Technology isn’t the real threat to Black Mirror, the series’ creator

At the end of the pandemic, charlie brooker His killers were almost over. Like many people, producer and screenwriter of black Mirror Most have been through the lockdown”watching one true crime documentary after another, Once things returned to normal, Brooker finished the miniseries about the gruesome murders and had an idea for a new episode of his hugely popular Netflix anthology series, which was known for its dark and humorous tone at the same time. It was famous for its uncanny ability to predict the future. ,

loch henry – a thought-provoking and moody set in Scotland – is the second episode of the sixth season of black Mirror, which is returning to the screens today after a gap of four years. Inspired by Marathon Series true Crime by brooker loch henry talk about turning torture into entertainment And about the troubling nature of this process: “As you look at them, you will feel like you are looking at real art Brooker says.but you’re really peeping at a crime scene,

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If success in the past black Mirror Built on its ability to deliver on the title’s promise — a look at our true selves reflected in the shiny surfaces of our smartphones — this season goes in a different direction. The camera is aimed at the chain and the material machine itself,

In mazzi day We meet a young celebrity stalked by paparazzi in Los Angeles in the early 2000s (in this case, Brooker’s inspiration came from a documentary about Britney Spears). In across the oceanStarring Aaron Paul and Josh Hartnett, A Remote Astronaut Pays a Big Price for Audience Appreciation. and in demon 79presented as the first episode of a bloody horror story red mirrorA story telling politician manipulates the media to spread his message of hate.

zone is awesome, the flagship episode of the new season, follows an ordinary woman who turns her life with Salma Hayek into a dazzling TV show that airs on Streamberry, a decidedly subtle reference to Netflix. Is. episode inspired drop outon the acclaimed series Elizabeth Holmes and the Theranos scandal, Looking at Amanda Seyfried’s interpretation, Brooker was struck by the fact that the events told by the series were very recent, and how different the experience must have been for the actual characters in the story: “All these celebrities were playing in this, who would be watching sitting at home.Brooker explains.

context is a perfect example of How much black Mirror know how to be sharpCriticizing the plate from which the series eats and the readiness with which people’s lives are converted into material, with or without the permission of interested parties.

wiredIt’s been four years since the last season of : black Mirror, What was it like writing a dystopian sci-fi series in an increasingly dystopian real-life setting?

charlie brooker: I started writing the season during the pandemic, and when I started — apart from Zoom, which everyone was suddenly using — I thought things had stabilized, but obviously the world was going through a difficult and dystopian time. Was staying

Do you want to shine a light or dig deeper into the dark?

I began to think, “well i don’t want to write another episode about things i’ve already written several episodes about“. One way to stop yourself from doing this is to erase the thought of the episode from your mind. black MirrorThinking “Go to hell“And start writing some more.

This explains why some of the stories in the new season don’t talk about technology or other traditional themes at all. Black Mirror,

we have a mix of episodes we can say a lot black Mirror And others that are less so, but which definitely shake things up a bit and get them out of rut. It would have been easier for me to sit and think,I want to do an episode on polarization in social media, I want to do an episode on NFT, But that was never the goal of the show. We didn’t mean to sayHere’s what’s happening in tech this week , It was always intended to be a more crazy, weird and hopefully unique series.

In some episodes of this season, the show itself seems to be rotating the lens. zone is awesome, in particular, talks about turning one’s life into something material. Did the inspiration come from any event in your life?

It’s not something I consciously think about; The only stories that fascinate me often seem to be about… lack of authenticity of experiencewould be one way to describe it.

One of the questions writers constantly have to grapple with is the extent to which they turn their lives into material. If something terrible happens to you and you’re working in a creative field, it’s tempting to write about it or do a series. It’s a tradeoff, but once it’s done there’s no going back.

can not be done. This is fame. It’s about dealing with things that have traditionally been the preserve of celebrities: living an extremely public life and subjecting ourselves to the judgment of others that we potentially all deal with. There is a human need to see clearly and to be recognized. I have a son who is 9 years old and asked me if he can start a YouTube channel. I really didn’t know what to answer.

You are known to worry a lot: Are you worried about the existential threat posed by artificial intelligence?

Yes, as far as everything else concerns me.

But are there things specific to AI that worry you?

I’m angry: I wanted to do an episode about a stand-up artificial intelligence, but I couldn’t and now I think it’s going to be a while. We’ve been telling stories about AI for a long time, I think maybe the first come back to me

with Domhnall Gleeson and Hayley Atwell, where he dies and she uses a sort of chatbot-style AI for the bereaved to speak to him. In a way, that sums up what I have to say, because it becomes a kind of soft imitation, which really isn’t as messed up and wonderful and weird and wrong as the original. It becomes a strange watery echo.

he recently told Empire of which I made ChatGpt to write an episode black Mirrorwhich, however, cameStool,

My concern right now is that the executives are using this to cobble together a nonsense list of unpaid ideas from real human beings: stolen from the internet and then mashed together into a mash. Awesome, I own this IP and now I will hire human authors to make it actually usable, for less, as ChatGPT can’t do that at the moment. This is definitely a valid concern.

Definitely.

As for the illustrations, I’m undecided, as this shows that (AI) is capable of creating really amazing illustrations. He can emulate the style of existing humans and then synthesize and merge everything. If I were an illustrator, I would be very concerned about the fact that the assignments may be over.

And what about impacts beyond the creative industries?

What if (AI) becomes Skynet and decides to wipe us out? I remember reading an article that said it would be in the afternoon, if it happens. We’ll wake up one morning, we’ll stretch, we’ll yawn, and when the sun goes down we’ll share the planet with 50 billion times our intelligence, and then you figure out what it can do. We cannot predict this.

But perhaps, if these systems were made in our image, they would only suffer from anxiety and self-loathing?

This will make them more interesting. But the problem is, they’re not. I’ve seen stories of robots suddenly developing human emotions, and I’ve always avoided including those kinds of stories. black Mirror Because I find it difficult to empathize.

Maybe I’m a robot, or maybe I just have too many feelings, I don’t know. But I’ve always found it distasteful as a plot, probably because I’m selfish and think, “I don’t care about that robot.” And come back to me was written as a story on the antipodes of the model”robot with emotions,

Society’s concerns change with the times: artificial intelligence, climate change and the threat of nuclear war, which appear in one of the new episodes. black Mirror He’s always been very good at predicting what the next concern will be. What worries you now and what will worry us in ten years?

In short, what concerns me is misinformation: as was the case with the image of the Pope with a quilt that went viral a few weeks ago and was later found to be generated by artificial intelligence. We can see what happens when these kinds of things are weaponized, which will happen very soon. It’s terrible, because some of the people they’re investigating either give a damn or actively encourage it.

It Scares Me: What People Do When They’re Afraid and Misinformed. It’s disappointing, isn’t it? This will probably be our biggest challenge in the next ten years. And then, beyond that, everything else: climate, nuclear bombs, etc.

but you wrote a lot of things for black Mirror Then they actually happened, and for many of the ones that do happen, one gets the impression that they could or should have been included in the series. Even a device like Apple’s Vision Pro is a dystopian device in many ways.

It’s weird, very weird. I had an instinct when I saw it: “oh my god it’s right from black mirrorWe haven’t had anything like it this season, but that’s because we’ve done it before! We did it years ago. But most of the time what I was doing was looking at things and guessing, so in a lot of ways it’s not that surprising.

But what are your warnings? Such a series is a warning not to do a certain thing, then on time Is done,

I don’t know that it’s necessarily about not doing a certain thing. Usually in the story it’s a weak and flawed human who blows everything up, not the technology. we have done metalheads, which was about AI robot dogs killing people around — that’s right, it’s technology. but in dangerous memoriesIn the episode where the protagonists can look back at their memories, it is the jealous and insecure husband who blows up their lives. Technology is usually not to blame in stories.

In general I am in favor of technology. We probably have to rely on them in order to survive, so I wouldn’t say they’re necessarily warnings, so much as fears. Those are probably the worst case scenarios. I read one thing – maybe it was on wired — that tech companies have “red teams” that meet and brainstorm things like: “How can this thing be misused? We just invented the Apple AirTag, what if someone used it to tail someone?“That’s often what I do.

This interview – which originally appeared on Wired UK – has been edited, condensed and translated.