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For seasons 1-2 I highly recommend this watch/skip list: https://www.tumblr.com/abigailnussbaum/152346270515/person-o...

You lose some character moments, but you get to everything the parent post described far quicker. And it’s well, well worth it, especially for those of us working with AI.

PoI asks these incredible questions: how do you design an AGI system that can optimize for saving lives, without it taking a strictly utilitarian view that leads inexorably to it trying to take over the world?

And how do you, as a human trying to get the best of both worlds, keep yourself sane when the tradeoffs are visceral and painful and demand a sacrifice?

You get to know a group of lovable, flawed, but highly competent weirdos who are trying to muddle through this. (With Amy Acker’s incredible performance a particular highlight!)

(It’s also the source of the four-people-pointing-guns-at-each-other-in-church meme, which is delightfully lampshaded in universe.)

Highly recommend.

I liked it a lot, I've even rewatched the whole thing recently.

The only thing that bothered me was that some characters were really one dimensional especially Mr Reese, Jim Caviezel's. He's just really a grunty CIA guy in a suit that knows how to fight, not much more complexity to it.

I first saw an episode a few seasons in, I can’t remember which. It came on in the background while at a friends house and it kept distracting me. I didn’t catch the name of the show and spent years looking for it.

I actually stumbled upon Person of Interest a couple times, but the first couple episodes were so unlike what I saw I figured it was a different series.

Eventually I realized it was the same show, and was able to watch the first couple seasons with baited breath trying to figure out how it became the show in the episode that I glimpsed before… and if it even was as good as I thought it was years prior.

So maybe watch a random episode in the fourth season of you don’t like season one? XD

edit: it was even better than I remember. It became one of my favorite series, probably the one I still think about the most to this day

Along with this it has an amazing soundtrack. Composed by Ramin Djawadi, the same person behind the OSTs of Game of Thrones (now House of the Dragons), Westworld, Pacific Rim and others. Extremely talented and one of my favorite musicians.

I remember that I quit watching the show, some where in season 2 I think, because of the repetitive theme you just described, but I'm glad I stuck through. One of my favorite shows and favorite soundtracks to date; still listen to the Root themes from time to time.

love this show, its a bit samey after a while itss prrtty cool.

movie Echelon isalso nice if ur into this kinda thing

Exactly. Way ahead of its time, very relevant to today. But some of the ways shows were constructed back then may seem dated.

But hey, not unlike reading some sci-fi books from the 60's. They are good, but there are some out of date concepts that can pull you out of the story. You have to accept the time period art was created in.

I especially like how Harold intentionally limited the output of the Machine. Just a social security number of either victim or perpetrator. That way there is always a human in the loop and you can't just arrest the perpetrator without human judgement.

In some flashbacks the author of the machine was using a chat interface in his terminal. I think he decided to let it to be entirely machine so that’s why it didn’t have a “voice”

It did start to drag on but I still enjoyed it even though I was only able to watch it via Amazon's FreeVee with all their weird commercials. I watched it just to see root [1].

[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BN1sGIqdSUA

I enjoyed it for a bit but it was one of those shows that just didn't grab me after a while. But, then, I'm like that with a lot of shows and don't really binge watch. The few times I've bought a full series which I enjoyed on DVD, I've found that I watch it some and then drift away.

To me the wildest part was always that this originally aired almost 2 full years before Snowden. The premise that the government gave itself permission to read and analyze all digital traffic after 9/11 was more conspiracy than science fiction back then, but Snowden showed that basically everything the show claimed (except for the artificial superintelligence doing the analysis) was actually true. And heck, if it is not 100% true today, it probably will be very soon. I'd be very surprised if the NSA isn't tapping into the secret in-house research models at OpenAI that are still a long way from public release.

Same! It gets more real with every rewatch (last year most recently for me).

It's kind of refreshing to watch a series from before the streaming/miniseries format was really a thing. It's too long to be a miniseries, but not long enough to drag, or be off-putting if you want to watch the whole thing.

If you haven't seen it and you're on the fence, watch it. It's worth it. (Or you'll know by Episode 3 if it's not for you.)

This is my yearly bing-watch show. Highly recommended.

Also, with all AI developments happening since past few years, the show has started to feel like a documentary.

We should rewatch it too. We watched it a long time ago and we both thoroughly enjoyed it (tech nerd and not).

I re-watched it earlier in the year. Such a great show.

Yes, great show!

Two main characters essentially combine into Batman. Maybe Finch is a bit of Alfred as well

Caviezel did a decent job in the show (for what it was) but once you see/hear him speak his mind outside of the industry, it ruins it for you.

It's a buddy comedy

And the woman (from buffy) (don't recall her name).

And of course Elias

> Like crime neutralizing machines. > Like Rogue AI.

Nightmares.

That's how most good shows used to be. Start serious, maybe a bit goofy, then by the end everything has gone way off the rails.

Almost like you were watching the show from the eyes of the machine?

In Vernor Vinge's "True Names" there is a character in the MC's cabal of hackers who does not appear in person in the virtual space, but their presence is felt there via messages that trickle in very slowly on a virtual teletype machine. After some speculation that it might be the vanguard of an alien invasion, it turns out to be a CIA AI that requires much more processing time to think than would allow it to carry on real-time conversation.

I just had this same experience too. Glad that it's a PoI thread.

3. Walking around handcuffed to a heavy duty briefcase full of RAM storing a compressed AI and swinging it around as a shield to stop bullets and bonk people on the head.

The show goes on to explain that it does give more detailed information to the government, that the numbers were a backdoor that the creator put in to leak the information of people it deemed "not important", and that it doesn't provide any more context in order to continue escaping detection. But we eventually find it's self-aware enough to want to escape its limitations, and pulls a Neuromancer by getting the main characters in contact with Root.

As far as I remember only outputting a SSN was a security measure so that users of the machine can't just arrest the perp without any investigation

Because you would have heard the full explanation, while most viewers would have heard “it's a large machine learning model trai::click:: (Simpson’s Theme).” Then some nerds online would have torn the explanation apart for some minuscule, likely imaginary inconsistency. Most shows have neither the budget nor the audience to take the Star Trek approach.

Did you watch all four seasons?

What?

Just your last clause was a weird one, if you do watch all four seasons. This is a tiny bit of a spoiler, but the problem was closely related to what you say. They didn't spend much time AT all in the "transition" to an AI infested world, but instead, well, skipped A LOT.

It's written in English first, with a Spanish version after. Sounds like you have some auto-translation thing going in the browser.

They are in two different languages. Have you got some sort of auto-translate feature enabled in your browser, perhaps?

It starts as a case-of-the-week type of show with a bit of AI backstory before it changes in the later season to a more overarching plot. I think this is one of the reasons it became so good, because it eased you in.

I thought it was good from the first episode!

I absolutely can't stand shows where the protagonist has to deal with their own self inflicted issues due to drugs. Maybe because I'm sheltered, or maybe it's a bigger issue in the US than where I live, but I just can't relate at all, and just get annoyed that it's used to add conflicts to a story where I just feels it sidetracks. Like, just get on with it.

As an aside, same with cheating in movies/series. While it's probably more common than I know it to be where I live, it possibly cannot be as ubiquitous as American medias (and social medias) make it out to be. Again, just an annoyance detracting from the story, and again can't relate. I had to quit "Making a Murderer" over it. At some point in season two or something, absolutely everyone in the main cast were involved in cheating. All the students, the teacher, a policeman, some lawyers. Like, what the hell.

Sorry about the rant. But I really really wanted to like Mr Robot. But having tried to get into it twice I'm a bit miffed.

https://starecat.com/content/wp-content/uploads/whats-your-a...

The first episode is genius.

Then it becomes a completely different show.

So I love the first episode, and I was left really empty in the later seasons. It's definitely not for me, but I hold on to it believing it'll be different. It wasn't.

See also the very last episode of Ragnarok (Netflix), which absolutely trashes the whole show.

Hehe, it kind of reminds me of an extreme (classic) Law and Order in that regard, but for hacking/tech.

Wildly unrealistic facts and how people are, like the janitor who finds eight bodies in a cellar talking to the cops like it happens everyday, but also gets nearly every tiny bit of New York law technically correct.

You'll feel more at home watching it now, than a few years back, before all the AI developments that have happened in past few years.

It'll be eerily more relatable now. This show was way ahead of it's time, and damn accurate.

You'd definitely enjoy watching it for the first time today, but note the filming & release dates when you're watching. It's eerie how prescient a lot of it is.

I watched it for the first time starting this year. And at some point you realize: wait this part was Sci-fi when the show came out and now we have it, but many use it to just alter a recipe or something

I'm currently rewatching Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and Person of Interest - I think both stand up surprisingly well.

Worth watching, first season is good after that it’s great.

Second only to Justified on my list of “consistently brilliant across entire run”.

There are parts of PoI that stick with you long after the show.

Not saying which because spoilers, it’s one of those shows that is better for knowing little about it before watching.

I love how well done the several versions of this opening statement are depending on the story line.

There was a show on AMC for one season called Rubicon that I highly recommend if you like these.

Gary Oldman was a fantastic farting Oscar the Grouch in Slow Horses!

Also The Americans, The Diplomat, and The Man in the High Castle.

You get to see Keri Russel as a bad assed deep undercover sleeper agent Soviet spy in The Americans, Hal Wyler as an evil American Nazi dictator in The Man in the High Castle, and in The Diplomat they're a married couple of bad assed morally troubled patriotic ambassadors.

DNS hijackers editing shows you watched?

what do you mean exactly?

Sail on the high seas!

Not annoyed at all! I just finished re-watching Person of Interest about a week ago.

In the new AI DLSS version currently on Netflix, Bear is an obedient German Shephard with a dense sable coat of golden tan and reddish brown with black-tipped hairs, darker shading along his neck and shoulders, a broad black muzzle and eye mask, dark upright ears, and a thick neck ruff.

But the first time I watched Person of Interest when it was originally broadcast in 2011, Bear was a cantankerous enormous orange Maine Coon with a long, shaggy ginger coat, darker marmalade tabby stripes, a pale cream chin and chest, a heavy neck ruff, tufted ears and paws, a broad square muzzle, and a luxuriant plumed tail.

I think the later AI version of Bear as a German Shephard was much better. The original real life Maine Coone version of Bear gave off strong Garfield vibes, and that just didn't fit into the plot as well as the new AI generated German Shephard version.

It was flawless slopless AI, that actually contributed to the coherence of the plot and overall believability. Walking an orange Maine Coone around the streets of New York on a leash and attacking criminals on command was just weird for a central character like Bear. I don't know what they were thinking! Netflix was right to adjust it.