So as Season 3 of Silo hurtles towards its finale mysteries are being revealed. I’ll try to avoid spoilers but anyone watching this season knows by now that A.I. is part of the equation. The emergence of no less than Tom Hanks’ son (Colin Hanks) as Per Stenson, the billionaire creator of the silos, illustrates how we’ve now reached the Ur-moment: Back in the misty past of, say, 2027-8 (near future, anyone?), the U.S. is at war with Iran and things are going badly. (Sound familiar?) Along comes the White Knight in the form of a billionaire dude who designs self-sufficient silos that will house a half-million people and save humankind from extinction.
Here’s where the A.I. (named Legacy) comes in: Legacy is apparently in charge of maintaining the silos and will do anything—including killing all the citizens of a silo—to preserve order. This is clever in its own way: Although assigned with preserving humankind the A.I. entity enforces a rigid order that ensures misery and, possibly, catastrophic destruction.
I’m glad to see the dangers of A.I. cropping up in pop fiction and film. I’ve used it myself, in such stories as “Camp America” (available here: see the website banner for link to the file). We need to be aware of these dangers. I’ve blogged about some A.I. books I’ve read. One of the most disturbing details about A.I.: The experts and originators of it admit they don’t exactly know how it works. That fuels imaginary scenarios as in the terrific film Backrooms. It’s not explicitly about A.I. but works on a metaphorical level.Back to Silo: And then of course there’s the Vitamin D+ drug that causes mass amnesia. But that’s another story.
