Paul Giamatti on the Set of Breakthrough | Breakthrough
Hello, I'm Paul Giamatti, and welcome to the set of Breakthrough. I'm not a big tech guy; I mean, I find this stuff interesting, but I’m inapt with it. This stuff is really cool. I'm into the kind of cybernetics and then robotic stuff; it's been ridiculous. I can't believe I'm talking to these guys—extraordinary giant brands.
The gentleman was using the jaws of life to open the car up. That's mostly what you're gonna see: you're gonna see them using this heavy equipment that normally a guy would be able to hold up for not even a minute probably, and do what they had to do. Now, I can hold it for hours at a time. We dropped two rocks on one car, but then mostly it's a demonstration of that exosuit and a pretty close analysis of how it works.
But the suit is amazing, you know? I mean, the suit itself is practically not there. What the guy can do is amazing. There’s a guy who's cybernetic now with that machine that's using it to rescue people. I mean, it's all like very, you know, the human level of it. It isn’t sort of making a superhuman; it's sort of being at a very human level, you know? It's like letting you be fully human.
The medical thing—if it seems a huge application for it, you know? I mean, that's a lot of what these guys are doing. But, you know, all this industrial stuff is saving these guys’ bodies to begin with, so these guys don't have medical problems. People are being turned into cyborgs in some sense. None of it is like turning you into something beyond human; it's all kind of either compensating for something or extending an ability you already have.
At some point, the idea seems to be you’ll be able to control an avatar, a complete other body. That's all sort of down the road. Right now, it kind of fills in and just makes you better at what you do already. There's a definite fear, and sort of, you know, a singularity where machines take over, and humans become subordinate to machines, which some of these guys just don’t see happening because the human element is always going to be in control.
Most of the stuff that I've seen has been extraordinarily helpful for people. It's saving lives, like these guys, but then it's also allowing people to walk. Okay, walk any more people into here who haven't been able to here before? I mean, the human element of it has been the most extraordinary part of it, and that seems to be the most meaningful application of the thing.
What we keep seeing is the thing in its perfect state right now. You know, it's always a stage to getting better, and they've failed a lot, you know? But we haven't seen any other failures; we just keep seeing the ones that are working at their best now. But it's going to get better than that.