Blade runner 1982 sos

Mar 25

2025
with

Dr. David Crandall

Director of Luddy Artificial Intelligence Center, Indiana University

Blade Runner— AI's promises and perils

Blade Runner is set in (our) past: 2019. But the promises of Artificial Intelligence are catching up, as are the perils. Dr. David Crandall—Director of Indiana University's Luddy Artificial Intelligence Center—discusses where we are and where we're possibly headed in the realm of AI.

This event is part of our 2025 National Evening of Science on Screen.

Buskirk-Chumley Theater Bloomington, IN

Tickets

Film Synopsis

A blade runner must pursue and try to terminate four replicants who stole a ship in space and have returned to Earth to find their creator.

In the not-too-distant future, Los Angeles and the surrounding area has become a dystopian wasteland, heavily industrialized and overcrowded. Genetically engineered humanoid beings known as replicants are manufactured by the powerful Tyrell Corporation for use in dangerous off-world colonization. Retired police officer Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), whose job was to track down replicants and assassinate them, is informed that four have come to Earth illegally. Called before his one-time superior (M. Emmett Walsh), Deckard is forced back into active duty to find and destroy the rogue replicants. Ridley Scott’s neo-noir classic initially polarized critics, but has since come to be regarded as one of the greatest sci-fi films of all time.

About the Speaker

Dr. David Crandall—the Director of Luddy Artificial Intelligence Center—received his Ph.D. in computer science from Cornell University. His main research interest is computer vision, the area of computer science that tries to design algorithms that can "see."