“Who knows? Historians may yet record this as the Bullshit Era.”
- Michael Collins, astronaut
An AI tried to blackmail a human for the first time two weeks ago. It’s less of a big deal than it sounds. Its makers baited the AI with knowledge of one engineer’s (fictional) extramarital affair. Told it was being deactivated and replaced, the AI did what it felt it had to do. The whole thing stinks of entrapment. Definitely wouldn’t hold up in court.
Also; how does blackmail even work, now that anyone can show anybody doing anything? State level extortion feels less and less plausible. Whatever dirty secrets the Kremlin holds on Trump, the value of those photos or videos is now in free fall. Doesn’t it seem suspicious that the president loudly broke with Putin the same month Google’s VEO 3 dropped? If you have incriminating media on someone, 2025 is probably a Use or Lose it situation. FYI.
CORRECTION - In my 2020 book Mutations, I wrote that Muzak played aboard Apollo 11. This was incorrect. Which invalidates footnote 137—
It’s a compelling visual: three astronauts sitting ramrod straight, listening to smooth jazz as they stare out into the endless black void.
I just learned this in Carrying the Fire, the compelling 1974 memoir by Michael Collins. Collins was the Apollo 11 astronaut who didn’t make it down to the lunar surface, but instead orbited the moon for a weird lonely day that took him in and out of contact with the Earth. The crew had brought a handheld Sony TC-50 cassette recorder for making observations. Halfway back, rummaging in one of the cupboards and nooks of the command module, someone busted out a mixtape made by NASA. This tape included
bland popular selections with ‘moon’ in them wherever possible. My favorite, which I’ve never heard before, is ‘Everyone’s Gone To the Moon.’ Or at least that’s the line the vocalist keeps repeating. There’s also some strange electronic sounding music, a favorite of Neil’s called ‘Music Out of the Moon.’ Finally there’s a jangling cacophony of bells, whistles, shrieks, and unidentifiable sounds at the end of the tape. We amuse ourselves now by pushing our radio transmitter button and holding the screeching tape recorder next to a microphone. This gets an immediate reaction.
Mutations’ footnote 137 should now read:
It’s a compelling visual: a roomful of NASA eggheads listening to the screams of Cthulu in mute horror.
I regret the error.
I watched HBO’s Mountainhead. It’s a dark farce involving four of the world’s richest men camped out in a remote resort while they watch the world fall apart on their smartphones. One of them, the richest, owns an app that just launched fully realistic and unfalsifiable deepfakes, sparking global panic. It’s the first film of the reality breakdown, debuting just ten days after the launch of VEO 3.
Other reviews have pointed out that it’s very hard to pull off this kind of satire at this particular moment, not just because TV is lousy with top 1% stories, but because our current ruling class is too grotesque to parody (no Bond villain would dare muse, as Jared Kushner has, on turning Gaza into waterfront condos). Personally, I felt it was miscast. I’d swap Josh Fadem for Jason Schwartzman, Rory Scovell for Steve Carell, and Jimmi Simpson for Cory Michael Smith. With the fictional app in the film, I could recast Mountainhead myself and watch it in the privacy of my own home.
I don’t know of any science fiction film set in so near a future. Demolition Man and Strange Days both predicted dystopia within five years. Godard’s Made in U.S.A. looked forward three years, to a future 1969 far tamer than the real 1969. The final season of NBC’s Parks and Recreation jumped ahead two years, to the alternate 2017 we all wanted in the real 2017.
Mountainhead is set maybe four months from now. It feels optimistic.
The titular remote resort has a Repo Man poster in one room. It felt like a dig at my generation. I’ll probably edit that out when I have AI redo the film.
Hey Sam, Jeremy Lungjuice from MA back in the day here.
Good to see you here!