The sci-fi movie that imagines AI isn’t so dystopian after all

Imagine you are the parent of an inquisitive seven-year-old who loves his family, playing baseball, and hanging out with his friends. It’s the life you’ve always wanted. And then the worst thing that ever could happen happens: A freak accident takes your son away. But as it turns out, you don’t have to live with the grief for long, because now there’s an AI company that can bring your kid back in the form of a robotic double that looks indistinguishable from a human. This is the world that acclaimed director Hirokazu Kore-eda, who won the Palme d’Or for his 2018 feature Shoplifters, has created with his latest sci-fi drama, Sheep in the Box. It’s the type of story that might have seemed far-fetched a few years ago but feels less so as AI encroaches on every aspect of our lives. This is a tension Kore-eda is acutely aware of — so much so that he sat down with a robotics expert while he was writing the script to get some answers of his own. They told him that because of the robots overheating, “we would…