I don’t consider myself a superstitious person, but tech journalist Kevin Roose’s recent (bonkers) conversation with Bing’s AI chatbot left me feeling unsettled. We humans like to make stories about the things we fear in order to safely confront those fears. The fear of a sentient AI has been around since at least 1872, when Samuel Butler’s early sci-fi novel Erewhon was published. The success of a recent movie like M3GAN indicates the market is ripe for more stories of the dark deeds tech companies could be getting up to in the name of efficiency, progress, and companionship. Here are a few to get you started.
The Consultant (Amazon): What exactly is The Consultant? The show provides few clear answers, although we can confidently say it’s at least a great way for Christoph Waltz to unsettle audiences in a new medium. Waltz has a rare and perfect combination of glee and menace about his person that keeps his scene partners on continually shifting ground. He has a vast toolbox of acting skills to work with and seems to be having fun in this series pulling one out at random and testing it on his co-stars, somewhat like a mad surgeon. The series flirts with the surreal, but its rough plot is that a brilliant young game designer and CEO has made a deal of some kind with the devil/consultant (Waltz) and after the CEO is murdered, the consultant arrives to take charge. Boasting a false name, no credentials, and several odd penchants (smelling all his employees, for instance) the consultant’s presence disturbs several existing employees, especially the old CEO’s assistant, Elaine (played by White Lotus’ Brittany O’Grady). The series plays on our fears of shadowy wunderkind executives, the amorphous role of the consultant, and a hunch that Silicon Valley is ripe for demonic possession (the ambition! the lack of oversight! the tampering with primeval forces!) The series is very odd and very unsettling, but its spiritual ancestors are clear. I suspect there’s a Faustian demon in this machine.
Watch if you liked Wandavision (same showrunner), or any of the various Faust properties out there.
Devs (FX on Hulu): If the tone of The Consultant is that of a fever dream, the tone of Devs is more that of an elegy. The limited series is set at a Silicon Valley tech company called Amaya, which is on the cutting edge of all kinds of new technology. When we meet one character, Sergei, he is demonstrating a predictive AI program that can forecast the next move of bacteria (I think?). Amaya is up to all sorts of secret stuff, but none more secret than the devs program, which Sergei is invited to join, with disastrous results. The series also involves a star turn from a familiar actor, Nick Offerman, who has proven his dramatic bona fides more recently in The Last of Us, but shows his skills in this series as well. He’s frightening, melancholy, and driven by a combination of grief and curiosity to invent… something. I’ll leave that top secret, as even though I’ve watched the series I’m not sure I could explain exactly what it is he invents.
Watch if you liked Ex Machina (same guy), or love seeing actors like Nick Offerman get the chance to be more than a funny man. Or if you’re scared of AI.