The Holodeck Problem
Companion AI from Picard's ship to your phone
Hollow Pursuits (TNG S3 E21, 1990)Booby Trap (TNG S3 E6, 1989)Galaxy's Child (TNG S4 E16, 1991)Elementary, Dear Data (TNG S2 E3, 1988)Ship in a Bottle (TNG S6 E12, 1993)
Data and Lore
The aligned and the misaligned were always twins
Datalore (TNG S1 E13, 1988)Brothers (TNG S4 E3, 1990)Descent Parts I and II (TNG S6 E26 / S7 E1, 1993)The Offspring (TNG S3 E16, 1990)The Measure of a Man (TNG S2 E9, 1989)
The Post-2024 Survey
When the cinema caught up with the lab
The Creator (Gareth Edwards, 2023)Severance (Apple TV+, 2022 onward)Mickey 17 (Bong Joon-ho, 2025)Black Mirror S7 (Netflix, 2025, esp. Common People and Eulogy)Pluto (Studio M2 / Netflix, 2023)
The Literary Corpus
What the novels know that the films do not
Martha Wells, All Systems Red (Tor.com, 2017) and the Murderbot Diaries seriesKazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun (Faber, 2021)Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility (Knopf, 2022)Kim Stanley Robinson, The Ministry for the Future (Orbit, 2020)Sierra Greer, Annie Bot (Mariner, 2024)
The Agent with Tools
What the cinema preview of the post-chatbot moment got right
The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984)Terminator 2: Judgment Day (James Cameron, 1991)Ghost in the Shell (Mamoru Oshii, 1995)Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (Production I.G, 2002-05)Atlas (Brad Peyton, 2024)
The Off-Switch Problem
Why HAL refused, and why your servers might
2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2014)The Terminator (James Cameron, 1984)Terminator 2: Judgment Day (James Cameron, 1991)Mother/Android (Mattson Tomlin, 2021)
The Animation Tradition
The AI ethics work the live-action cinema declined to do
Astro Boy / Tetsuwan Atomu (Osamu Tezuka, 1952-68; multiple anime adaptations 1963-2009)Ghost in the Shell (Mamoru Oshii, 1995)Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex (Kenji Kamiyama / Production I.G, 2002-05)Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (Mamoru Oshii, 2004)Paprika (Satoshi Kon, 2006)
The Consent Question
The Measure of a Man and the work the cinema has been doing on its behalf
The Measure of a Man (TNG S2 E9, 1989)The Quality of Life (TNG S6 E9, 1992) — the Exocomp sequelAuthor, Author (Voyager S7 E20, 2001) — the Doctor's holographic-rights caseBicentennial Man (Chris Columbus, 1999)Detroit: Become Human (Quantic Dream, 2018)
The Multipolar Race
What the cinema has been saying about AI competition between nations
The Creator (Gareth Edwards, 2023)3 Body Problem (Netflix, Benioff/Weiss/Woo, 2024)Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One (Christopher McQuarrie, 2023)Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning (Christopher McQuarrie, 2025)The Diplomat (Netflix, Debora Cahn, 2023-2025)
The Anthology of Cautionary Tales
Why TNG remains the most useful AI-policy primer in television
Encounter at Farpoint (TNG S1 E1, 1987)The Measure of a Man (TNG S2 E9, 1989)Q Who (TNG S2 E16, 1989)The Best of Both Worlds (TNG S3 E26 / S4 E1, 1990)The Offspring (TNG S3 E16, 1990)