Science fiction, for decades, has been about predicting the future--and warning against it. Even as Star Trek envisioned the wonders of flip phones and iPads, Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash warned of the dystopian nature of the metaverse. Throughout 2023, as artificial intelligence has creeped its way into every corner of public, private, and creative life, it's been easy to see the lessons sci-fi tried to teach. On Star Trek: The Next Generation, Data was a bot who worked in harmony with organic beings; Hal 9000, in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, (spoiler) goes all murder-y to save its own life. Too often, it seems like the minds pushing AI watched too much Trek and not enough Kubrick.

Back in 1969 I finally caught 2001: A Space Odyssey in a Cinerama theater in Scottsdale, Arizona. At that point, the film had been running in that theater for over a year. I had longed to see it since its release in 1968 (I remember seeing it on the marquee of a theater in downtown Indianapolis), but when we visited relatives in Phoenix the following summer the opportunity finally presented itself. After the crescendo of its end, and the credits that ran to the tune of Johann Strauss' "The Blue Danube," I stepped out of the theater in a fog, completely stunned. From the hype I had heard about the film I was expecting something of an ambitious, up-to-date Destination Moon.

Aliens, astronauts, time travel--you name it, there's a dazzling sci-fi film about it. That makes compiling a list of the best sci-fi nearly impossible. It's almost impossible to know where to start--or where to stop. To understand where sci-fi films came from, you need to head back to the dawn of the cinema age. Right at the beginning, Metropolis, released in 1927, used groundbreaking visuals to create a reference point for all future urban dystopias--it's no fluke, for example, that the aesthetic of Blade Runner bears more than a passing resemblance to Fritz Lang's prophetic city hellscape. Then along came War of the Worlds (1953), a gripping tale of alien invasion adapted from H. G. Wells' classic novel. In 1964, Dr. Strangelove did more than most films before or since to ossify the fear of a nuclear holocaust. Below is WIRED's ever-evolving selection of the sci-fi movies everyone should watch, from the obscure to the hugely influential. You may also enjoy our guides to the best sci-fi books of all time and the best space movies. This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from. When Alfonso Cuarón wrote the screenplay for Gravity, he wasn't setting out to make a film about space itself. Rather, he was interested in exploring the concepts of adversity and human resilience, with space as a secondary background. But it was hard for audiences to not be wowed by the visuals in this Oscar-winning film about two scientists (George Clooney and Sandra Bullock) who find themselves stranded in space, and what they must endure in order to get safely back to Earth.

If you've watched a classic, landmark sci-fi movie and you were blown away by the quality and realism of its effects, then there's a good chance Douglas Trumbull's name is in the credits. The VFX pioneer, who passed away on February 8th, 2022, has worked on key films in the sci-fi canon. Even a short version of his resume would have to include 2001: A Space Odyssey, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Blade Runner and Silent Running. To have worked on one of those in your lifetime would have been a big deal, but to have contributed to all of them speaks to just how much work Trumbull did to push the artform forward. Trumbull was the son of an artist and engineer, Donald Trumbull, who worked on VFX for The Wizard of Oz.

Originally to be helmed by Stanley Kubrick before the baton was passed over to Steven Spielberg, A.I. Artificial Intelligence is emblazoned with visual motifs indicative of both filmmakers' catalogs. Though Kubrick died two years before the film's release, the distinct essence of both filmmakers is palpable due to Spielberg's script closely following the original treatment from Kubrick's fledgling work on the project in the '70s. Though many critics have unduly attributed certain aspects of A.I.'s contrasting tone of surreal, uncanny darkness and whimsical adventure to the wrong directors, the exploration of these two realms and the moral dilemmas they pose on a futuristic, dystopian level are never more tangible than when delving into the construction of gender. Against public misconception, Spielberg remains faithfully fixated on the sinister ethical conundrums presented in A.I., unsettling audiences with the implications of this far-off 2141 society outsourcing human emotions to machines. During the opening sequence of the film, an otherwise supplementary character simply credited as "female colleague" (April Grace) raises an uncomfortable philosophical question.

"I thought this would be hard for you to understand. You were created to be so young." This heartbreaking line arrives toward the end of AI: Artificial Intelligence, many centuries after David, an uncommonly sophisticated mechanical child (or "Mecha"), has embarked on a quest to become "a real boy", like Pinocchio, and reunite with the human mother he's been programmed to love. The years have not aged him, of course. He is eternally young, incapable of acquiring the wisdom and perspective that come with age.

Martin Taylor is the Deputy CEO and Co-Founder of Content Guru. Siri and Alexa -- the robots we couldn't live without. Throughout the pandemic, these voice assistants have proven invaluable to many, as users turned towards Alexa and Google Assistant for entertainment, education and emotional help. In fact, according to one survey, 3 in 5 users believe that their voice assistant has helped them get through isolation, and 40% will continue to use their digital assistants more as a result of the pandemic. These smart assistants are so effective because they're driven by artificial intelligence (AI).

There's another Kubrick science–fiction project that received a similarly puzzled critical reception to 2001, and which is overdue for reappraisal. AI: Artificial Intelligence, which came out 13 years ago, was developed by Kubrick and latterly with Steven Spielberg, a perfect fear–and–wonder pairing. The film is an Oedipal fairy tale about a robot boy called David driven by his programming to seek a mother's love. It's equal parts Pinocchio and Frankenstein and, like those stories, is fascinated less by the creator than their creation. David, perfectly played by Haley Joel Osment, is a new brand of "mecha", or humanoid robot, invented by a Dr Hobby (William Hurt) as a kind of child–surrogate.

In this chapter, we give an introduction to symbolic artificial intelligence (AI) and discuss its relation and application to multimedia. We begin by defining what symbolic AI is, what distinguishes it from non-symbolic approaches, such as machine learning, and how it can used in the construction of advanced multimedia applications. We then introduce description logic (DL) and use it to discuss symbolic representation and reasoning. DL is the logical underpinning of OWL, the most successful family of ontology languages. After discussing DL, we present OWL and related Semantic Web technologies, such as RDF and SPARQL. We conclude the chapter by discussing a hybrid model for multimedia representation, called Hyperknowledge. Throughout the text, we make references to technologies and extensions specifically designed to solve the kinds of problems that arise in multimedia representation.

With opening of Doctor Sleep this past weekend, we are reminded of the visionary genius of Stanley Kubrick. His powerful impact on art, technology and, yes, even humanity itself remains. Perhaps his most profound contribution was his science-fiction masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey, which was produced in 1968 and was based on the novel (and previously, the short story "The Sentinel") by Arthur C. Clarke. The film explores human evolution, existentialism and, notably, artificial intelligence. This is pure visual poetry about the relationship between man and technology. In many ways, this piece of art inspired today's technology, which is now inspiring today's "art."