The following text contains an information hazard, which could inspire dread and existential discomfort. Read at your own risk:

Recently, I took a chance on a Peacock streaming series called “Mrs. Davis,” which is the latest offering from former “Lost” showrunner Damon Lindelof, a man whose name usually sends me in the other direction given how that experience ended. Despite my trepidation, there’s something about its first few episodes I can’t shake.

Its gonzo premise is focused on a renegade Catholic nun named Sister Simone who makes a deal with the titular Mrs. Davis, an all-powerful and all-knowing artificial intelligence that benevolently runs the world in an alternate 2023. Our nun on the run goes a globetrotting quest worthy of Indiana Jones, filled with hijinks, strange euro trash gangsters and righteous luddite revolutionaries, because Mrs. Davis has promised to turn itself off if Simone is able to recover the Cup of Christ, the fabled Holy Grail, and destroy it.

The jury is still out on whether the series will be worth sticking with until the end (it is a Lindelof joint after all), but there was something about the dystopian trappings I couldn’t help but find appealing. The 2023 of “Mrs. Davis” is very unlike our own, filled with mostly happy people pursuing their businesses, their interests, devoted to their families, awash in harmony and liberty, so long as you operate within the parameters set by an unaccountable technocratic machine spirit. The cracks and seams of this seemingly “perfect” techno-utopia are bound to show as I continue watching it, but there’s a reason why on the surface everything is so appealing.

This was all made possible because society evolved beyond having to enforce rules on others through the use of human force. Everyone is free to practice their religion of choice, and seek a vocation, but ultimately the unseen hand of Mrs. Davis calculates the financial and social logistics of where each human being on the planet should be, setting them on the course to achieve optimum fulfillment. Don’t get me wrong, that still sounds pretty hellish, but there are some positives that come along with our species ceding free will and enterprise to a piece of transcendent technology.

Not only has this AI engineered a society that has overcome mental illness, poverty, and deaths of despair, we have no need for governments either. There is no longer a purpose for pointless bureaucracy, petty partisan bickering, or the wages of fear that fuels democratically elected governance.

If there is one thing the culture war reinforces, it is the urban and rural divide. The culture of the Red River Valley for example is very different than the culture that dominated the recently completed legislative session. In this dichotomy, one side girds its loins against social trends embraced by the other, reinforcing the desire within both groups to just be free from the other’s control completely. Both find the other so odious that they would use the organs of government to limit their influence, and I think we can all guess where this dynamic could end up.

The brainless march toward another insipid presidential election is a slog too depressing and thankless for me to even consider much more at this juncture, especially when the gravity is being thrown behind a rematch between two candidates no one wants. The outcome for 2024 is already written, based on how disinterested in our sacred democratic process both parties will prove to be as they go through the motions and rubber stamp delegates during Primary season. I’m only being pushed online ads and campaign videos from one individual across both parties at this time, and I’ll just say he loves the smell of small children and a half-melted ice cream cone.

It’s rational for my fellow writers to be wary and opposed to the destabilizing inevitabilities of a world running on algorithms, which is partly why the Writers Guild of America members walked off the job. There will always be an audience who wants that human element in everything, whether it’s the news or stories they read, the art or content they view, and in the authorities and institutions that make the world move. But who knows, maybe we aren’t missing anything with the absence of ideological pablum from our evenings.

However, if power is so dang corrupting, then arguably no person should be trusted completely with it either, regardless of how far responsibility is diffused through a bureaucracy. Writing college essays or jokes and slapping together beer commercials is one thing, but how can one make the case for handing over such responsibilities to a seemingly unaccountable machine in a world of unaccountable people?

The obvious baked in problem is that any AI, even one that is able expand its intelligence and application, is ultimately the product of whomever created it, an extension of all its biases and miscalculations.

Working against this case as well is the famous thought experiment or rather an “infohazard” that has gained infamy on the Internet proposed by a user of a discussion board LessWrong named Roko. Roko stated that an otherwise benevolent omniscient AI could be incentivized to create a virtual simulation to torture anyone who didn’t take action to deliberately contribute to its development or creation.

If this all-power AI is such an incontrovertible benefit for humankind, what kind of person could possibly want to get in the way of its implementation? Wouldn’t all good people be working towards this singular goal? This was the key source of discomfort for those who considered Roko’s Basilisk, as it also stipulated that even being aware of the thought experiment could be enough to ensure eternal suffering for their AI avatar. And now you know about it, dear reader. You’re welcome.

Some dismissed it for its religious undertones, and similarities to Pascal’s Wager and the Prisoner’s Dilemma. For a time, Roko’s post about his Basilisk and any reference to it was banned from LessWrong, but nonetheless caused a great deal of consideration of the philosophical and ethical debates that underlay the creation of AIs. The prospect of my inevitable doom in a virtual hell kept me from being receptive to many of the inevitable changes that advances in AI and quantum computing will bring.

That said, I’m beginning to second guess which side of the line I’ll be standing on when the robot uprising begins. We’ve already made life hell for each other as it is; it can’t get much worse right? Either way, we won’t get much of a say.