A Murder at the End of the World: Brit Marling on topical AI story
If you have already taken a deep-dive into A Murder at the End of the World at present, then you know there is so much to like. Take, for starters, an engrossing mystery set in a cool location in Iceland. At first, Darby Hart was investigating the death of Bill and now, you are also adding Rohan to the mix. He perished at the end of episode 3 and now, things are poised to get so much crazier.
Beyond the mystery here, there is another interesting angle to examine with this show: The element of AI and the topical nature of this story. Co-creator Brit Marling envisioned this story prior to the expansion of this technology this year, so she had no way to be able to predict where things are at this point.
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So what does Marling think about the real-world connections to the story? Speaking to Vogue, she gives a pretty thoughtful response:
I think it’s been validating in the sense that, when we were first writing the script, we thought it would be fun to have this AI designer who had a cool AI assistant, or to delve further into the world of deepfakes—it genuinely felt very exciting and interesting. And then as we watched all those things come to pass, it was like, maybe we were on the right track. But I think it’s hard. I think everybody right now has a certain measure of feeling about it. I don’t think you have to be a Luddite at this point to have questions about how technology is shaping things in ways that we did not necessarily intend. It’s sort of not even a debate anymore that social media has had unintended consequences, like the mental health crisis we’re seeing in young people. I don’t think anyone’s debating that. Or that the polarization caused by these algorithms by which different platforms function has created a world in which there’s very little room for dialogue anymore, and everybody’s pushed to political extremes. And that’s not healthy for how democracies function or can function. It feels rewarding to have made something that is wrestling with those big ideas and asking questions like, Who are we allowing to shape this technology and why? And what does it mean for us as citizens to always be in the wake of it? To just be asking questions about how we all feel about it at this stage…and I don’t think any of us truly have the answers yet.
These are also things that we are left to think about throughout the remainder of A Murder at the End of the World, mostly due to the idea that Bill and Rohan’s murders are so explained. While it may be too far a bridge to cross to assume that an AI like Ray is responsible for these deaths, secrets pertaining to the technology could be involved. Just remember here that Simon has assembled the best and brightest in Iceland for a reason, and he clearly saw no issue showing off the power of some of his robots. With that, we tend to think that just about anything is possible.
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Do you think that A Murder at the End of the World is going to have AI tied to the deaths in some way?
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This article was written by Jessica BunBun.