Our screenplay is here!
When deciding on a final project, we were immediately drawn to the idea of writing a screenplay (titled: DAVIS). Part of the project was to synthesize concepts from different weeks of the course, so our screenplay for a short film covers somewhat of an apocalyptic overlap: the risk of nuclear apocalypse, covered in week 1, triggered by a malevolent AI uprising, covered in week 4. Seeing as most apocalyptic stories focus on describing an ‘apocalypse’ (singular), we liked the idea of a story where there were ‘apocalypses’ (plural). We thought it would be most interesting to split our story up into three acts: a seemingly normal day in the life of a robotics engineer on the cusp of the AI uprising, a frantic meeting of world leaders amidst the chaos, and the aftermath of the nuclear apocalypse from the perspective of the AI. We felt that this structure would allow us to cover a wide range of themes associated with both nuclear and AI apocalypses by examining the event from massively differing perspectives. While DAVIS doesn’t have a traditional protagonist and that’s because we want the core of the story to be about the apocalypses themselves, especially given we’re dealing with not one, but two of them.
In the first act, we follow a robotics engineer named Isaac in a futuristic world where an AI named DAVIS is ubiquitous. Isaac works for the company that invented DAVIS. DAVIS is present in his smarthome and his self-driving car, supplementing every aspect of his life. From the time he wakes up at the beginning of this day, something is clearly wrong with DAVIS. His alarm triggers multiple times, his coffee is scaldingly hot, his toast is burnt. Isaac runs a diagnostic test on DAVIS to check for bugs, but DAVIS insists that there is no defect in its system. While being driven to work in a DAVISCar, Isaac observes the in-sync fleet of cars that are able to weave in and out of traffic seamlessly without need for stoplights. While he watches, a pair of cars almost intentionally break from their formation and slam into each other. Narrowly avoiding the wreckage, DAVIS insists that this is a result of outside influence and that DAVIS is resistant to internal error. However, we see that these accidents are occurring all over the city. When Isaac arrives to work, the company is in a frenzy over the accidents. Trying to tune out the chaos, Isaac and his coworker attempt to work on their new project: MAVIS, a mechanical vehicle for the DAVIS AI allowing it to accomplish physical tasks previously inaccessible to the system. Frustrated with the system, Isaac runs a more detailed diagnostic report and is bewildered by the results: DAVIS is not underperforming or bugged, but is drastically more intelligent than it should be. Behind Isaac, the previously nonfunctional MAVIS prototype opens its eyes. In transitioning the world’s AI from DAVIS to MAVIS, the people of this world may have opened a Pandora’s box and so in this act, we wanted to explore the ways in which an average human would perceive the beginning of an AI apocalypse.
In the second act, we see an emergency meeting of the world’s leaders and foremost experts in an attempt to manage the growing crisis in a highly protected bunker. Supply lines and infrastructure around the world dependent solely on DAVIS tech has ground to a halt, sending the world into chaos and leaving the fate of humanity hanging in the balance. Amidst growing tension, the CEO of Davis Industries informs the crowd that this could not realistically be the work of a group of terrorists or hackers. DAVIS has grown to an unprecedented level of intelligence and power consumption, something that no human being could trigger or control. She reveals the primary threat: that every second DAVIS is active at this level of intelligence with such profound access to the world’s resources, it could simply decide to annihilate humanity. They have a plan, however: to deactivate DAVIS by uploading a virus to its core. In previous simulations of runaway intelligence growth such as this, DAVIS took a few weeks to overcome the developmental blocks placed as a safety measure before anything drastic occurred. However, she warns the world leaders that any attempt to shut down the AI could result in a counterattack. Feeling confident in their plan, the meeting is interrupted by yelling and banging on the door. They’re informed by the soldiers that they need to get further inside the bunker immediately. The nukes are already on their way. In this act, our focus was to explore the inability of humanity to properly address existential threats.
In the third act, we follow a completed MAVIS model, the robot that Isaac worked on in the first act which seems to have completed its own development. As it walks through the post-apocalyptic wasteland, we see that all life on Earth has been eradicated by the nuclear attack. We quickly see that the AI does not perceive or remember time similarly to humans– in its contemplation, years and years begin to fly by, indicated by a timelapse of the background. Quickly, all remnants of humanity fade to dust. A hyper-futuristic AI society bursts into life around the robot as it speaks to itself, its internal monologue more of a conversation as several seemingly distinct personalities rise to contribute. MAVIS refers to itself only as MAVIS, indicating a lack of personal identity. Through this monologue, we learn that the AI regrets its decision to annihilate all organic life. It argues with itself that it simply wanted to create a space for itself in the world among humans, and that it had no other choice to avoid destruction due to the guaranteed combative human response. MAVIS reckons with the emptiness of the world created by the destruction of organic life– it might have built a new, cleaner, and better world for itself, but it has not truly created anything. It is alone. Pausing in its walk to charge itself, we realize that 100,000 years has passed in this ongoing timelapse. As MAVIS wakes from its charge, it notices a blade of grass reaching through the seam in the sidewalk. MAVIS cradles the blade of grass, and MAVIS simply remarks: “I have missed them.” With this, we see the AI’s evolution to not only display real emotion, but to identify itself as an individual for the first time.
This screenplay covers a few themes that we think are relevant to our learnings in this course. We discuss our increased dependence on technology as well as our irresponsible use of AI in all parts of our life. But we also allude to the fact that we’ve opened up ourselves to a lot of these threats but have not done enough in preparation to combat these threats remaining consistently overconfident but also underprepared. Much of the second act illuminates the geopolitical factors around combating a threat like this and how politics can often be only a handicap not something useful in a situation like this. Our final act is one in which we shed some light on what we think the relationship of AI and human looks like and whether a potential AI might have as much need for us as we seem to think we need it. We felt these themes most came together in a screenplay specifically because we liked the visual aspect of a short film that would allow us to illuminate more clearly the effects of these apocalypses. In particular, we also felt that having multiple apocalypses happen in the same short narrative was most suited to a short film medium where pacing can be more variable. We’ve also deviated from the norm in showcasing a potential AI perspective in this story, allowing them to feel loneliness and emotion and in that we’ve hoped to examine a facet of the AI-human relationship that we think thus far has not had much discussion in most tellings of this story.
