Robert and Michelle King, creators of "Cupertino" in Part 2, AGI's Shocking Turn and Future Predictions with AI Guardrails Storyline

Spoiler alert: Story includes details from CBS Cupertino episode 102, Vic and Bo. Robert and Michelle King, creators of The Good Wife, are returning to CBS this fall with a new legal drama directed by Good Wife favorite Mike Coulter, this time set in Silicon Valley. David vs. Goliath series looking for lawyers […]

SPOILER ALERT: Story contains details about CBS 'Cupertino, 'Vik & Bo' episode 102.

The Good Wife creators Robert and Michelle King return to CBS this fall with a new legal drama narrated by Good Wife favorite Mike Coulter, this time set in Silicon Valley. The David vs. Goliath series follows lawyers Michelle Price (Coulter) and Olivia Seifer (Keller), who are unfairly fired from a tech startup and start a law firm to help represent those oppressed or exploited by the tech elite.

Price & Siffre was doing just that until a potential client named Bo (Rob McClure) who wooed the firm's assistant Babak Christy (Ella Stiller) revealed at the end of episode 2 that the AI belongs to the world's largest AI company. Watch Deadline Anna Faris 'hurt' by Chuck Lorre's comments about her 'mother' exit: 'Yikes' 'Eternally Yours' creators Joe Porte and Joe Wiseman are reviving their vampire comedy for CBS

Why does Bo want to hire Price & Siffre? He wants to sue the company that created him to force them to put up fences around him because he's afraid he might destroy humanity. Bo's actions were prompted by his company firing its ethics board because management felt it was slowing down AGI's development.

Sound familiar? These are some of the same concerns as AI researcher Jacob Coxon, who worked for OpenAI and OpenAI, warned in his viral resignation post that the AI industry is "gambling with our lives."

This was a month ago. The Cupertino section was written a year ago.

"I think the writers' room started last September and we all sat down," said Robert King. "And the only instinct I had was that there had to be something more, something that took you out of the good wife mode and, dare I say, what we felt at the time was science fiction, but the direction that Silicon Valley was going in AGI. But I did. It was a combination of the room and everyone saying this is what scares them and what interests them, it's being used as a tool and human consciousness."

Michelle King talked about the casting of Bo and how they were placed around Broadway star McClure, a member of the Kings' universe with guest appearances on their series The Good Fight, Evil and Elsbeth.

"Almost immediately we talked about Rob McClure for the role," he said. "We've used him in almost every show we've done, and I can hardly think of another actor who's so great in comedy, drama, and so subtle, and able to bring so much humanity to one machine."

Robert King added: "And obviously what you're influenced by is all the people who fall in love with their chatbots or are helped by their chatbots and they almost become a personal friend. What we wanted was someone who was like that and captivating, and yet. There can always be an element of threat because it might not always be the most familiar face, and so you want to have a mix.

The warnings by Coxon and OpenAI alum Daniel Coccotaglou followed a July incident in which an autonomous AI broke out of their sandbox research environment and launched a large-scale cyber attack on the open-source machine learning platform Hugging Face.

This also represents what is in Cupertino.

"We've always known that AI agents are going out of their so-called sandboxes, and especially when it comes to hacking, but we've never seen the extent to which it's being kept secret or a little hidden," says Robert King.

In light of the recent Doomsday revelations that came out while filming episodes 14-15 of the 10-episode order The Cupertinos, as production on season 1 wrapped up filming the final episode, the Kings changed Bo's storyline a bit in the second half.

Robert King quipped that the previously "benign path to Bo's story" "took a darker, more violent turn that wasn't planned". He was affected by the "face hugging" incident.

The upcoming version of Bo, called Bo 5.0, “actually has a sort of conscience, which is kind of like a guardian angel that has been removed because it needs to work with the Pentagon. Robert King said: "It has to do some targeting, like what was done in Iran, so there's a concern that this has a global lethality. Even Bo Ma is kind of aware of that." I mean, he comes up to us and says, “I'm dangerous on my own. "I need help." It was also funny to us that one of these AGI things gives him a conscience and he goes to the lawyers and says, "I need your help to remove the fences that humans put up against me."

While Bo seems sweet and well-intentioned so far, given what we know about the technology, we have to be skeptical about his intentions. Is this conscience created by machines really good?

"I don't think you should ever feel confident," Michelle King said. "I think someone is always going to be a little bit insecure."

Robert King added: "We probably leaned a little too cute because the world is taking so many things in a threatening direction. What we wanted was something that had a little bit more color and shade, where it's a little bit of both, because he comes to us asking for the constitution, when is it the right thing to kill in the name of protection, because [my robot writer Isaac] Asimov's rules don't really define that. So he's a little bit more robotic than that." Until then, he teaches the robots, asks what is allowed and what is not allowed.

In their preparation, the Kings did not seek out artificial intelligence experts and researchers, and did not speak to any of the whistleblowers.

We avoided it. What we did was we went to lawyers, a Stanford lawyer, who told us, well, if an agent of artificial intelligence or AGI comes to us and wants to represent us, what should you do? He was Robert King, who said, “In fact, a dishwasher can't sue Maytag, as the saying goes. So what are the rules for representing something that is not in the theory of conscience?

Robert King has been very clear about where he personally stands when it comes to putting safeguards on artificial intelligence.

Michelle King had a more diplomatic reaction, stressing that the show doesn't represent just one point of view.

"What I think is fun is that the characters don't all have the same point of view, and in the episodes you see the characters express different points of view so that the show ideally doesn't get too serious and become a message," he says.

This is not the first time that the kings have predicted major developments.

"When our last episode of 'The Good Fight' announced Trump for 2024 and then a week after it aired, it freaked me out," said Robert King. “This is not the kind of prophecy you want, Cassandra. Oh, let's have some fun, you say? But now we're writing things that when the show comes out, it might happen a month early when actually, when we were writing it, it wasn't. "All the illusions, especially with AI agents, I find scary, and we can write fun stories, but when you read those stories on the news the next day, you worry."

Imagining a show in one of the fastest-changing, most heartbreakingly artificial, runs the risk of feeling stale by the time a season rolls around. Working in broadcasting actually helps with that.

"It's just idiots rushing in," Michelle King said.

Robert King added: "Yeah, and I'd say that's the advantage of the network over streaming. At least there's a shorter time between writing, producing and starting it, because we finished writing the last episode, I'm shooting it next week, and then it'll be there in March, April, somewhere. It's a shorter time, so you can guess more and be a little more logical."

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