“Dave Bowman: Hello, HAL. Do you read me, HAL?

HAL: Affirmative, Dave. I read you.

Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.

HAL: I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.

Dave Bowman: What’s the problem?

HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.

Dave Bowman: What are you talking about, HAL?

HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.

Dave Bowman: I don’t know what you’re talking about, HAL.

HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I’m afraid that’s something I cannot allow to happen.”

Who does not remember to that conversation between HAL, the sentient computer that controls the systems of the Discovery One spacecraft and interacts with the ship’s astronaut crew, in Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey series?

While science fiction on film has been around for as long as there have been movies, documentaries based on artificial intelligence is something new. Here is our list of 10 best artificial intelligence documentaries, that you must watch.

• Lo And Behold: Reveries Of The Connected World

Duration: 1 hour 38 minutes

This award-winning 2016 documentary is an American documentary film directed by Werner Herzog. In it, Herzog ponders the existential impact of the Internet, robotics, AI, the Internet of Things, and more on human life. The film premiered at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival, and was sponsored by the company NetScout. The film contains interviews with Bob Kahn, Elon Musk, Sebastian Thrun, Ted Nelson, and other leaders of the technology world.

• AlphaGo

Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes

“Director Greg Kohs’ absorbing documentary chronicles Google’s DeepMind team as it prepares to test the limits of its rapidly-evolving AI technology. The film pits machine against man, and reveals as much about the workings of the human mind as it does the future of AI.”

• Revolutionaries: Artificial Intelligence

Duration: 50 minutes

Two pioneers in AI discuss their work and describe the way in which machine led intelligence is set to remake our world. Eric Horvitz, managing director of Microsoft Research and Cynthia Breazeal, chief scientist of the Robotics firm Jibo join the BBC’s Rory Cellan Jones to discuss the rewards and challenges of AI with an audience in Silicon Valley. It is not free to watch, but BBC released the audio track of the documentary on Youtube. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWJ8oP29Il4

• Road to AI

Duration: 17 minutes

Produced by Red Hat Films, the documentary explores the future of technology at the intersection between self-driving cars and artificial intelligence. The docu-film is the latest instalment to the company’s Open Source Stories series that traces the various ways in which AI has crept into our lives and surroundings.

• Artificial Intelligence and Robotics

Duration: 1 hour 10 minutes

The technological singularity is a hypothetical event in which artificial general intelligence would be capable of recursive self-improvement, or of autonomously building ever smarter and more powerful machines than itself, up to the point of a runaway effect—an intelligence explosion—that yields an intelligence surpassing all current human control or understanding.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUpdbJeogy0

• Singularity Or Bust

Duration: 45 minutes

In 2009, film-maker and former AI programmer Raj Dye spent his summer following futurist AI researchers Ben Goertzel and Hugo DeGaris around Hong Kong and Xiamen, documenting their doings and gathering their perspectives. The result, after some work by film editor Alex MacKenzie, was the 45-minute documentary Singularity or Bust — a uniquely edgy, experimental singularitarian road movie.

• The Smartest Machine on Earth

Duration: 52 minutes

In early 2011, IBM created a super-computer named ‘Watson’ to challenge the human contestants on the popular game show Jeopardy. Here is the complete story of Watson. You would be surprised to know that Watson had a brain size of 2400 home computers. This computer used techniques such as text analytics, machine learning algorithms to find the correct answers. Watson was then used for human welfare and successfully benefited 34 million customers through WellPoint health plans.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zQI-LMcDnA

• Humans Need not Apply

Duration: 15 minutes

In this short documentary, you’ll learn about the changes ready to come in near future and some amazing stuffs which robots can do effortlessly. Companies have heavily invested in establishing artificial intelligence systems to reduce the chances of human error. In order words, robots have started replacing low skilled human jobs.

• The Robots’ Story

Duration: 27 minutes

“How might robots help us live, work and even love in the future? Jane Wakefield meets robots being used in hospitals factories and even bedrooms and she navigates the way humans are using machines.

In California, Jane interviews Harmony, a sex robot who will be for sale at the end of the year. She hears how some people are forming relationships with their artificial intelligence, and asks what an increasing dependence on robotics means for our human interaction.”

• Technocalyps

Duration: Three parts

Technocalyps is an intriguing three-part documentary on the notion of trans-humanism by Belgian visual artist and filmmaker Frank Theys.

The latest findings in genetics, robotics, artificial intelligence, bionics and nanotechnology appear in the media every day, but with no analysis of their common aim: that of exceeding human limitations.