In Davis Square on a recent fall night, I found myself descending into a basement, both literally and metaphorically.
The basement was The Rockwell, a theater space underneath a couple of restaurants on Elm Street, one of those Somerville blocks that’s managed to maintain an air of 1980s grittiness, amid the waves of gentrification.
The metaphorical underworld was a play I had come to see — also pretty gritty — called “The Commute.” The one-act drama is playwright Karin Anell’s modern-day take on Jean-Paul Sartre’s “No Exit,” with an AI twist.
You’d have to be living in a cave, or a dark basement, not to notice that everyone is talking about AI: will it cure cancer, eliminate millions of jobs, end the world, or just help manage the kids’ carpool? Existential dread about the technology also was a driving force in last week’s midterm elections, as candidates and ballot measures promising to stop the data center construction boom for AI won overwhelmingly nationwide.
So, of course, it’s a subject ripe for a talky drama featuring three strangers — a busy money manager, a doctor, and a back office worker at a bank — who find themselves on a Red Line train, stranded between stations. As they discuss their predicament and start to quarrel, the obvious comparisons to “No Exit” arise.
Once the group decides they’re not dead (unlike the characters in “No Exit”) the discussion turns to more personal details of their life woes and regrets. Then comes the crisis: A homeless man who’s been asleep in the subway car stirs and then collapses, confronting the three with a question of how to react. Without giving too much away, there’s eventually an AI factor that recasts all that came before.
Here’s where we get to art imitating life.
The play’s examination of people’s responsibility to act when faced with a crisis brought to mind our current societal debate about what to do, if anything, to slow or stop the advance of artificial intelligence. There’s also the question of how AI will likely have a different impact on people based on their socioeconomic status.
“What concerns me more is how these voices are not part of the conversations around technology or the development of these tools,” said Sulagna Ghosh, a multidisciplinary scientist and founder of the nonprofit Joint Family, which runs neighborhood workshops around Boston about tech issues. “And yet they’re often the ones impacted by it.”
Ghosh, who was part of a discussion after the show, said she also supports stronger regulation of AI to protect people. She noted that for her husband to become a licensed social worker, he had to get a degree and become certified. “And yet we have AI chatbots that are offering therapy and emotional support to young people with zero regulation or guardrails,” she said.
Anell, the playwright, is looking for new venues to present her show, after a short run at The Rockwell. When I asked about her inspiration for “The Commute,” Anell said when she studied psychology, she’d been fascinated by the work of Stanley Milgram, whose experiments tested people’s tolerance to harm others. And lately, she’s been following the spread of AI and incidents where the tech was misused or went rogue.
“It’s a wonderful tool, but I think it’s a dangerous tool to put in the hands of of humans,” she said, combining the way both human psychology and unchecked AI can be harmful.
In the end, my thoughts returned to the metaphor of a basement. Author Stephen King has explained that his darkest tales come from a layer in his subconscious he’s dubbed “the boys in the basement” — that isn’t bound by higher-level ethical concerns.
For me, “The Commute” conjured a similar thought, that negative human inspirations could bring out the worst in AI. And that could be very bad for the rest of us.
🚧 The Kraft Group wants to build a $16 billion data center campus in a small Central Mass. town. Read more from Globe reporters Aaron Pressman and Travis Andersen.
👀 Quincy ditched Flock surveillance. What exactly did it replace it with? Read more from Globe contributor Yogev Toby.
📱 DraftKings stock takes a hit after disclosing just how much it’s spending in prediction market expansion. Read more from business reporter Jon Chesto.
📉 Tech stocks tank as investors see Democrats slowing the AI boom. Read more from tech reporter Aaron Pressman.
💰 Internet services company Akamai Technologies in Cambridge raised $2.2 billion through the sale of convertible notes. The company plans to use a portion of the proceeds to repay an earlier issue of $1.2 billion of convertible notes that come due in 2027.
⚡ Nuclear tech company Project Omega in Newport, R.I., raised $80 million in a deal led by B Capital.
✈️ At Tripadvisor in Needham, chief executive Matt Goldberg is stepping down in February, while chief financial officer Mike Noonan is leaving as of Dec. 31 for an unspecified career opportunity. Chief strategy officer Kristen Dalton will take over as interim CFO, and the company has hired an executive search firm to find the next CEO and CFO.
🏛️ DraftKings chief legal officer R. Stanton Dodge is resigning in February to pursue an opportunity in public service, the company said in a quarterly securities filing.
🔒 Security tech company Evolv Technologies in Waltham added Jason Blessing, former CEO of Model N, to its board of directors.
👋 Nuclear energy startup Alva Energy in Cambridge added Jeff Lyash, former chief executive of the Tennessee Valley Authority, to its board of directors.
🔍 Nvidia CEO and cofounder Jensen Huang, one of the staunchest cheerleaders of the AI boom, is under scrutiny after admitting to an affair with a woman whom US intelligence services believe is a Chinese spy. Nvidia’s board has opened an investigation into Huang’s behavior.
What We’re Reading
Good riddance, Cybertruck! (The Verge)
Hot fridges, a fake nuclear alert and a $6bn heist: are we in the foothills of a hacking epidemic? (The Guardian)
The Death Knell of Digital Search (The New Yorker)
👋 Thanks for reading. We’ll be will be back next Wednesday.
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Aaron Pressman can be reached at aaron.pressman@globe.com. Follow him @ampressman.