Archive

We live in an amazing time, when artificial intelligence has become our friend and companion. We ask it to help put together a schedule, write a text for us, find the best restaurant in town, and some people even trust it with managing their finances and projects.

For most people it is just a slightly more complex kind of calculator, and to some extent that is true. But will we notice the moment we cross that invisible line between a calculator and a machine endowed with consciousness, and possibly feelings? And how will we react, considering that we have not even learned to respect human feelings yet?

Archive is a sci-fi story about an engineer who lost his wife in a car accident and is trying to bring her back to life. The plot is familiar and well worn, isn’t it? We have seen it many times. And it would seem that if you strip away the beautifully built visuals, you already know everything that comes next. But somehow the director found interesting details that gave me a new image of both the main character and the characters who represent AI. There is a special kind of love in this story that reminded me what it means to be human.

I will admit that I guessed the ending: the director leaves clues generously along the way, and I followed them like tracks. But the pleasure came from the journey itself. Somewhere along the way the film showed me what relationships with artificial intelligence can look like and opened up a side I had never thought about before. It will come back to me every time I start a conversation with an AI.