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Episode 07: “Stick”

“You can keep the sticks, you’re gonna need ‘em!”

Opening Credits

Ninjas.. not quite what I expected to start off the episode. This ‘blind ninja’ is stalking someone in a office building in Japan, and asks about “Black Sky”. He finds out that it was taken to New York City.

(Tune in to the TV Soup Podcast - Daredevil, "Stick" & "Shadows in the Glass" Review) 

We don’t know that the ninja is blind until after the middle-aged looking office guy has been decapitated. Cool way to unveil the character – and of course there are some parallels there to the other blind guy that we have gotten to know.. Matt Murdock.

Stick

Matt wastes no time going after the next bad guy in line (Leland Owlsley), but ends up writhing on the floor of a parking garage after being tasered in the process of interrogating Owlsley. Turns out, he was distracted by the tapping sounds of a walking stick.. Stick reveals himself shortly afterward and wastes no time either, proceeding to mock Matt’s unsuccessful altercation.

The relationship between Stick and Murdock is a rough one – Stick found him at a young age in an orphanage (the motivation behind which is still undetermined) and took him under his wing for training. It’s obvious the amount of skill that Stick has in using his senses to ‘see’ the world around him much better than even a normal person can (demonstrated by describing the specific dairies and chemicals, etc contained within a single taste of ice cream).

It’s great that Stick wants to train Matt and pass on these abilities, although Stick lets on early that he is being trained for a war that is yet to come. When Stick goes back to Matt’s house with him, he further rails into Matt because he believes that one should not become ‘soft’. Relationships, silk sheets and other material items will only lead to your death, he says.

After a physical confrontation with Stick that gives us some more glimpses into their relationship years ago, Matt agrees to help him find and destroy ‘Black Sky’ but only if killing is not a part of the plan.

Foggy & Karen

Back at the homestead, Foggy goes on a tirade about the “devil of Hell’s Kitchen.” Seems the public opinion of this man in a mask has turned sour very quickly, mostly due to Wilson Fisk’s well-timed disaster-on-demand and the city’s need for a scapegoat, blaming it on Daredevil.

Karen goes out once more to search for answers – this time to Elena’s apartment – and when she leaves she is met head on by several thugs. The only way she survives is because Foggy had followed her and was able to put them out of commission with his softball bat. Looks like he’s got a pretty good swing. Still, Karen is not happy about the situation – she would prefer to keep her secrets to herself. Like most people in this series, except for maybe Foggy. He seems like an open book.

We also find out that Karen has told Foggy all about her and Ben’s investigation, much to Ben’s chagrin. Karen insists that he is trustworthy, though, and it looks like Karen now has a whole team on her hands.

The Docks

Seems like most comic book series’ find themselves at the docks from time to time. I mean I get it, people are always shipping the darndest things. In this case, we find out that Black Sky.. ‘bringer of shadows’ as referred to earlier, is really a boy. At one point, Stick takes aim at the kid with a bow but Matt notices his actions and is able to deflect the arrow before it gets to its intended target. Daredevil also gets a new weapon, a pair of wooden batons that Stick gives to him.

Surprise, surprise – Stick reveals later at Matt’s house that he had already killed Black Sky and that it wasn’t a child, but a weapon. Unrelenting in his belief that killing is never necessary, Matt attacks Stick and this time is able to take him down convincingly – perhaps for the first time in their history. Although Matt is furious, Stick is actually pleased that Matt is finally able to defeat him.

We are not specifically introduced to the character that is revealed at the end of this episode, but we know that he is a well-built, heavily scarred man that is familiar with Stick and with Matt. He asks Stick if Matt will be ready, and received the foreboding response, ”I don’t know”.

Episode 08: “Shadows in the Glass”

All About That Fisk

Every good superhero show is made so not only because of the merits of the hero, but also because of the villain. How awesome is he, and how believable his backstory? In this case, Fisk has been built up to be a larger than life character and all of this violence and insecurity that has so far been revealed requires an explanation.

A visually and emotionally grueling episode, we’re taken through Fisk’s childhood with an abusive father and all that goes with it. Strangely, this episode comes across as much quieter than the previous ones - even though it ultimately ends with death and the disposal of a body in the river.

The routine that Fisk has for himself every morning – making the same omelette, picking out the same cufflinks, etc is a way for him to make sure that he is in control. Absolute control, over every single thing that occurs around him. He has demonstrated an extreme rage when presented with things that were not a part of the plan.

The one exception to this may be his infatuation with Vanessa. When originally at the art gallery, Fisk was drawn to one painting in particular, entitled ‘Rabbit in a Snowstorm’. When we first discussed this, we thought it may be the chaotic patterns, or a number of other things that attracted him to it – but it turns out that this visceral reaction that he experiences when taking in the painting can be directly attributed to his childhood. In fact, ‘Rabbit in a Snowstorm’ looks very much like the plastered design of the wall from his house as a child. The one that he was forced to sit in front of and stare at while in the background his father savagely beat his mother. The one that he stared at while building up the courage to stand up and put an end to that beating, permanently.

Vanessa Marianna

It’s all a little suspicious, isn’t it, that Vanessa has stuck it out this far into a relationship with someone that can kindly be called ‘troubled’? I suppose she herself may have an equally sordid past and thus be able to deal with Fisk much better than normal people.. on par with someone like James Wesley, for example. If that’s the case, though, she has not yet revealed any of that to us.

Yes, I assume that there is more underneath the exterior there, because there always is (except maybe with Foggy) but it seems like Vanessa has had an extremely large impact on Wilson Fisk in a very short amount of time. She has taken him from an unstable dinner date to shattering his normal routine and joining him for breakfast. He is even letting her pick out his clothes (and cufflinks!).

A bit of a breakthrough for Fisk, it seems, after letting the worst of himself and his past out into the light. In doing so, he reclaims his name and sets to become more of a public personality – which just so happens to shatter the expose that Matt has urged Ben to write for the paper. The one that he almost submits right before seeing the live footage of Fisk’s speech on his computer screen.

Vanessa is certainly guiding Fisk at this point. Whether or not that is for her own nefarious purposes, I suppose we will find out in the episodes yet to come! I will be watching the rest of the season’s episodes with rapt attention.

Artificial Intelligence is a vast topic, but I’d like to discuss it from just a couple of angles and see where we go from there. Let’s start with Alan Turing.

(Listen to the Retrospectical Podcast Episode 10: Artificial Intelligence and the Kurzweil Singularity) 

Alan Turing

Now considered to be the father of artificial intelligence, Turing was famously involved with quite a lot of cryptology (specifically cracking codes, not creating them) during World War 2 but had previously studied in and contributed to many other scientific communities as well.

At this time, no one had even come up with the term ‘Artificial Intelligence’. Computers were limited to processing input provided on punch-cards and were still taking up entire buildings and assembled with thousands of vacuum tubes.

Turing thought that – given enough processing power and the inevitable advances of technology - the ability to distinguish between a person and a computer in conversation could become blurred to the point where such a distinction ceased to exist.

The test is based on an old parlour game (“The Imitation Game”, which also happens to be the title of a recently released movie about Alan Turing’s life and death as played by Benedict Cumberbatch that everyone should go see) where a man and a woman are both trying to convince everyone that they are the woman. The woman has to answer honestly, and the man can answer in any way he likes in order to convince the audience that he is, in fact, the woman. Turing’s version of the test puts the computer in the role of the man, trying to convince the audience that it is, in fact, the human.

Although there have been many attempts to pass the Turing test, most have still all failed. Several have recently appeared to either win or comes close to winning (such as the Russian chatbot, Eugene Goostman who successfully got 1 in 3 judges to pick it as a 13-year-old, non-native-speaking Ukrainian boy). Goostman technically won, but it is itself simply a computer program running scripts and playing tricks (like misspelling some words on purpose, etc) in order to fool the judges. Most will argue that no computer has yet passed the Turing test according its original spirit. http://io9.com/a-chatbot-has-passed-the-turing-test-for-the-first-ti-1587834715

Some others working in the field of artificial intelligence submit that the Turing test is inherently flawed and any computer that is able to fool the judge(s) will be doing just that – fooling them with tricks rather than demonstrating actual comprehension and intelligence. These critics have also come up with a series of alternative tests that try to accomplish the same goal without allowing the same loopholes: http://io9.com/8-possible-alternatives-to-the-turing-test-1697983985

Ray Kurzweil

Kurzweil is a mad genius. He’s widely recognized as force of intelligence and innovation (which cannot really be refuted in good faith since he invented flatbed scanners, print-to-speech machines, music synthesizers and helped pioneer optical character recognition in general). He has also – sometimes in the same breath – been called crazy. He has borrowed science fiction terms like the ‘Singularity’ (referring to a point – in the near future, according to Kurzweil, where technological progress grows past the point of human comprehension of that same technology) for use in his books and talks.

This ‘Kurzweilian’ view on the future, as it has come to be known, has been popularized recently by a successful science fiction movie called Her, which was specifically about the Singularity and a highly recommended film. Kurzweil himself even reviewed the film, adding his own input to the film’s ending:

In my view, biological humans will not be outpaced by the AIs because they (we) will enhance themselves (ourselves) with AI. It will not be us versus the machines (whether the machines are enemies or lovers), but rather, we will enhance our own capacity by merging with our intelligent creations. We are doing this already. Even though most of our computers — although not all — are not yet physically inside us, I consider that to be an arbitrary distinction.

They are already slipping into our ears and eyes and some, such as Parkinson’s implants, are already connected into our brains. A kid in Africa with a smartphone has instant access to more knowledge than the President of the United States had just 15 years ago. We have always created and used our technology to extend our reach. We couldn’t reach the fruit at that higher branch a thousand years ago, so we fashioned a tool to extend our physical reach. We have already vastly extended our mental reach, and that is going to continue at an exponential pace.

Excerpted from http://www.kurzweilai.net/a-review-of-her-by-ray-kurzweil

The mind-boggling thing is just how many people out there trust and respect his work and his many predictions. In fact, Kurzweil was recently hired as Google’s Director of Engineering and is directly in charge of all Google’s artificial intelligence efforts. Google has spent billions of dollars in the past few years, picking up companies like Boston Dynamics (develops and manufactures life-like military robots) for an undisclosed sum, Nest Labs (smart thermostats) for 3.2 billion and last year they acquired British artificial intelligence startup DeepMind (who recently demonstrated a computer system that was capable of learning how to play video games from scratch with no prior programming - as opposed to a system like Deep Blue that was designed specifically to play one game - and routinely beat professional human players at those games) and many others. What is currently being assembled via Google acquisitions and the installation of Kurzweil at the helm has been referred to more than a few times as the ‘Manhattan project of AI’.

Kurzweil predictions in the past that were right, and those going forward into the future: http://singularityhub.com/2015/01/26/ray-kurzweils-mind-boggling-predictions-for-the-next-25-years/

But what about Skynet?

The reality is that right now artificial intelligence is limited, but almost everyone in the AI field agrees (with varying time-spans) that eventually computers will surpass us in intelligence (http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2013/10/why-we-should-think-about-the-threat-of-artificial-intelligence.html) and be able to reprogram themselves and other computers to perform any number of tasks including self-replication, resource gathering, etc.

Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Steve Wozniak have all said that artificial intelligence is one of humanity’s biggest existential risks. Hundreds of artificial intelligence experts recently signed a letter put together by the Future of Life Institute that prompted Elon Musk to donate $10 million to the institute. "We recommend expanded research aimed at ensuring that increasingly capable AI systems are robust and beneficial: our A.I. systems must do what we want them to do," the letter read.

But who does “we” refer to? Surely, the idea being put forth here is for humanity to somehow collectively decide the direction going forward – but that is never the case in these kinds of situations. Who decides what sort of ethics will be programmed into or even taught to these new systems of the future? Is consciousness uniquely human (e.g. could something be built that was defined as ‘intelligent’ but didn’t have a consciousness)? What sort of consequences will the development of high level artificial intelligences have on the deeply religious people throughout the world?

Musk once tweeted, "We need to be super careful with AI. Potentially more dangerous than nukes." Stephen Hawking has also spoken up against speeding ahead with AI development without careful consideration: "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race," he said.

As so often happens, the real world may take cues from science fiction before it. Years ago, Isaac Asimov thought up the 3 rules of robotics (rules that he thought should be programmed into the very basic code of any sort of artificial intelligence): (1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. (2) A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. (3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Knowing all of the possibilities, the question becomes: will that impending technology be controllable? Assuming we succeed in creating something that can think, make decisions and act on those decisions will the world end up looking like Kurzweil envisions it to be (a place where death and poverty no longer exist and we merge ourselves with the technology that we have created), or will it be more decidedly dystopian with intelligent war machines that could easily turn on humanity all together?