Can these short films convince people that AI is a force for good?

MOUNTAIN VIEW — For decades, Hollywood directors including Stanley Kubrick, James Cameron and Alex Garland have cast artificial intelligence as a villain that can turn into a killing machine.

Even Steven Spielberg’s relatively hopeful “A.I.: Artificial Intelligence” had a pessimistic edge to its vision of the future.

Now Google — a leading developer in AI technology — wants to move the cultural conversations away from the technology as seen in “The Terminator,” “2001: A…