There aren\u2019t many television shows yet about how AI affects our daily lives. After all, there isn\u2019t much dramatic potential in shows about creatively flaccid people using ChatGPT to write woeful little Facebook updates. But that is not to say we haven\u2019t come close.<\/p>\n
For years, fiction about AI tended to be exclusively about killer robots, but some shows have taken a more nuanced look at how AI will shape our lives over the next few years. Here are the best of them.<\/p>\n
8. HumansHorrifyingly prescient \u2026 Mia (Gemma Chan), Max (Ivanno Jeremiah) and Flash (Ritu Arya) in Humans. Photograph: Colin Hutton\/Kudos\/Wild Mercury\/Channel 4<\/p>\n
As this Channel 4 sci-fi wore on, it headed more and more towards the killer robot trope, as the synthetic humans gained consciousness, realised how shabbily the human race had treated them, and sought revenge. But in the more contemplative first season, Humans revolved around the idea of how humanity and AI interact. In an age in which people fall in love with their chatbots<\/a>, and parents are suing OpenAI<\/a> for ChatGPT allegedly encouraging their children to kill themselves, this element of the show is starting to look horrifyingly prescient.<\/p>\n 7. Person of InterestA race to the bottom? \u2026 Michael Emerson in Person of Interest. Photograph: TCD\/Prod.DB\/Alamy<\/p>\n Another slightly lazy thing for creators to do is to use AI as an all-knowing bogeyman, as the last two Mission: Impossible films proved. Jonathan Nolan\u2019s Person of Interest narrowly avoided falling into this trap, even though it was about an artificial intelligence program designed to prevent crime before it is committed. Person of Interest became more relevant when it introduced a second, less scrupulous program that was determined to destroy the first. If you\u2019ve ever looked on aghast at what seems like AI\u2019s race to the bottom, this will resonate.<\/p>\n 6. Devs<\/p>\n Alex Garland\u2019s banger of a series took a leap when it predicted what AI could achieve by using machine learning to analyse every piece of data in the universe to map the entire past, present and future of human history. Given that today\u2019s AI has roughly the same skills as a trainee copywriter, this may still be some years away. However, the culture that brought the technology into being \u2013 which favoured progress over ethics \u2013 does feel quite contemporary.<\/p>\n 5. NextDeeply unsettling \u2026 John Slattery in Next. Photograph: Everett Collection Inc\/Alamy<\/p>\n This short-lived Fox procedural was about a superintelligent AI that broke out of its confines and thrust havoc on the world. Obviously this hasn\u2019t happened yet (give it six months), but it did a very unsettling job of showing how easy it would be, since every single thing we own seems to be connected to the internet. Emails were faked. Phones went down. Wifi-connected cars went haywire. I can\u2019t remember if someone\u2019s smart fridge ended up killing them, but frankly it\u2019s only a matter of time.<\/p>\n 4. Years and YearsIt could always get worse? \u2026 Emma Thompson as Vivienne Rook in Years and Years. Photograph: Album\/Alamy<\/p>\n Russell T Davies wrote his dystopian thriller more than half a decade ago, but with every passing day it feels as if he is getting more and more right. The show predicted the Ukraine war, the pandemic, Trump\u2019s second term and a populist rightwing leader keen to dismantle the BBC. Another running theme of the show is having characters who are forced into low-paid service work after their jobs are taken by AI. Which is depressing, but given that the show also features bombings and death camps, it could always get worse.<\/p>\n 3. Mrs DavisPlanet ravaging stuff \u2026 Betty Gilpin in Mrs Davis. Photograph: Landmark Media\/Alamy<\/p>\n On the surface, Vince Gilligan\u2019s new show Pluribus has a lot in common with Damon Lindelof\u2019s 2023 series Mrs Davis. Both feature a woman determined to save the world from a force that seems to have united the rest of the world against her. In the case of Pluribus, an alien virus destroys individuality, replacing all of humanity with a single inanely cheerful consciousness. But in Mrs Davis, the threat was an all-knowing AI that people had willingly signed up for \u2013 even though it was ravaging the planet \u2013 because it made their lives marginally easier. Sound familiar?<\/p>\n 2. The CaptureFar more frightening than any killer robot \u2026 Isaac Turner (Paapa Essiedu) and DCI Rachel Carey (Holliday Grainger) in The Capture. Photograph: Ray Burmiston\/BBC\/Heyday\/Universal International Studios<\/p>\n A BBC drama with a premise that becomes more and more relevant by the day; what if you could no longer trust your own eyes? The Capture depicted AI as a tool of propaganda, where governments could use deepfake technology to depict anyone doing anything, and the results were indistinguishable from reality. Again, this isn\u2019t impossible to imagine \u2013 there are already TikTok deepfakes of Queen Elizabeth II having a tantrum in Greggs \u2013 but the thought of AI being used as a way to control the truth is far more frightening than any killer robot.<\/p>\n 1. Black MirrorCould our chatbots destroy us? \u2026 Be Right Back: Black Mirror. Photograph: Channel 4<\/p>\n