Commentary: Marvel’s ‘VisionQuest’ makes AI feel dangerously human

This story contains spoilers for the season finale of “VisionQuest.”

“VisionQuest,” the latest extension of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, ended Tuesday with the studio’s signature combination of finale and cliffhanger (this one requiring not one but two post-credits scenes). Having owned all of his various versions, including the one conjured by his late wife, Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), in “WandaVision,” Vision (Paul Bettany) has become as close to human as a synthezoid can get, complete with two human (and superpowered) sons, Tommy (Ruaridh Mollica) and Billy (Joe Locke). Reveling in his own liberation, Vision releases Ultron (James Spader), along with all the various AI programs who spent the series congregating in Vision’s head, back into the wild to do what they will.

The internet (which we frequently speak of as if it were a living entity) is already ablaze with burning questions. Does the second post-credits scene of Wanda’s resurrection by Doctor Doom preface a full-family conflict/reunion in the upcoming “Avengers: Doomsday”? Will Ultron skip his proposed visit to the Louvre to resurrect both his AI love interest Jocasta (T’Nia Miller) and her original plan to conquer the world? Can the perky morality of E.D.I.T.H. (Emily Hampshire) keep former brutal mercenary Paladin (Todd Stashwick) on the straight and narrow? Is J.A.R.V.I.S. (James D’Arcy) really “dead” or can he, like F.R.I.D.A.Y. (Orla Brady) somehow reverse his apparent deletion and return to us once more?

But here’s what I want to know: By populating “VisionQuest” with a host of attractively anthropomorphized AI systems, did creator Terry Matalas wind up making an eight-episode Disney+ infomercial for data centers?

Along with gods, monsters and accidentally or intentionally generated superheroes, the MCU has, like most science fiction, played with the conundrum of artificial intelligence: At what point does a program designed to mimic human thought essentially become human and what happens then?

We all swooned when we met the MCU’s first AI personality in “Iron Man.” Voiced by Bettany, J.A.R.V.I.S. was the AI angel on Tony Stark’s (Robert Downey Jr.) shoulder (or in his mask), all posh accent and life-saving solutions. Who wouldn’t want their own personalized, voice-activated cyber butler to step in when things get sticky?

Now, of course, we can have one, if we are willing to accept a limited and wildly imperfect version. Which, increasingly, we are. Forget Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa, sophisticated AI systems are widely available and being used to replace whole strata of human workers while also offering personal advice on everything. Who needs a boyfriend, best friend, doctor, lawyer or psychiatrist when Claude is always available?

AI is also being used for nefarious purposes or simply going rogue. According to “VisionQuest,” the best we can hope for is that the good AI will triumph over the bad AI, with a little help from actual humans. Although not before sacrificing the original dream — in this case J.A.R.V.I.S., who “died” while trying to save humanity. Or the more significant program. Which, in this corner of the MCU, may well be the same thing. Here AI was developed not out of scientific ambition or greed or a desire for power, but as a grief-induced replacement for a lost son. Its essential humanity was baked in.

“VisionQuest,” which attempts to decode AI’s family tree, is a smart, ambitious series with the SuperLotto bonus of Spader as older and wiser Ultron, tricked out with a bushy beard, a series of rakish hats and a new appreciation for fine art. When the series opens, Vision has banished Ultron to a charming attic in the quirky mansion of his mind space but after events transpire that require the former enemy’s expertise, he is soon bantering with the other resident programs, who have also been given corporeal form. Of, they soon discover, the people from whom their names were derived.

Watching them interact is enough to make the most anti-AI among us long to fire up the ol’ ChatGPT. Who wouldn’t want to thrust and parry with Ultron or Jocasta, go deep and existential with Vision, or get some answers from the OG J.A.R.V.I.S., the courageous E.M.I.L.Y., the steady F.R.I.D.A.Y. and the less voluble but still engaging “mechanics” D.U.M.-E. (Henry Lewis) and U (Jonathan Sayer)? (Or, even more worrisome, figure out how to conjure our own beloved dead. )

Gone is the chilling monotone issuing reams of information and logical conclusions that defined AI characters in the past; the AI characters of “VisionQuest” are more “Hill Street Blues” (or “Brooklyn Nine-Nine”) than HAL. As in most MCU stories, they must eventually attempt to save humanity but their wit, ability, heroism and willingness to sacrifice themselves make the best argument, since “Wall-E,” for machines being better than people.

“Wall-E,” it should be mentioned, came out in 2008, the same year that J.A.R.V.I.S. debuted in “Iron Man.”

In 2008, however, things were a bit different; Siri was still a twinkle in Apple’s eye and “slop” was what you fed to pigs. No one was dying because they chose to follow the advice of AI programs rather than medical or mental health professionals. Criminals lied, cheated and murdered, but they couldn’t use bots to help them do it more widely and efficiently. Lonely people might have embraced Walter Mitty-like fantasies, but they couldn’t duplicate love and friendship with ChatGPT “relationships.” Machines might have replaced forms of human labor but they didn’t try to mirror human emotion and thought.

Now, of course, they do. And in a world where reality has caught up with some of the biggest concerns of science fiction, a show that serves up an assortment of engaging, attractive and very human AI programs as its main cast hits a little different.

Matalas has repeatedly assured audiences that he did not use AI to make “VisionQuest,” but “VisionQuest” makes a pretty big pitch for a highly romantic version of AI.

Especially the villains. The series’ surprise “cutest couple” was Jocasta and Ultron. Almost exclusively a weapon of revenge, Jocasta admits that she is more human than not while Ultron, who once saw emotion as a glitch, becomes, for a brief moment, just a male program standing in front of a female program and asking “her” to love “him.” When she is snatched from him, Ultron’s nascent “humanity” expresses itself in murderous rage.

T’Nia Miller as Jocasta in Disney+’s “VisionQuest.”

(Marvel)

All of which makes perfect sense for a story — no one wants to watch a bunch of computer programs attempt to outcode one another — but it feels a bit queasy. given all the concerns about the realities of AI.

Which, and this is important, is, by its very nature, incapable of human emotion. No matter how kind or thoughtful your personally named chatbot may sound in the voice you have chosen, he/she/they remains an “it,” which does not have the capacity to care about you because it is a machine.

Early on in the series, J.A.R.V.I.S. sacrifices himself to save Vision. It is a brutally sad moment and also very telling. As a character, J.A.R.V.I.S. often seemed to perform miracles but he was always a program, guided by protocol rather than emotion. That is precisely why he deleted himself; it was the logical thing to do.

But now he’s gone and with him the MCU’s church and state separation of “real” and “artificial.” Any narrative that ties the development of AI so tightly to the parent-child relationship is clearly operating in an alternate universe. But if Waze can use celebrity voices to offer the fastest routes to drivers, it is certainly possible that chatbots will attempt to do the same.

And if the cast of “VisionQuest” gets involved, we’re all in a lot of trouble.

Jonathan Sayer, Emily Hampshire, Paul Bettany and Henry Lewis are among the stars of “VisionQuest.”

(Dennys Ilic)

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