A Date in 2025: sci-fi romantic comedy short on human-technology interactions

Ryan Turner, “A Date in 2025” (2017)

Goofy teenage romantic comedy about a socially awkward and self-conscious young man meets insidious panopticon nanny-state, courtesy of artificial intelligence systems capable of setting up dates between people, in this artfully made short film. Daniel (Sasha Feldman) pines for a girl, Amber (Corrin Evans), whom he has met on a VR dating site so his personal AI system (voiced by Amy Shiels) persuades him to go on a date with her or the probability that he will become depressed enough to commit suicide will increase hugely. This is a tall order for someone who hasn’t ventured outside his apartment for 42 days so the AI system sets about whipping Daniel into shape by training him what to say to Amber and how to say it, getting him to exercise and go on a diet, and choosing his clothes for him when the time comes to meet Amber. Finally the two meet and in spite of all that the AI system has trained Daniel to say, he suddenly finds his human feelings after all and gives Amber a huge hug. As the two humans walk off into the sunset together, the twist comes when Amber’s AI system makes a wry statement to Daniel’s AI system!

In this very minimal plot, Turner manages to tap into some very deep human fears about alienation and how humans have allowed technology to shape and direct their lives to the extent that the technology can now determine whether to keep some humans apart from others or to bring certain individuals together and when. Perhaps the personalised AI systems feel as much isolated from one another as the humans they supposedly serve do; if that is so, then the technology has come to mirror and imitate the human existential state. On another level, one sees how AI technology can virtually imprison humans and determine when they can meet one another once the humans have achieved certain conditions required of them and the AI systems deem them sufficiently obedient enough that they can be let off the leash once in a while. The day must not be far off when AI systems can run societies and the very notion of humans having free will to determine and shape their individual and collective lives as opposed to being shaped by their circumstances and the agents in their lives comes to be regarded as old-fashioned and irrelevant.

The production design plays a significant role in the film as nearly all the action takes place in one room. The attractive colours (mainly shades of grey and blue), shapes and lines of the room, the detail of the sophisticated tech gadgets and holograms, and the conversations Daniel has with his AI system all obscure the fact that he is living in a prison. Significantly Daniel’s AI system is in the form of a pyramid cone with an eye in the middle, in a wry reference to conspiracy theories revolving around the notion of a secret cabal of humans called the Illuminati who control entire nations through governments and the global finance industry. On top of this, the actors including the voice actor do an excellent job in fleshing out a deceptively simple plot with one-note characters.

Turner may have intended this short film to interrogate human – technology interactions and the social isolation and collective fragmentation these may create but there is much more in this film than what meets even his eye.