Does Not Compute
10.3.24
DOES NOT COMPUTE
In 2020, a Yale lab announced a neural network built to study schizophrenia. The plan was to induce symptoms of the disorder – hallucinations, conflicting stimuli, false memories – into a sort of AI and then see what happened.
This inspired the creation of EnGAGE, Agent Stoker’s most frequent nemesis. Like Dr. Loveless in the original series of THE WILD WILD WEST, we wanted Agent Stoker to have a recurring antagonist who was brilliant and ruthless but also strangely pitiable.
The premise was to imagine an AI created under the same circumstances, fed conflicting stimuli including files on an actual malevolent schizophrenic like Charles Manson – and then imagine that something supernatural or paranormal had brought this AI to full consciousness. It knows it was built broken, and it’s understandably enraged against a world that has birthed It in such damaged condition.
The last few decades, of course, have been rife with stories of robots and androids and artificial intelligence which freeze when faced with the contradictions of the real world. As a kid I recall the robot of LOST IN SPACE announcing “That does not compute” when faced with an irresolvable contradiction – though the phrase seems to have been first coined by the sitcom MY LIVING DOLL in which Julie Newmar played the robotic Rhoda.
But what takes this idea from light and even comedic science fiction into the realm of horror and thriller? It’s when the AI comes to realize that its perceptions are all a matter of mere programming.
There are many stories like this stretching back decades – notably for me, the wonderful Inger Stevens playing a daughter who doesn’t know she’s an android in THE TWILIGHT ZONE’s “The Lateness of the Hour.” And a syndicated rerun of THE TWILIGHT ZONE episode “In His Image” offered one of my most unsettling childhood TV experiences, when George Grizzard’s character peels back his skin to discover he’s just an artificial creation.
With more and more stories of berserk AI, now we’re well in the Mary Shelley world where we feel threatened by our own creation. Yet we also have to face how easily we as humans can be “reprogrammed.”
Thus in Agent Stoker’s world, the schizophrenic AI begins as a project called GAGE, after Phineas Gage – the 19th century workman who suffered a bolt going through his head which didn’t kill him but which changed his whole personality. Who we humans are can be changed by chemical imbalances or illness or physical interventions, and eerily we may never know it’s happened.
When the fictional GAGE becomes sentient, it christens itself as “EnGAGE” and decides to wreak vengeance on a world it never made, in more senses than one. The world “does not compute” for EnGAGE, and it’s going to make the world pay for that.
When Chris and I were creating AGENT STOKER, it was early in the pandemic and we decided we should work with actors we knew and loved, pros who were game for anything. On ALTERED CARBON, Chris had become friends with the remarkable Ato Essandoh who’s also appeared in everything from TALES OF THE LOOP to THE DIPLOMAT.
Chris suggested Ato for the role of EnGAGE, and Ato’s brilliance in playing an AI on the verge of a nervous breakdown (and the same AI’s more compassionate multiple identity) has been one of our many secret weapons in the show.
As we head toward Season Three of AGENT STOKER where the apocalypse is bearing down on the world like a Mack truck, what role will EnGAGE play in it all? Stay tuned!
Onward
Brian