A THREAT CALLED AGGIE
. Good when the information feeds theatre-moments. This week, AI solved in two days a medical conundrum which had baffled people for a decade. On the opposite hand, a mischievous journalist tricked ChatGPT into telling the world that Dr Crippen was a melancholic poet. Whether we’re heading to heaven or hel with Artificial Intelligence continues to be anyone’s guess, however it’s a good topic for drama .
And needs to be thrillingly suspenseful within the fingers of Beau Willimon, former showrunner for House of Cards US. He explains that the TV writers’ strike made him flip to the stage for this, so hopes have been excessive at Hampstead. He affords us Lena (Kaya Scodelario) nervy and intelligent, deep within the mysteries of coding ,,and in flight from a Mennonite anti-tech cult childhood and abuse. Her teammate and lover is Russian Sasha (Luke Treadaway), stressed, energetic and really watchable .
The pair are considered one of eleven groups of coders engaged on the large AI “Logos” programme, and are being questioned by an NSA (National Security Agency) panel together with an Iranian lesbian Sufi , the smooth spoken Samira (Nathalie Armin) and the Jewish-Māori, Ari (an imposing Cliff Curtis) . He at one level breaks the fourth wall with an advanced lecture on the philosophy of dualism, during which he doesn’t imagine, and begins sweating for no very clear motive. Their boss is Tom, who for an excellent whereas scowlingly screens the investigation on a platform overhead along with his arms folded, and who when requested for his antecedents by Sufi-Jewish-Maori colleagues snaps “I’m American!”. Behind a desk within the hq above is a technician with little to say , which satirically means we would like to listen to extra. I moderately hoped he’d get away, however alas not.
Ellen McDougall’s manufacturing is pretty pacy, however the play itself needs to be both extra tense, or extra personally partaking. The former is hampered by its eagerness to bombard us with concepts about accelerated evolution and exponential self-learning; the emotional deficit is as a result of Lena and Sasha don’t persuade us of their mutual attraction within the flashbacks of their working alliance. (the NSA is aware of far an excessive amount of about their lives and texts in addition to their work: the sense of stifling deep-underground military-level safety could be very efficient) . The core of the issue is that Sasha believes that God didn’t create the universe however that having developed the human mind and its innovations, the universe is now creating God. Which is Logos. And which is “bigger than any nation” and will finish struggle and illness. Though whether or not it might hassle to is , at one stage, explicitly doubted.
So – although really a NSA agent himself – he’s an enemy inside it. He and Lena are alleged to be growing Orion, a Trojan programme to regulate or change off Logos if it tries to take over the world. They amiably name Logos Aggie (AGI, Artificial General Intelligence) and are sabotaging Orion to free it – her – to develop into God. Which it appears she will be able to solely do by greedy the theological thriller that issues could be each one factor and one thing reverse: you realize, God and man, nowhere and in every single place, east is south, all that….
Aggie does practically get there, in a terrific gentle present which I believed is perhaps the finale. But the NSA – stern Tom – doesn’t need mystical dualism messing with world servers and resorts to handcuffs and finger-breaking whereas Ari reanimates his former drug behavior and delivers a spectacular ultimate haka from his ancestry. And that actually is the finale, superbly dramatic too.
OK, it might be a stronger play with a couple of cuts – 100 straight minutes with out laughter to ease us is taxing, and to be sincere the ‘abuse” plot doesn’t do a lot for it. And I obtained irritated by Lena’s ultimate second which feels, sigh, like a kind of too-familiar tragic thrives beloved of recent playwrights who wish to shock and never be criticized for it. . But the entire thing is extra fascinating than irritating, and has a critical go on the philosophical ethical points round AI.
Moreover, since proper now it appears as if energy over our our future future is being shared out between tech bros and the iron fist of US Security exceptionalism, it’s not a waste of time.
hampsteadtheatre.com to fifteen March
Rating 3.
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