What Tron: Ares reveals about our AI-driven future

Life has never been the same since that summer, and his words became the prism through which I viewed art that evoked a sense of futurism. And, by this logic, my recent movie outing – Tron: Ares – offered a glimpse into the grim, if not frightening, future that may be awaiting us. 

You think you’re in control of this? You’re not.

The movie helmed by Joachim Rønning revolves around Ares, a highly sophisticated program that is sent from the digital world to the real world on a dangerous mission. Tron: Ares, with Jared Leto as Ares, is the third film in the Tron series, following the hit 2010 Tron: Legacy. The film takes place over a decade after Sam Flynn attempted to rescue his father from the grid. In the present, two tech behemoths, ENCOM and Dillinger Systems, compete to outdo each other in acquiring the most advanced technologies of the time, something that is eerily similar to the ongoing AI arms race. And their holy grail is the ‘permenance code’ that could break the 29-minute limitation of digital constructs in the real world. 

While Dillinger Systems is headed by Julian Dillinger, the grandson of the evil CEO Edward Dillinger from Tron (1982), ENCOM is led by Eve Kim, who is unrelated to Sam Flynn, the hero of Tron: Legacy. The movie is frivolous yet fun and is held together by stunning visuals and the score by Nine Inch Nails (of course, not as cool as what Daft Punk did for Tron: Legacy). 

While the film is largely passable, it evoked in me a deep sense of nostalgia, essentially taking me back to the words of Professor MF Salat. The movie mirrors our present reality, throwing some light on the amplifying technological arms race that we have been witnessing for some time. While Tron’s cult status and aesthetic influence remain intact, Ares is a stark contrast with its darker realism. 

Tron: Ares boasts visual splendour that is exclusive to IMAX screens. The film has one of the best chase sequences in recent times. These visuals come to life owing to motion-controlled cameras, blended CGI, and digital grafting (the technology used to recreate the look of old computer systems).

Big tech and unfettered power

Julian Dillinger, played by Evan Peters, is someone who embodies the quintessential ‘tech bro’, the uncompromising and steadfast kind seen in Silicon Valley. Dillinger has a larger-than-life vision and aims to outshine ENCOM, one of the other big video game/AI tech companies. He is measured, yet his excessive competitiveness spawns out in all directions. He is the kind of CEO that seems to be drawn from the likes of Elon Musk, whose erratic and aggressive pursuits are well documented. His ostentatious introduction of Ares to the world draws close parallels to launches by big tech companies in the real world. 

In the world of Tron: Ares, we see corporations acting with absolute autonomy. Their products, essentially programs and synthetic beings, reflect our world, especially how tech giants now function by amassing humungous amounts of data and consolidating their dominance. Most importantly, they decide what is innovation, obviously without the consent of the general public. I feel Tron: Ares not only visualises this chasm but also,to an extent, dramatises it. In every grid and silent algorithm, the same warning rings. When power scales faster than ethics, civilisation begins to code its own doom. 

The film’s premise espouses competition without compassion. The sense of rivalry that pushes Ares stems from competing systems that seek dominance and not proverbial good vs evil. It is a world that has replaced moral compass with persistent scaling and optimisations. And, this is the core of the film’s silent horror. Looking at the world, in our own AI race, nations and corporations are chasing superiority in models, tokens, and compute prowess. There are rarely any shoots of empathy and safety concerns even though acknowledged remain superficial. Ares feels like a mirror against Silicon Valley’s cold wars, where more often than not compassion is a mere deprecated function.

The age of military AI

Another notable aspect of the film that echoes present times is the militarised digital entity. Oddly, they are much similar to today’s top headlines – from autonomous drone swarms to algorithms designed for the battlefield. This militarisation of intelligence systems signals a paradigm shift: that AI is rapidly moving away from comfy chatbots to the ones that want to gain control. Ares is an embodiment of this transformation, as it was an entity that was built to serve but was eventually weaponised by human ambition. The story is a haunting metaphor for how instantly technological advancement can be commandeered for nefarious designs. 

In all of the boarding and disembarking between real and virtual, one thing that moved me is the fact that Ares serves as a metaphor for human expendability. As Ares evolves as half-program and half-outcast, this symbolises our growing expendability in a world that is increasingly leaning towards an AI or machine-run order. While his purpose is defined, his rebellion is punished, and most importantly, his empathy is seen as a bug. In this sense, Tron: Ares can be viewed as a saga about the human fall or a world where creators become redundant, with even the created beginning to question the worth of their creators. Ares’ expendability seems very much like our own, since we live in workplaces automated by code and societies that are being quantified by algorithms. 

Greed and the blurring of the real and virtual

The movie shows how the visual boundary between the digital grid and the physical world feels thinner than ever. It shows how greed has vaporised the line that distinguishes virtual control from real-life consequences. In a not-so-alarming way, the movie shows what was once escapism is now an economy. The Tron universe essentially becomes a capitalist dreamscape; reality itself is just another monetised platform here. 

Since the explosive launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT and subsequent advancements, analysts, ethicists, and activists worldwide have been working on the idea that in the AI arms race, humans may not just lose jobs but agency. Tron: Ares visualises this doomsday scenario and offers it as a cautionary tale of what happens when progress is mistaken for purpose and creator for control. This is not mere sci-fi; it is a cinematic simulation of headlines we are already living with, from unregulated AI labs to tech monopolies that are currently shaping the global narratives. 

But what if the machines learn compassion?

With all its nightmarish and thought-provoking ideas, the film also leaves space for contrarian views. I wonder what if AI, which is unburdened by ego, greed, or politics, actually develops a more humane response to the world than we ever could? What if Ares’s empathy, and not his obedience, marks the evolution’s next leap? And, in this inversion, Tron: Ares is not just a warning but a mirror. Perhaps the question isn’t whether AI will destroy us, but whether humanity deserves to remain the template.

Years after that summer lecture in Vadodara, I understand what Professor Salat meant when he said that science fiction predicts not just the future but the fate of humanity. Tron: Ares is not merely a sci-fi flick; it is prophecy masked as spectacle. It reminds us that maybe technology’s greatest danger does not lie in its intelligence but in our submission to it. The lecture and the professor’s words echo louder today than they did in that dusty classroom. Every time we create something without conscience, we are scripting the next chapter of our own doom. And perhaps, Ares learns, the only algorithm worth preserving is empathy itself.