"During its nearly-perfect fourth season, TNG had several bangers, and also some episodes that flew under-the-sensors. During the week of February 11, 1991, one of those episodes was "Clues," the 14th episode of Season 4, which, at the time, seemed like a fun head-scratcher. But today, the episode scans somewhat differently than it did back in 1991. What was then a strange story about a ship-wide mystery actually now reads as a kind of predictive tale"
"This idea harkens back to some of the most formative speculative fiction about artificial intelligence; we want our robots to serve us like tools, but we also don't always like the answers generated by databases and algorithms. In the 1941 Isaac Asimov story "Liar!" a robot starts to lie to his various human colleagues, out of concern for their feelings, and to slavishly adhere to his do-no-harm programming, it begins telling white lies."
Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 4 episode "Clues" presents a ship-wide mystery that now reads as prescient about contemporary AI concerns. The episode's plot and Data's behavior raise questions about what advanced artificial intelligences reveal and withhold. Cultural examples such as Interstellar's robot TARS and Isaac Asimov's 1941 story "Liar!" illuminate tensions between utility and uncomfortable truths. The episode originated from a fan spec script rewritten by Joe Menosky, reflecting TNG's open submission policy. The story frames Data as an aspirational AI whose omissions provoke modern anxieties about algorithmic honesty.
Read at Inverse
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