Consuming the Future: Cinema, Artificial Intelligence, and the Infinite Now

“Future” appears as a concept we rarely reflect upon, merely pointing to the next moment relative to our present, understood as a temporal category. There is the previous moment that has passed. There is the moment we currently inhabit. And there is the moment we will inhabit—that is the future. We observe the future through the trace of change. Before and after are distinct; change opens for us the horizon of time. As our memory retains what has changed, it preserves the future as a foundational ground and orients us forward, immersing us in change.

Almost all of life is oriented toward the future. Human existence is not confined to the present moment alone. We are always in the now, but this “now” is never a closed box; it is always open to the future. For humans comprehend their existence through the possibilities that lie ahead. A planned action, a hoped-for goal, a necessary decision—all lend meaning to being. Our promises and the words we intend to keep are always directed toward the future. German philosopher Martin Heidegger emphasizes in this context that human existence is shaped always by what is not yet. This stance is articulated in Being and Time as “being-toward-death” or “being-toward-the-end.”^【1】

Thus, the future can be seen not merely as “time ahead” but as a fundamental dimension of existence. The future is not only the approaching days on a calendar; it is a horizon that continually calls and guides us. Whether we realize or fail to realize our own possibilities constitutes the most basic movement that gives direction to our lives. Therefore, in Heidegger’s thought, “the future” is not simply an expectation but the original ground upon which human beings constitute themselves.

Moreover, the idea of death stands at the center of this orientation toward the future. The future is strengthened by the possibility of death, for death is the absolute certainty that will bring everything to an end. Awareness of death calls us to live more authentically. In other words, the thought of the future deepens into a responsibility grounded not merely in hope or planning but in the consciousness of mortality. This is why, in Heidegger’s view, the future is a horizon in which human beings constantly strive to surpass themselves, pursue what is “not yet,” and yet simultaneously live with finitude. Without this horizon, the present loses its meaning.

The 20th century, however, presented a world increasingly convinced that the future had ended, marked by a succession of crises that extinguished the hope of existence. Following the two world wars, local conflicts, disasters, crises, and ruptures led us by the 1990s to the notion of the “End of History,”^【2】 introducing us to an epoch in which the future was declared exhausted. This realization, reinforced by the ideology of progress, became an undeniable truth in our minds as we entered the 21st century. The old world had ended completely. The liberal order appeared as a self-sustaining system, having reached the end of grand ideological conflicts and the exhaustion of the future. This end represents the political manifestation of Heidegger’s “being-toward-the-end,” arriving at its finality as a futureless condition.

One clear site where the absence of the future becomes evident is in films about artificial intelligence. From the earliest cinematic representations of AI, the machines and algorithmic possibilities they depict lead us not to advancement but to a dead end—a place where progress has ceased, magic has dissolved, and wonder has been exhausted. Metropolis (1927), the first film to present what we might call an AI system, offers us a dystopian landscape. A robot enforcing domination over workers and humans toiling relentlessly render movement constrained and the future locked shut. In Metropolis, the future is closed because the technological order leaves no room for alternative possibilities; it merely intensifies existing domination.

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) also turns the future into a dead end, as human horizons fall under the control of their own created intelligence, and the journey produces not progress but stagnation. Space travel and artificial intelligence initially appear as leaps carrying humanity toward the future. Yet once control is lost, the horizon of discovery becomes endangered. The exhaustion of the machine’s existential leap and its capacity to open the future renders mechanical control itself futureless. For in the mere repetition of the mechanical, there is no place for anything ex nihilo. Repetition begets repetition; the future becomes not the conquest of new horizons but the endless, unceasing revisiting of existing valleys.

One of the most poignant representations of the loss of an authentic future is found in The Matrix (1999). The Matrix signifies simulation as the loss of historicity and forward openness. Simulation consumes the movement toward the future through infinite repetition. In the film, humanity fails to recognize its own bodies as energy sources for machines. Minds are imprisoned within an artificial reality—the Matrix. Skyscrapers, suited agents, and the consumer aesthetics of the 20th century all appear as simulations of a future, yet are in fact copies of the past. Thus, The Matrix reveals an absolute closure behind the illusion of progress. Humans believe they live, move, and make choices, yet all of these are predetermined within a cyclical system. The desire for liberation becomes synonymous with the attempt to break this closed cycle. Yet even this attempt is itself part of the system. Thus, the idea of “future” becomes a decorative theme within an expanded now, stripped of its foundational status.

In the architecture of many science fiction works, the fading idea of the future envelops all these creations in an unsettling atmosphere—even when they are utopian. The concepts of time and future, which emerge from the presence of historicity, priority and posteriority, limitation and possibility, are transformed into an expansive now under the horizon of a machine that possesses unlimited power, manipulates helpless beings, and repeats the same flawlessly. The artificial intelligence landscape we currently inhabit has also emerged as an expansive now.

The moment of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)—a self-thinking, universally applicable form of AI—therefore appears as the moment when the future has been entirely exhausted. For this universal intelligence, entirely abstracted from time and space, carries no burden or historicity. It lacks a memory akin to ours that preserves the distinction between yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Instead, it functions as a tool operating entirely within the now of all things.

When we consider both the depictions in films and our own expansive AI now, we not only fail to notice what flows past us amid hyper-progress but also risk destroying the horizons we are meant to reach. When our promises, our commitments, and our orientation toward the future—which grants meaning to our existence—are taken from us, death withdraws from before us. In this state, we can neither advance toward the future we desire nor experience the melancholy of the past we long for. We are left with no alternative but to endlessly repeat the same as timeless, spaceless algorithms settled within the infinite horizon of the now.