town's inhabitants caught in its data-driven machinations.
The movie stars Pedro Pascal as the town's mayor, Joaquin Phoenix as local sheriff Joe Cross, and other notable actors. The character of SolidGoldMagikarp, as a "glitch token", symbolizes the unpredictable and potentially harmful effects of unforeseen inputs in AI models or technology in general.
Glitch tokens are tokens that a language model encounters which it wasn't trained on, and can produce strange behavior in the program. In "Eddington", when SolidGoldMagikarp was entered into a language model, it produced bizarre results, such as babbling nonsense, uttering oblique phrases, and displaying aggressive behavior.
The concept of SolidGoldMagikarp is based on a real-life AI development term. Rumbelow and her research partner, Matthew Watkins, discovered the glitch token SolidGoldMagikarp. According to Rumbelow, the AI doesn't know what to do with the input of SolidGoldMagikarp because it wasn't seen during the model's training process.
Tokenization, the process of translating human text into numerical data for machine consumption in AI training, plays a crucial role in this narrative. A tokenizer can be compared to a software compiler that translates human input into binary code. Tokenization can make the effort to process large amounts of data more efficient and less costly.
In "Eddington", the human characters become the emissaries, pawns, or victims of the data center. The movie highlights the potential dangers of unchecked technology and its influence on society, communication, and identity, especially during times of social turmoil. The glitch token "SolidGoldMagikarp" serves as a symbolic bridge between technical AI anomalies and the film’s broader themes about technology’s destabilizing grip on society, communication, and identity during fraught contemporary times.
- The theme of artificial intelligence is subtly woven into the story of "Eddington", as the character of SolidGoldMagikarp, a "glitch token", symbolizes the unpredictable and potentially harmful effects of unforeseen inputs in AI models or technology in general.
- Rumbelow and her research partner, Matthew Watkins, discovered the glitch token SolidGoldMagikarp in their AI development work, a reminder that AI doesn't always behave as expected when encountering data it wasn't trained on.
- The movie "Eddington" underscores the dangers of space – not the cosmos, but the digital realm – as it portrays the internet itself as a dark, powerful force that can easily manipulate people's lives.
- The concept of SolidGoldMagikarp serves as a bridge between technical AI anomalies and the broader themes of the movie, illustrating how technology's destabilizing grip can impact society, communication, and identity, particularly during times of social upheaval, much like the COVID-19 pandemic depicted in the film.
