Thomas Middledtich Leads AI Scripted Sci-Fi Short, Sunspring

We haven't quite reached Terminator's Judgment Day, but there's no doubt that technological advancement has lead to countless gadgets and computer programs that have taken over jobs that used to belong to humans (I used to be a projectionist, which is all but extinct in the age of digital). Director Oscar Sharp, producers Allison Friedman, Andrew Kortschak, Andrew Swett, and Silicon Valley star Thomas Middledtich teamed up to create the short film Sunspring – a nonsensical piece written by anLSTM recurrent neural network. Along with "technologist collaborator" Ross Goodwin, the team set out to build "Jetson", a machine that could write screenplays. They fed the neural network hundreds of science fiction scripts, from TV and film, and proceeded to shoot and edit Jetson'scrazypants script over the course of 48 hours for the Sci-Fi London 48 Hour Film Challenge. "The question for us is, Can a computer write a screenplay that will win a competition?", says the filmmaker over the credits.