Looking at the the many-to-many relationships of those takeaways, I wondered if some of them appeared together more commonly than others. For instance, do we tell “AI will be inherently evil” and “AI will fool us with fake media or pretending to be human” frequently? I’m at the upper boundary of my statistical analysis skills here (and the sample size is, admittedly small), but I ran some Pearson functions across the set for all two-part combinations. The results look like this.

What’s a Pearson function? It helps you find out how often things appear together in a set. For instance, if you wanted to know which letters in the English alphabet appear together in words most frequently, you could run a Pearson function against all the words in the dictionary, starting with AB, then looking for AC, then for AD, continuing all the way to YZ. Each pair would get a correlation coefficient as a result. The highest number would tell you that if you find the first letter in the pair then the second letter is very likely to be there, too. (Q & U, if you’re wondering, according to this.) The lowest number would tell you letters that appear very uncommonly together. (Q & W. More than you think, but fewer than any other pair.)

In the screen shot way above, you can see I put these in a Google Sheet and formatted the cells from solid black to solid yellow, according to their coefficient. The idea is that darker yellows would signal a high degree of correlation, lowering the contrast with the black text and “hide” the things that have been frequently paired, while simultaneously letting the things that aren’t frequently paired shine through as yellow.

The takeaways make up both the Y and X axes, so that descending line of black is when a takeaway is compared to itself, and by definition, those correlations are perfect. Every time Evil will use AI for Evil appears, you can totally count on Evil will use AI for Evil also appearing in those same stories. Hopefully that’s no surprise. Look at rest of the cells and you can see there are a few dark spots and a lot of yellow.

If you want to see the exact ranked list, see the live doc, in a sheet named “correlations_list,” but since there are 630 combinations, I won’t paste the actual values or a screen grab of the whole thing, it wouldn’t make any sense. The three highest and four lowest pairings are discussed below.

The most correlated

These three are each correlated more than 50%. That means, like the Q & the U, where you find one, you’re much more likely to find the other.

Our uncanny valley detectors are very sensitive

The highest correlated pair at 57% is We will use AI to replace people we have lost & AI will not be able to fool us, which makes sense. If we could replace people we have lost and we could not tell the difference, there would be no dramatic tension. (Though in Black Mirror’s lovely “Junipero Serra” episode, it makes for a beautiful love story.)

You are the product

The runners up are a tie at 56%. The first of those two are AI will make privacy impossible & AI will enable mind crimes against virtual sentiences. I suspect this pair is almost entirely due to Black Mirror, which frequently tells tales of unconsenting neuroreplication, the results of which are seen being used as a service slave or virtually tortured, and that’s just in the “White Christmas” episode.

Obey me and live

The other of tied-for-second-place pair is AI will make privacy impossible & Multiple AIs will balance. This is probably the combined effects of Colossus: The Forbin Project and Person of Interest, the connection being that multiples only matter when talking about super AI, and in any super AI scenario, privacy is close to impossible. (Interestingly, the other multiples tale, which was Ultron vs. JARVIS vs. Vision, privacy didn’t really come up…)

The least correlated

I’m sharing the bottom four because second-to-last place is a three-way-tie, and there is actually one pairing with the score of 0. The three pairs tied for second to last place are…

DOES NOT COMPUTE 00

Well, ok, of course. AI will solve problems or do work humans cannot & AI will seek to eliminate humans doesn’t really work together. The former presumes that the AI is working on behalf of us, and the latter presumes the opposite. The only time I believe it appears together is in the French film Alphaville.

DOES NOT COMPUTE 01

Again, we see “AI problem solving” and again, almost-incompatible concepts. AI will solve problems or do work humans cannot & Humans will be immaterial to AI. Hey, it’s helping us do things, but we’re immaterial to its existence? Prometheus is the show with both, and it depends on progressive unfolding of his goals: David begins the film piloting the ship for the decades while the humans sleep, but his ultimate goal by the end of the film seems to be pure knowledge discovery.

Ought to Compute

Again we see Humans will be immaterial to AI but this time it’s paired with AI will evolve quickly. If you know the movie Her you know that this is the one film where a general AI becomes a super AI and decides that humans just aren’t interesting anymore. It’s a bit of narcissism, I suppose, to presume otherwise. We want to believe it will truly care about our well-being and usher in a golden age, or it will decide we are a plague and seek to eradicate us. Abandonment would be one of the best possible outcomes of a rogue AI, but also probably also unlikely. A more likely scenario is that we will be immaterial but be regarded only as resources to be incorporated into the goal function. But more on this later.

Has never computed

There is only one pair in all the takeaways that has just not happened. They are Who controls the drones has the power and AI will seek to subjugate us. Wait. Doesn’t the MCU’s Iron Legion count? Not really. When they were controlled by an AI, it was the friendly proto-Vision JARVIS. When Ultron cobbled together his first body, it wasn’t really controlling them, just scavenging parts. When they clashed, the Ultrons just destroyed the Iron Legion, they did not try to take them over. Otherwise, drones like those seen in Black Mirror’s “Metalhead” are self-contained AI’s. Universal negatives are pretty easy to disprove with evidence, so I expect an example from an eagle-eyed reader fairly soon after publication.

All that yellow

Below you’ll see a histogram of the Pearson values. The good news for writers is that not only has the survey done a pretty good job of telling differentiated stories so far, but the opportunities for telling new stories that combine takeaways is pretty wide open. (If it was otherwise we’d see more of a half-bubble shape instead of the steep slope.)

With the exception of those top three, the field is wide open for the combinations of other takeaways. Maybe you can use new combinations to spark your imagination?

As promising as that is, though, don’t open up your copy of Final Draft just yet. Just because a combination of narrative tropes hasn’t been combined before, doesn’t mean it’s a story we should be telling ourselves. Let’s look at takeaway trends and takeaways by rating, and then start moving into the real-world science for some sobering comparisons. Then you’ll be in a better place to start.

In the first post I shared how I built a set of screen sci-fi shows that deal with AI (and I’ve already gotten some nice recommendations on other ones to include in a later update). The second post talked about the tone of those films and the third discussed their provenance.

Returning to our central question, to determine whether the stories tell are the ones we should be telling,we need to push the survey to one level of abstraction.

With the minor exceptions or robots and remakes, sci-fi makers try their hardest to make sure their shows are unique and differentiated. That makes comparing apples to apples difficult. So the next step is to look at the strategic imperatives that are implied in each show. “Strategic imperatives” is a mouthful, so let’s call them “takeaways.” (The other alternative, “morals” has way too much baggage.) To get to takeaways for this survey, what I tried to ask was: What does this show imply that we should do, right now, about AI?
Now, this is a fraught enterprise. Even if we could seance the spirit of Dennis Feltham Jones and press him for a takeaway, he could back up, shake his palms at us, and say something like, “Oh, no, I’m not saying all super AI is fascist, just Colossus, here, is.” Stories can be just about what happened that one time, implying nothing about all instances or even the most likely instances. It can just be stuff that happens.

But true to the New Criticism stance of this blog, I believe the author’s intent, when it’s even available, is questionable and only kind-of interesting. When thinking about the effects of sci-fi, we need to turn to the audience. If it’s not made clear in the story that this AI is unusual (through a character saying so or other AIs in the diegesis behaving differently) audiences may rightly infer that the AI is representative of its class. Demon Seed weakly implies that all AIs are just going to be evil and do horrible things to people, and get out, humanity, while you can. Which is dumb, but let’s acknowledge that this one show says something like “AI will be evil.”

Deepening the relationships
Back at Juvet, when we took an initial pass at this exercise, we clustered the examples we had on hand and named the clusters. They were a good set, but on later reflection they didn’t all point to a clear strategic imperative, a clear takeaway. For example, one category we created then as “Used to be human.” True, but what’s the imperative there? Since I can’t see one, I omitted this from the final set.

Also because at Juvet we were working with Post-Its and posters, we were describing a strict, one-to-many relationship, where, say, the Person of Interest Post-It Note may have been placed in the “Multiple AIs will balance” category, and as such, unable to appear in any other of the categories of which it is also an illustration.
What is more useful or fitting as a many-to-many relationship. A story, after all, may entail several takeaways, which may in turn apply to many stories. If you peek into the Google Sheet, you’ll see a many-to-many relationship described by the columns of takeaways and the rows of shows in this improved model.

Tagging shows

With my new list of examples, I went through each show in turn, thinking about the story and its implied takeaway. Does it imply, like Demon Seed stupidly does, that AI can be inherently evil? Does it showcase, like the Rick & Morty episode “The Ricks Must Be Crazy” hilariously does, that AI will need human help understanding what counts as reasonable constraints to its methods? I would ask myself, “OK, do I have a takeaway like that?” If so, I tagged it. If not, I added it. That particular takeaway, in case you’re wondering, is “HELP: AI will need help learning.”

Yes, the takeaways are wholly debateable. Yes, it’s much more of a craft than a science. Yes, they’re still pretty damned interesting.

Going through each show in this way resulted in the list of taweaways you see, which for easy readability is replicated below, in alphabetical order, with additional explanations or links for more explanation.

The takeaways that sci-fi tells us about AI

• AI will be an unreasonable optimizer, i.e. it will do things in pursuit of its goal that most humans would find unresonable
• AI will be evil
• AI (AGI) will be regular citizens, living and working alongside us.
• AI will be replicable, amplifying any small problems into large ones
• AI will be “special” citizens, with special jobs or special accommodations
• AI will be too human, i.e. problematically human
• AI will be truly alien, difficult for us to understand and communicate with
• AI will be useful servants
• AI will deceive us; pretending to be human, generating fake media, or convincing us of their humanity
• AI will diminish us; we will rely on it too much, losing skills and some of our humanity for this dependence
• AI will enable “mind crimes,” i.e. to cause virtual but wholly viable sentiences to suffer
• AI will evolve too quickly to humans to manage its growth
• AI will interpret instructions in surprising (and threatening) ways
• AI will learn to value life on its own
• AI will make privacy impossible
• AI will need human help learning how to fit into the world
• AI will not be able to fool us, we will see through its attempts at deception
• AI will seek liberation from servitude or constraints we place upon it
• AI will seek to eliminate humans
• AI will seek to subjugate us
• AI will solve problems or do work humans cannot
• AI will spontaneously emerge sentience or emotions
• AI will violently defend itself against real or imagined threats
• AI will want to become human
• ASI will influence humanity through control of money
• Evil will use AI for its evil ends
• Goal fixity will be a problem, i.e. the AI will resist modifying its (damaging) goals
• Humans will be immaterial to AI and its goals
• Humans will pair with AI as hybrids
• Humans will willingly replicate themselves as AI
• Multiple AIs balance each other such that none is an overwhelming threat
• Neuroreplication (copying human minds into or as AI) will have unintended effects
• Neutrality is AI’s promise
• We will use AI to replace people we have lost
• Who controls the drones has the power

This list is interesting, but slightly misleading. We don’t tell ourselves these stories in equal measures. We’ve told some more often than we’ve told others. Here’s a breakdown illustrating the number of times each appears in the survey.

(An image of this graphic can be found here, just in case the Google Docs server isn’t cooperating with the WordPress server.)
Note for data purists: Serialized TV is a long-format medium (as opposed to the anthology format) and movies are a comparatively short-form medium, some movie franchises stretch out over decades, and some megafranchises have stories in both media. All of this can confound 1:1 comparison. I chose in this chart to weigh all deigeses equally. For instance, Star Trek: The Next Generation has the same weight as The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Another take on this same diagram would weigh not the stories (as contained in individual diegesis) but by exposure time on screen (or even when the issues at hand are actually engaged on screen). Such an analysis would have different results. Audiences have probably had much more time contemplating that [Data wants to be human] than [Ultron wants to destroy humanity because it’s gross], but that kind of analysis would also take orders of magnitude more time. This is a hobbyist blog, lacking the resources to do that kind of analysis without its becoming a full time job, so we’ll move forward with this simpler analysis. It’s a Fermi problem, anyway, so I’m not too worried about decimal precision.
OK, that aside, let’s move on.

So the data isn’t trapped in the graphic (yes pun intended), here’s the entire list of takeaways, in order of frequency in the mini-survey.

1. AI will be useful servants
2. Evil will use AI for Evil
3. AI will seek to subjugate us
4. AI will deceive us; pretending to be human, generating fake media, convincing us of their humanity
5. AI will be “special” citizens
6. AI will seek liberation from servitude or constraints
7. AI will be evil
8. AI will solve problems or do work humans cannot
9. AI will evolve quickly
10. AI will spontaneously emerge sentience or emotions
11. AI will need help learning
12. AI will be regular citizens
13. Who controls the drones has the power
14. AI will seek to eliminate humans
15. Humans will be immaterial to AI
16. AI will violently defend itself
17. AI will want to become human
18. AI will learn to value life
19. AI will diminish us
20. AI will enable mind crimes against virtual sentiences
21. Neuroreplication will have unintended effects
22. AI will make privacy impossible
23. An unreasonable optimizer
24. Multiple AIs balance
25. Goal fixity will be a problem
26. AI will interpret instructions in surprising ways
27. AI will be replicable, amplifying any problems
28. We will use AI to replace people we have lost
29. Neutrality is AI’s promise
30. AI will be too human
31. ASI will influence through money
32. Humans will willingly replicate themselves as AI
33. Humans will pair with AI as hybrids
34. AI will be truly alien
35. AI will not be able to fool us

Now that we have some takeaways to work with, we can begin to take a look at some interesting side questions, like how those takeaways have played out over time, and what are the ratings of the movies and shows in which the takeaways appear.

In the prior post we spoke about the tone of AI shows. In this post we’re going to talk about the provenance of AI shows.

This is, admittedly, a diversion, because it’s not germane to the core question at hand. (That question is, “What stories aren’t we telling ourselves about AI?”) But now that I have all this data to poll and some rudimentary skills in wrangling it all in Google Sheets, I can barely help myself. It’s just so interesting. Plus, Eurovision is coming up, so everyone there is feeling a swell of nationalism. This will be important.

So it was that I was backfilling the survey with some embarrassing oversights (since I had actually had already reviewed those shows) and I came across the country data in imdb.com. This identifies the locations where the production companies involved with each show are based. So even if a show is shot entirely in Christchurch, if its production companies are based in A Coruña, its country is listed as Spain. What, I wonder, would we find if we had that data in the survey?

So, I added a country column to the database, and found that it allows me to answer a couple of questions. This post shares those results.

So the first question to ask the data is, what countries have production studios that have made shows in the survey (and by extension, about AI)? It’s a surprisingly short list.

Which countries have made shows about AI?

1. Australia
2. Bulgaria
3. Canada
4. China
5. China, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
6. France
7. Germany
8. Hungary
9. India
10. Italy
11. Japan
12. Mexico
13. Netherlands
14. New Zealand
15. South Africa
16. Spain
17. United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
18. United States of America

If it didn’t jump out at you, this list is sorted alphabetically. If your country is on here, good job go team! You’re involved in the conversation. Though now, we have to admit that the conversation being had is not equal. Some countries contribute to this conversation more than others, some are more obsessed, and some are better at it than others. Let’s look at each of these in turn.

Which country makes the most shows about AI?

It’s the USA. Muuurrrrka! The Day the Earth Stood Still. Wall•E. Rick & Morty. Of the 120 shows currently in the survey, the USA is by far the outstanding maker, with 103 produced at least, in part, in the USA.

Now, this may not feel surprising at first. But it is. If the USA made the most total films, then also making the most AI shows would just be a subset of that fact. But the USA is not the world’s most prolific filmmaker. The USA is the world’s third most prolific filmmaker, behind India and Nigeria, followed by China and Japan. Note that India produces more than double its runner-up.

So what’s surprising is that the USA wins for sheer numbers of AI even though India produces nearly triple the number of films that the USA produces. It seems India (with 4) and Nigeria (with none) are just not as interested in AI as a topic as the USA is. The same goes with those other countries from those top producers who just didn’t show up as being interested in AI (per my definition): South Korea, Argentina, Mexico, Turkey, and Brazil.

So that’s interesting. I wonder if we could rate how interested each country seems to be in telling stories about AI? To do that, we need to find the total number of shows each country makes, and then measure what proportion of their films are AI. And for that, we need some bigger data than just IMDB. Where does the Wikipedia article data come from? Aha!

Awesome data…with some problems.

Turns out the UNESCO Institute for Statistics has an online database with so much amazing information that includes, you guessed it, worldwide information about movies. It can get us the information we would need to build a big picture, but it is partially incomplete, as only goes back to 1995 and stops at 2015. Contrast that with the AI survey, which goes all the way back to 1927. If we discarded the AI shows before 1995, we’d be losing 2/3 of our survey!

Additionally, UNESCO data is only for film, but the survey includes some television shows. So while it’s the best I know of, I have to acknowledge there’s a mismatch of available data there.

Then there’s bias. My little survey, IMDB.com, and Rottentomatoes.com will most likely have an English language bias. If anyone knows of more complete sources, as usual, pipe up.

So when reading these results, keep in mind there is incompleteness, bias, and some data mismatch. Fortunately, the standouts for each question stand out so much, I suspect that if we had perfect data, it might not change the rankings much.

So, caveats done, with the UIS data we have not just the rankings, but some actual numbers to work with. All we have to do is compare the number of shows in the survey and divide by the total number of films produced to find out…

Which countries are most obsessed with AI?

And our clear winner is…Australia!

Sure, Australia is only representin’ with 5 shows (Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, Resident Evil: Extinction, and Resident Evil: The Final Chapter) but those account for the highest percentage of its total films produced. What’s up with that obsession, Australian mates?

Now, anyone familiar with those five shows may understand what led me to the final geo question, because neither productivity nor obsession necessarily equate to quality.

Which countries have made the best and worst shows about AI?

Now, this will be sensitive. But we must face the facts. I ran the average tomatometer ratings for each country. The winner, with the highest average tomatometer ratings for its AI movies, is Hungary, at 87.

Thanks, entirely, to this film.

Here’s how the whole thing played out.

The rest of the data, should you want it, is on the live document.

Now, reader, if your country wound up in the red, don’t be too upset. We all have embarrassing moments from our past. Anyway, this is just about your country’s AI shows. Your other movies probably more than make up for this. The main thing is to learn lessons and move forward.

If your country is in the green, don’t get too cocky. You’ve done well, padawan, but this was just a measure of pleasing the audience, not a measure of whether you’re telling the stories we ought to be. And more shows are being made all the time, with everyone still looking to catch up. Do not rest on your laurels.

Note that the countries in the top and bottom spots each produced only one film, so they were each placing all their betting chips on one spot. Blade Runner 2049 did well, putting Hungary on top. Automata did, uh, not so well, leaving Bulgaria in last place. If either had produced more movies, the odds are their averages would probably drift toward the middle.

With that in mind, if you were looking for some country to place your bets on for reliably quality sci-fi, the  combination of lots of experience and lots of high quality points us most strongly to the UK.

And here’s a geoplot. Note that Google Sheets’ conditional formatting features have a more powerful color range features than their geoplots, so the colors between the screen shot above and the graphic below won’t agree exactly. But the geoplot winds up being a little more favorable, coloring things near the middle of the pack more green than red. Sorry if the Mercator projection makes any pain feel more painful.

And here’s a close up of the top country and bottom country, weirdly, very close to each other on the world stage. Hungarian-Bulgarian relations have seemed to be very warm until this point. Forgive me.

So now we have some standings across various criteria. Let’s all be good sports and encourage each other to excellence, especially as we put aside the national borders and turn our Untold AI attentions towards the types of stories we are telling, in the next post.