"It's about a brilliant, conflicted computer programmer pulled into a secret project stop reading here if you want to avoid spoilers to win a Department of Homeland Security contract for a database tracking immigrants. A brisk theatrical thriller, the play perfectly captures the slick, grandiose language with which tech titans justify their potentially totalitarian projects to the public and perhaps to themselves. Data is the language of our time, says a data analytics manager named Alex, sounding a lot like Palantir chief Alex Karp."
"So if those fluent in the language don't help democracy flourish, we hurt it. And if we don't win this contract, someone else less fluent will. I'm always on the lookout for art that tries to make sense of our careening, crises-ridden political moment and found the play invigorating. But over the last two weeks, as events in the real world have come to echo some of the plot points in Data, it's started to seem almost prophetic."
A zippy off-Broadway play portrays ethical crises among employees at a Palantir-like artificial intelligence company. A brilliant, conflicted programmer is pulled into a secret project to win a Department of Homeland Security contract for an immigrant-tracking database. The production captures the slick, grandiose language tech leaders use to justify potentially totalitarian projects. Dialogue frames data as a language whose narratives will be written by victors, implying democratic risk if technologists fail to act. The protagonist creates an algorithm with frighteningly accurate predictive power, and real-world AI advances heighten concerns about moral ambivalence and societal harms. The play raises urgency about who controls such technologies and whether technologists will resist or enable surveillance.
Read at www.mercurynews.com
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