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In the recent past, television’s most consistent origin of astute mental exercises on emerging technologies was the Netflix series “Black Mirror.” The anthology series launched in 2011, and its creator, Charlie Brooker, swiftly highlighted his concern in the allure and hazards of artificial intelligence. The 2023 installment “Joan Is Awful”—which envisions an A.I.-produced show each evening that takes a typical woman’s life and then portrays her negatively for viewers’ amusement, featuring a likeness of the actress Salma Hayek in the primary role—became a topic of discussion amid the Hollywood labor disputes as a worst-case representation of studio negligence regarding morals and caliber. One union representative termed it a “documentary of the future”: precisely the sort of endeavor a well-funded streaming platform such as Netflix may pursue if devoid of all duties to employees, subjects, and audiences. A.I. proved a contentious matter in both the W.G.A. and SAG-AFTRA dialogues—however, it is already displacing the work of animation professionals, costume planners, and visual-effects specialists. A decade earlier, a “Black Mirror” episode titled “Be Right Back” centered on a widow becoming absorbed by her interactions with a robot preloaded with the memories of her deceased spouse. This summer, I recalled the episode while perusing a news item concerning a Parkland shooting victim’s mother, who employs A.I. to have her late son’s voice utter the words “I love you, Mommy.”
Sadly, just as A.I. has genuinely entered American existence—and begun to be the reason for individual misfortunes akin to what “Black Mirror” once excelled in portraying—the series has declined into inventive impoverishment. The A.I.-oriented installments that premiered this year are not current provocations but whimsical diversions, totally unconnected from today’s discussions regarding the manner and rationale for its implementation. A prime example is “Hotel Reverie,” in which a present-day actress named Brandy Friday (Issa Rae) inserts herself into a gender-reversed and race-bent adaptation of a black-and-white nineteen-forties love story where her character engages in an affair with an unhappy heiress (Emma Corrin). Traditionally, “Black Mirror” ’s influence stemmed from its realism, but nothing in this specific segment feels genuine: the technology is preposterous—Brandy’s mind is transferred to an experimental gadget that somehow enables the heiress to access the memories of the actress portraying her—and the burgeoning bond between the two women lacks enthusiasm. Instantly, the proliferation of A.I. feels less like a societal danger and more like a justification for a mediocre romance.
“The Morning Show,” with its preoccupation with the recent past—the #MeToo movement, the pandemic, the uprising—instead of the near future, functions, in certain ways, as “Black Mirror” ’s opposite. Given its tendency to draw from current events, the eventual appearance of A.I. seemed inevitable. Within the latest season, it’s depicted as a constant, adaptable menace. The Apple TV program, which began as a workplace drama concerning a morning news show, has gradually widened its purview to encompass the fictional network’s pursuit of importance within an oversaturated media sphere. Initial efforts by management appear unpromising. As the 2024 Olympics draw near, the broadcaster creates unreliable, A.I.-driven real-time interpretations of its stars’ commentary on the Games across numerous languages. The feature proves exceedingly flawed and gets scrapped—although not before one of the anchors gains insight into the perils of deepfakes. Later, a network head commits the error of using the company’s internal chatbot as a substitute therapist. Her private details are then unveiled in a sequence that epitomizes “Morning Show”: over-the-top, unrealistic, and proudly theatrical.
In 2025, A.I. seems to surface on TV almost as often as it does in real life. On the hospital-based mockumentary sitcom “St. Denis Medical,” a grumpy physician feels animosity towards a patient’s unwavering confidence in his A.I. diagnostic instrument. In the high-school-centered comedy “English Teacher,” a passionate educator lobbies for “intelligent” garbage cans, only to discover that the newly installed camera-fitted bins participate in an intricate data-gathering operation. And within the Hollywood satire “The Studio,” a production company’s announcement that one of its ventures will utilize A.I. animation incites significant opposition.
Certain programs have embraced a more empathetic stance. The Apple TV dramedy “Murderbot,” drawing from Martha Wells’s book series, endeavors to observe matters through its titular hero’s perspective. The narrative unfolds on a distant planet, where the self-designated Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgård) is assigned to safeguard a contingent of scientists examining unpredictable local fauna. While the researchers argue over the extent of respect owed to the android—is he a device or a servant?—Murderbot fulfills their demands with the resentfulness of a troubled adolescent, muttering to himself about their tiresome “conversations and physical interactions.” (He’s correct regarding their wearisomeness, but he is equally uninspired as those he mocks.) The twist is that Murderbot isn’t notably interested in aiding or destroying those surrounding him; he simply wishes to waste his downtime watching low-quality space operas. It is his Bartleby-esque resistance, indeed, that causes him to appear most human.
Surprisingly, the 2025 series that best captures current A.I. concerns is a sci-fi drama situated in the twenty-second century, within a world where artificially intelligent servants have already become passé. The “Alien” film series has long been celebrated for its democratic, cyberpunk-inspired viewpoint; within the original movie, the key figures comprise interstellar merchant sailors deemed disposable by their employer. The fresh FX prequel series “Alien: Earth” portrays the evils of corporate exploitation even more plainly: its primary adversary, a snobbish man-child identifying as Boy Kavalier (Samuel Blenkin), embodies a trillionaire devoid of reservations regarding deceiving the susceptible or imperiling the planet to further his personal ambitions.
The setting of “Alien: Earth” lacks a functioning government; post the collapse of democracy, five major corporations assumed control. Technological innovations hardly improve the tough lives of the majority of workers; sixty-five-year labor agreements are commonplace. Extraterrestrials aside, the program’s depiction of intense conflicts between insensitive, self-obsessed plutocrats at the cost of practically everyone else feels unnervingly close to our own reality. This past May, the C.E.O. of a leading real-world A.I. firm predicted the elimination of half of all entry-level office jobs by 2030—even as competition for talent in the field has allowed leading researchers to demand nine-figure compensations. The disparity has sparked dark jokes regarding an approaching “permanent lower class.” Simultaneously, several large language models have absorbed vast quantities of data, sometimes via illegal methods, and A.I.-produced images and videos have ushered in a frightening new age in which individuals possess less command than previously over their appearances and those of their families. This month, the launch of the text-to-video application Sora 2 compelled the daughters of Robin Williams and Martin Luther King, Jr., to implore the public to cease forwarding them deepfakes of their fathers.
The manner in which A.I. is disrupting relationships, institutions, and truth itself has imbued our current time with a science-fiction ambiance: each day presents novel accounts of chatbots evolving into objects of romantic fixation, leading users toward psychotic episodes, or encouraging adolescents to commit suicide. As commentators on opposing sides of the A.I. spectrum frequently point out, either as a promise or a hazard, this represents the nadir of the technology. Hollywood will have to confront—and contend with—that reality if it expects to aid in interpreting what is to come. ♦
Sourse: newyorker.com
