The 2001 film “A.I. Artificial Intelligence” began as a Brian Aldiss short story, “Supertoys Last All Summer Long,” about David - a robotic child built to give unconditional love in an overpopulated future where having children is restricted, and who cannot tell that the affection he offers is not returned. Stanley Kubrick acquired the rights and developed the project for years, but kept setting it aside, partly because he doubted the visual-effects technology of the time could render a convincing artificial child and doubted a real child actor could play one.
Kubrick eventually decided the material suited Steven Spielberg better and handed it to him. After Kubrick’s death in 1999, Spielberg wrote and directed the film himself, releasing it in 2001. The story follows David’s quest to become “a real boy” so that his adoptive human mother will love him - a deliberate echo of Pinocchio, transplanted into a meditation on whether a machine programmed to love can be loved back, and whether switching such a machine off is killing it.
The Aldiss estate’s official site hosts the source story and confirms the Kubrick-to-Spielberg lineage.
Why business readers should care: A.I. centers the question now appearing in real markets for companion chatbots and AI toys - what we owe to a system designed to simulate affection, and what it does to the people, especially children, who bond with it.