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Linde | 2022 World's Most Admired Companies | Fortune

“Prayer is dwindling”: ‘The Big Bang Theory’ writer teams up with ‘Lost’ and ‘The Leftovers’ co-creator for Peacock’s new sci-fi comedy series tackling spirituality and tech.

Religion vs. A.I.: “Mrs. Davis” follows nun on quest to save humanity from a powerful algorithm

Photograph courtesy of Peacock / NBC Universal

Entertainment

“Mrs. Davis”, co-created by Lindelof and showrunner Tara Hernandez, stars Betty Gilpin as a nun on a quest to save humanity from a powerful algorithm.

Damon Lindelof’s new show tackles faith vs. A.I.

“Prayer is dwindling”: ‘The Big Bang Theory’ writer teams up with ‘Lost’ and ‘The Leftovers’ co-creator for Peacock’s new sci-fi comedy series.

She'll speak to me through here and then I'll just repeat whatever she says. Not. She, it, it is a machine. She wants to talk, talk, talk, talk to Mrs Davis is an all powerful algorithm, an app that sort of lives on everybody's phone, like Facebook and Twitter and tiktok all rolled into one except you don't ask Mrs Davis for the weather or how to get from A to B. You ask Davis for purpose in your life and she sends people on these quests in order for them to find meaning. And we have a nun named Sister Simone and her convent is shut down and bought out by Mrs Davis. And Mrs Davis sends Simone on a quest. You must locate the holy grail. So what now? And the terms of the of this quest is if Simone is able to complete it, Mrs Davis will turn herself off. So this nun is basically representing all of humanity in an effort to sort of rest our, our souls back from tech. She wants to talk to you. We really wanted to create a figure that felt personal, that felt like it was providing people guidance and direction in the big questions they might have in their life, you know, should I get divorced? Should I move for this job that that kind of led into? Oh, can you get people to feel a sense of calm and peace and connection as a result of A I technology, which is basically largely the space of spirituality and religion, given the way that human beings are in terms of like we kind of want it. Now we want results. Now it feels like prayer is, is dwindling and sort of immediate gratification is winning and tech is right there to bring us over to the cusp of that. We sort of looked at the construction of a world that felt like yes, people were turning to this almost miraculous source of Mrs Davis and of course, that would brush up against sister Simone and her beliefs and her face relationship that just felt like such a juicy pairing something we hadn't seen before. And of course, we wanted to, to pursue that for our show, we had writers who had their fingers on the pulse, who were really, you know, sort of experts in the field, writers who were anywhere from, you know, going to mit and studying technology and trends to working in gaming. And the great thing about television writing is you have a eight or nine people in a room and each, each person has an entirely different perspective on it. They were significantly younger than I was, they were people of color. And so that the idea of like this is what A I is to me is much different than it was to them. So from the outset, we were having conversations about what the show wanted to take on in terms of the moment that we were all living in and what artificial intelligence was going to do to make things better or worse. When we were in those conversations, we could feel the weight and the gravity of the show started pulling down on us and we had to measure against it would have been irresponsible not to address it, but at the same time for the show to have some lift in its early episodes and not to feel like it was taking medicines. This is Davis is all knowing and all powerful. I think a lot of it was our own trepidation and how to, how to handle, you know, such intense subject matter in a way that hasn't been done before traditional dystopic science fiction, you know, that just showed technology overthrowing all of us. I certainly think that we acknowledge sort of the threat or encroaching, you know, technology in our lives in the show. It's just done in a way that hopefully is gonna find maybe a broader appeal and isn't so heavy handed. Mrs David. No one calls Facebook. Yeah. And I, I also think that it's our nature to anthropomorphize A I and so this idea of like we give it human characteristics, which is why when I, when A I becomes sentient, the first thing that it wants to do is destroy humanity. Um And we started to think, well, if we don't anthropomorphize ai what does it, what does it want? It only wants what it, whatever it's coded to want. And what if A I was people pleasing the sort of idea of an artificial intelligence that really all it wants is that it for its users to give it five stars and to like it, that started to feel a little bit more comedic in terms of OK, that makes more sense because if an artificial intelligence decided to wipe out humanity, then it's then what it gets like super duper bored. We read this book, you look like a thing and I love you. And it was just about, oh, artificial intelligence is very impressive and also super dumb and uh like that felt like something that we wanted to chip away at Mrs Davis is available now streaming on. Do go enjoy. We don't, we still don't know, we don't know what I'm not gonna. Yeah. In, in my mind they still sound kind of like chicken. Yeah.

Linde

Company Information

World's Most Admired Companies
As of 2/2/22

Linde

Company Information

World's Most Admired CompaniesAs of 2/2/22

World's Most Admired Companies
As of 2/2/22