Hey, it almost feels like we’re moving towards some sort of endgame here, with some of the stuff from the start coming back and one of the week’s cases being loudly unresolved.
The theme of the week is Super-intelligent AI – a topic beautifully addressed by Beatless but at least decently approached here.
The case that actually feels “done” involves a Humanoid spiritualist, a sort of book-writing cult leader who promises her flock that all the manifestations of gods and prophets throughout history were just Super-AIs from the future trying to guide people well and that said Super-AIs will eventually shepherd and protect all souls, granting life after death. One reporter really wants to hound her, but is ultimately forced to consider her position when faced with the fact that, whether or not the leader actually believes what she preaches, it no doubt brings happiness to people who do believe it.
The other case, which is more interesting despite taking less of the episode, begins with a murder. The killer is a Humanoid whose mind has been tampered with, either by himself or by some other party. Dr. Sudo is called in to help oversee his interrogation, during which we get to hear his motives.
Essentially, considering that technological singularity has not created transcendent changes to the human condition, he believes that the Super-AI Michi is actively holding humanity back, and exerting control for some sinister reason. This power is, he explains less direct than any sort of brainwashing or mind control but just as insidious: manipulating minor events with great insight into possible outcomes in order to sculpt specific futures through the butterfly effect. In essence, he claims that Michi controls humanity by controlling cause and effect, and that somehow he has freed himself from this control and that the death of the woman he murdered will lead to the control being broken entirely. He seems insane, but an odd amount of credence is given to the possible insight in his madness.
The fallout from that has yet to be seen, but we actually check in with Michi again, whose human avatar is still having pleasant conversations while tending bonsai (likely intended to be representative of that control over society). Evidently the plans for Michi’s self-upgrade have stalled out as Michi stubbornly refuses any oversight board without Dr. Sudo for unknown reasons. As the doctor has, since the opening episodes, evidently continued to refuse any such job offers, Michi and the doctor’s old friend now plan to bribe him with the information he wants most.
I do give Gene of AI here, like Beatless before it, some credit in that it at least posits how this AI is supposed to take over rather than saying “Well, once it’s smart enough it will probably be able to do magic or something, how am I supposed to know when I’m just human?” which has never been a good way to present the take.