Ok, watched
Devs- thumbs up. I looked at
Hand Maid’s Tale and decided against it because I read the book, and don’t think I want to watch 4 seasons of women being abused and pressed under people’s thumbs.
Devs Talk
Regarding Devs (Hulu) and AI, not sure this show applies as an AI story because of the way it is presented.
If you want to walk into Devs oblivious, than stop reading here.
I started a Devs thread, but almost no one cared, no problem, comes with the territory especially with science fiction.
Devs is really intriguing from a quantum universe aspect, ie, we now know about it, we study it, and we are learning about existence/our reality on the quantum level, and how that relates to our reality. The idea that a particle of matter can not only be in two places at once, but can be everywhere at once, kind of gives our existence/reality a mysterious magical quality.
Most mind bending concepts presented in this show are of a quantum record of the time line that can be examined going backwards and can be projected forward with certainty, can be visualized, and not only that, but that we exist on rails, with limited, if any free will.
This is where Devs shines and it’s a shocking reveal of the character Forest’s outlook, who would fire a lead programmer for using a logarithm that supports the idea of the multiverse, because still feeling the loss of wife and child, dictates research on an emotional level and wants to only see his real daughter, not a daughter from a parallel universe. All very interesting stuff at least to me.
Series Final Spoiler
The huge reveal from the Series final is where AI may appear, but I’m not certain. The Devs Computer System (as portrayed in the show) not only can observe the universe, past, present, and future, but that they created a simulation of that universe based on their observation and collection of data. In the series final after dying in the real world, Forest and Lilly find themselves in this simulation with their memories intact, based on data gathered about them and this universe.
It is a theme that has been explored previously, such as in
Star Trek Next Gen episode, The Schizoid Man that presumes the essence of a human mind, their identity can be reduced to a data set for not only an accurate representation/simulation of them, but in essence *is* them, versus a copy of them. We as human beings, possess self awareness, a sense of oneness, uniqueness, a singular existence. Soul is often associated with perception of our uniqueness.
In Devs, the real question becomes what have Forest and Lilly become and more importantly, can their entity be captured to a point of being just a simulation of them, who have the memories of those people, who think they are those people, but the original Forrest and Lilly no longer exist?
Or have they, themselves been transferred into this alternate reality? Is there an unbroken continuation of consciousness? Secondly is there any AI programming involved or do they exist and function only by virtue of their data that possesses the ability to function on its own?
This is why I’m not sure that AI in the traditional sense, (something created by humans to give machines the ability to make decisions) applies to this story. For all I know, a celestial AI is working behind the scene (if not artificial call it a celestial intelligence) that has a bearing on every action we take, make, or think we decided on our own. And then there is biological intelligence/ programming, I’ll stop there. ?