Across the street apparently, Ebert's review of A.I. (June 29, 2001) reveals Ebert's refusal to give David any real human characteristics, only our weak human projections of ourselves onto a mechanical machine. While he lauds the movie and its cinematic greatness, he serious faults the substance of the movie's insinuation that artificial intelligence can translate into anything that human should be really concerned about.
It's difficult to distinguish between what is real and what we "think" or "perceive" is real. Do we, as humans, create reality or is reality out there? Are emotions, morality objective actual existing phenomena with an independent reality other than what we give it? Is David nothing more than our own imbued imaginative projections of what we think ought to exist? Or is David really something more, a moral being in its own right? Ebert had no problem, had no hesitation to dismiss A.I., however well it was put together, because in the end he just didn't believe. Perhaps, many of the other critics didn't either.
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