Robert Downey Jr., Ayad Akhtar and Bartlett Sher on “Truthful Lies” in AI, Art and Politics
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It's long.

Hi everyone from new york magazine in the box media podcast network. This is on with care a swisher and i'm Carry swisher. If you've been listening to the show, you know i've been talking to a lot of people about A I recently.

Why not? It's the tech digg I says there always is one tech leaders like microsoft misstep ha sulema about personal AI assistance and its impact on climate change. Bill gates about energy and regulation and signals made width er about power consolidation and how A I is continuing to feel the surveilLance economy.

I also got them to the implications of A I for our society democracy with historian you will know a harari whose book is centers a lot on A I and information systems. The thing with A I is it's not just about consumer products or manufacturing revolution or helping people solve cancer is having and going to have an impact on all of us. To quote the writer jack mcconnell in the new play, micky el, digital machines are not just remaking stories.

They're making us. Micky el is now showing at the lincoln center theater, new york. I saw last week and I was gone away away a really interesting ways that made me think I do not agree with a lot of the critics.

I think you should go see. And it's not just about AI. It's also about the truth.

It's about the pillows ing of information. It's about plagiarize is about lies and of course, power. Mick neel is written by people. Surprise winning play, right? I had actor directed by tony, award winning director, ballet sheer and IT starts Oscar winning actor Robert downey junior in his broadway debut.

He's really done a great job here also and of course we all know him from being tony stark, the greatest tech figure um in the MC u quite impressive and interesting combination of people. I'm happy to say that all three of these creative powerhouses are my guests today. And our expert question comes from the front man for OpenAI himself, sam altman, who is named, checked in the play. So tony dark is in the house. This is going to be fun to listen up.

Alright, a at bark and Robert, thanks for being on on. I'm super excited to talk to you three.

I thank you .

for all around that.

You're using the tat. Oh, wow, that looks nice. Anyway, I really am excited to talk about mick neil.

I saw IT linking center on tuesday. I loved IT. I know you're getting sort of mixture views from critics, but I feel like they don't get IT.

And I I see what their criticisms I read all of them and everything else. But I really do feel like I it's i've seen a lot of A I stuff. I think most of that I don't get.

And this I understood what was happening. But artificial intelligence, specifically general day, I plays a central role in the play, although I don't think IT is the central store at all as a tool, as a metaphor, as lens. So to start off, I like each of you tell me what ChatGPT prop you would use to ask the air.

But for help with you are part of the production. A, uh, uh, you go first and barked. And Robert, uh, well, I mean.

I would just be some reductions of what I tried to do throughout the writing in the play, which is, could you rewrite this play yeah yeah which I did wasn't never really able to do very well. So I wasn't able to to use much of that or any of IT really until the end.

So but um it's a funny one because when you're directing is so like with real people and it's very hard to kind of get the information. So mine might be something like um please provide the critics all the information they need to properly evaluate the show.

Oh no, it's okay. Please get rid of critics. No.

I don't know. I wouldn't say that. I think they can be very helpful and very great. But do you know?

Alright, Robert. Well.

first of all, I found the mixed reaction an absolute joy because it's suspended. Our disbelief in the fact that it's irrelevant, particularly nowadays, about h what is the audience enjoyment? I haven't really played with any of these these things at all.

interesting. No, no. Why is that?

It's not that i'm not a techno optimist, is that one would need to access IT, not become frustrated with downloading the APP. And i'm sure I could have I done. But also I wanted to maintain a bit of innocence going into this and really have the characteristic point of view as this is taking place in the supposed near future, where it'll all be different anyway.

So so what? I want to dig more into A I but much of your work today, your novel memor homeland elegies, which was amazing, a number of your place, including your pillow surprise winning play disGrace, to have focused on the american muslim experience. So this is a departure for people i'm seen. You can give us a quick and options of micky el, so people understand what's happening here and talk about the impose for writing. IT wasn't like, I do an A I playing a thing like.

well, so Robert plays a novell's Jacob kneel of some runner who 啊， in the foreseen, wins the nobel and goes on a truth telling bender. A partly to torch his career and life, and partly to sort of simulate and burn, but even more greater intensity in area has.

And the play unfolds over a course of seven scenes in which you gradually start to perhaps understand that mick neel is himself a composite of below and rows and mayor and Stevens and other writers in the references in the play. And perhaps at some point, the play is actually being generated by an artificial intelligence that has sort of been set in motion in the first scene. So that's that's the basic sumac of the play. But I think there there's you know bark can speak to this and spoken Robert eloquently there's an a human through line which um which hopefully is the essential experience that the audience is having.

right because he is A A malaise of so many people you'd see and and it's sort of a person who's run out of fox and is tired of but the change of society I think the encounter reaching him in the reporter was punch in that way. But robot, this is your broadway debut and you're kind of an obvious choice for this role maybe or maybe not even if you never use dye, you have one an iron man in java. Um so you're comfortable with the paradigm for sure. You'd have to be in some way, but talk about why you wanted to do this play in particular, and why do a play at all because it's not you could have done a lot of easy place, I suspect, right? Yeah I mean easy show.

Well, I mean, I think you can agree that often times in retrospect to go well, why did I make that decision right? And it's kind of difficult really to explain A A S S writing transported me regardless of the the themes they are in and knowing that bark had signed on to direct IT and then IT was going to be at lincoln center and then maybe one day we'd be .

talking to you after .

it's really interest because you've there a lot lately and I would never be interested in a generated version of your opinions, thoughts or or your contributions. I'm only interested in the human experience of what I hear you say and see you do. And there's something about the death of the author or the fear of IT and the addition of these now competing technologies and our fear about being overwhelmed by them. And then also are guilt for maybe acknowledging that we're always using short cuts and .

hacks and life is are dirty little secret, which the check Doris m and A I we call IT you know a malgamiters or synaptic sizing, but it's plagiary m on the less. But when you directed the play, you're also executive pretty link center of theater where it's running. What entice you again was at the moment is we are in an A I moment and OpenAI value hundred and fifty seven billion dollars.

Anthropic is about to be valued forty billion dollars. I start up, right. I know Robert, i'll get to IT makes tech investments in in a but what does that mean to you at this moment? Because it's I don't think it's about A I it's about the human condition is just the latest technology. That's why sort beefing with some of the critics on that.

Well, I think there's a unique relationship that the theater has to live experience, you know, especially if you come to the bomb or it's like in a circle, like you're sitting at the eco polis on the hillside and the idea that human beings can come and be in the same room and have a conversation with one of our leading actors, one of our greatest writers, about a subject which we all are facing becomes the unique activity mechanism of health ater sort of Operates to create uh, conflict consensus experience shared and that's uniquely human. So you have this great um kind of collision between the subject of A I which is so beyond us, and the deeply human experience of sharing up within a theatre was spoken words and being so close to actual human beings and that to me seems like a really something. Also IT gave me a chance to play with lots of technologies which are new to the theatre and intersect them with that same experience.

What did you use? What did you use these technologies besides the set? Not to that minute, because the set is a character .

inner of itself in the set, the way in which the set uses L, D and projection and the way we can build these transitions, which we would never have have the capacity to do five years ago and the amount of space, uh, and just computer power we need to build these transitions and put them on on A L, D upstage and all that is super fun.

Yeah that looks like the inside of an iphone IT mean the whole thing looks like a really demanded apple store. Or like your involvement um which you I think is a very critical part of IT but but in a lot of ways is a classic tragedy.

A man at the top of his game is revealed as the person is IT goes into a downtown spiral talk about jack bicknell we see him through phases with A I in the beginning he mox city calls the AI chap at a solar silicon suck up and that computer generated stories are flooding the zone like overly sewage. And the speech after winning the nobel prize, he says, no matter what the data reports to tell us, paleo is no delphy. Sam altman is no oracle.

He is not quite well, but he's not, he's not stupid, or compared to many of them. But by the end, he uses a ID right of new book and says, quote, watching those pages come out of the printer was like seeing the last chunk of the adoptive ice fall into the ocean. There's no turning back. Yes, I talk about this, how Michael trajectory with the use of A I and its implications.

Well, I think it's, I think its mirrors .

and I think .

interested in IT since GPT went live in, in november of twenty two. And I have been sort of actively engaged in. And i've seen some of the tools in hollywood, the more advanced tools that, that people are using for story and and they're astonishing.

I mean, what's happening is true, truly astonishing and and hard to believe actually when you actually watch IT. And so you know, one of the things that I wanted to play to do was to create that sense of magic. And you have that in the final, the final monogue where the monogue appears generated by by A I, that there's a sense of magic that this is actually happening because I that that's my that's been my experience.

Now of course, I had to I had to imitate the AI in order to make IT work for the play. I couldn't get the AI to do IT itself, but yet not. Yes, but I think just for people to know.

in one of the tradition's audiences, text being uploaded into a chap, hot klier madam, over you head a gaber edip, rex kafka, the protocol, some medical material, and they and say, IT in the voice region and go water and say in the voice of this play, right? Yeah, it's senses. It's about synthesis.

But this does IT on a fast level in the way the human brain can do. Or or and IT comes up with dumb ideas. And what I always tell people is there's nine dumb ideas, I said, but there's three good ones like that you would never thought of.

I I would say that the most astonishing experience i've had with the tools that i've seen as the AI story capacity to give notes to itself, its ability to and now analyze a story and identify the weaknesses and potential opportunities is the thing. That has been most surprising.

Did you put the whole place through IT and say.

what could I do Better here? No, I didn't. But a friend of I did. And he put IT in, and he actually generated a pocket. IT was the second day .

no book on right. This is the google thing that podcast that was not bad.

He sent me an eleven minute podcast on the play that was certainly Better than anything, any critical written. I mean, I was very interesting.

So when you think of your character, um Robert, when how are you approaching IT because you are playing sort of a trope of a old White man writer who was at the top of the game of saw below its mentioned the place several different times. Were you trying to play like a dinosaur or someone really leaning into the future? Because you leaned right into the A I with a lot of verb that a lot of these guys, I don't think, would have .

scarily sure. Well, to backtrack for a second with my relative past in the mcu. I only never really looked at A I and jarvis who then turns into vision and now has his own serious as a storytelling device about a futurist who is relying on his own creations to to address his own mortality in some ways.

And the other thing about the play that i've find so a critical is that he's essentially given a death sentence in seen one as well at the same time as is being awarded the nobel. So that to me is a story device which is so critical to everything that happens after IT. In other words, if you knew your days were super numbered, like ninety five minutes on stage, what would you do? What kind of do? What would you want to involve yourself in? But my approach to IT was honestly, and A S said, no cell phones during rehearsal.

Let's not be distracted. Let's try to bring as much of our human energy to this, A A powerful tale about a truth ism that is descending upon us in the now. So what a great opportunity as a performer to go. Okay, I found myself just trying to become in a malgre of barge thoughts and a ads words in the cast feedback, and then my own kind of strange into connectiveness with technology and storytelling the last twenty years.

No, no. Your character, iron man tony stark is almost friends with the A I. I mean, one of the things that I always thought is what a lonely man like you are, because that's the only person you really interact with on a loser basis, right? Until you would make friends would captain in america, I guess. Yeah, but that is your friend .

that love hearing you talk about the mp.

I love. I have questions. Doctor doom.

i'll get to in a minute about the that sense in the sea I you know I we don't know each other but I come by my pretention honestly I don't mean to be pretentious by design but um the dawes have this wonderful saying which is that in the moment that you open hardest accept the reality of your death, in the very next moment the dow is born and so in a weird way, what what doing his character, what micky el is on a journey for is is actually to see what's on the other side of the fear of death. And of course, fear of death and death itself is a thing that A I doesn't understand. So that's a fundamental paradox at the core of the play.

I suspect this character, never a fuck, doesn't seem like at the way he treats. Speak right?

He doesn't seem to, but it's interesting that he proclaims that he no longer wants to live in fear of anything, typically ally, not the end. And by the end, he reminds the audience that he has changed very little. Yeah, it's our inability to change, but a very little. And this kind of capital ation to this, you know, this historic being overrun by what's coming.

what's coming. So but you all seem, I would say, like tech optimist. I think this play is check optimistic.

I know that sounds crazy, but IT really is because the villain is, is the people, or the people essentially in some fashion? Um AI doesn't doesn't abuse a child. A I doesn't drink excessively and make trouble.

Everything else is actually quite controlled. What do you say to people have real concerns about AI, worries about copyright valuations, fear they replace creaative jobs, writers, artists, even theater, although theatres a very live experience, obviously, but certainly play right. We can be written by A I these plays will be written by A I and get good, Better and Better.

I mean the the part that I most um identify where the eye is is in the play itself where they talk about shakespeare play jorissen because one of the first rules going back to area style for creativity is imitation. In other way, you take something you imitated and you develop your own style from IT. Um and so what I find comforting about IT is that we all participate in this.

And instead of looking at the A I is something that's gonna us all over, I think of IT more like a shade metaphor of a miro held up to nature. IT helps us see more a reflects back. We use IT to see more what we can and then advance from there. Whether I think I can quite capture the unique intuition and highly developed, enormously incredible ideas of a great artist is completely ahead of.

don't think random. That, which is what I can't know about, death can't do random very well, and people do random rather well, right? And that the.

and I think one of .

the part of start, look at one, whatever you that they call that, not sure that I .

am not sure the place, the technology. I mean, I hear what you're saying.

and I don't IT IT cool IT .

might make IT ool, but I think IT does pose the question of whether flawed humanity really is not ultimately preferable to a kind of sanity, zed, and more sort of less human future. I mean, I think I don't think IT comes down on one side versus the other, but I think that does IT does present that tries to present that paradox. And I think that the great literature, as Jacobi deal says in the first scene, is not about liking the people in IT.

Will be back in a minute.

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So every week we get a question from an outside expert. Here's one from a guy who knows a singer to about A I OpenAI founder, sam alt men, the guy who isn't an oracle.

He is a question for you. Hi, this is samen and might be questions. This in a world where artificial intelligence skinnin Better at the rate that we all might and can write beautiful things, but learns from what humans and society have developed, and also gives a new tool for people to build Better and Better things, like photographed for, are many other things have done for before. what? What is the sort of social contract of artificial intelligence with production of art?

Okay, there's the main guy who is the big moment, the C. M, all men who you mentioned in the play. He is not an oracle.

I don't think he thinks himself, but what is the social contract of artificial intelligence? Because there isn't one of its being run by individual people that aren't you guys anymore? sure.

I mean, we're talking about a larger issue that has to do with sort of a larger geneology of us not having a common an idea of a common good that is overseen by our government, say, and you have we have technologies where, you know, in the twenty first century, to exist in the public spaces, to exist with under the eyes of five companies. And those companies are in our cognition. So I mean, we're going to have that conversation. I I mean, I think it's it's very nice for sam to ask the question the way he does. But IT is ssl to to even pose the question that way.

okay.

Tell me why. Well, because the social contract is up to him. It's up to him and and a few other people. And if they want to sit around and figure out what an appropriate social contract is for the rest of us, that's fine.

But but in reality, over the last fifteen years, we are existing within a regime where in order to communicate publicly, in order to live our lives, in order to have goods and services delivered, we're living within a regime that they've created. And there really isn't an alternatives. So for folks to say, well, we just powered on our phones.

What shall we all agree on when they run everything?

I think so I think I just I kind of reject the question out of hand.

Oddly enough, when he sent IT to me, I said, well, what is this fuck and social contract?

Well, so so we're on the same page, even you looking at me icy as I speaking.

I give you i'll give you a counterpoint after bar OK go.

No.

I think you know I think when you see when you see mark sacra t test fine to congress about know how facebook could be regulated over content, you know that mark eckbert has to be participated, that with suggestions and ideas about what that is, so that a social contract means an agreement between two sides. So whatever sam has to offer and whatever we can offer can come up with the solution, but we can be IT can be put on us to decide the solution for the whole thing doesn't make sense.

Okay, Robert.

I don't envy anyone who has been over identified with the advent of this new phase of the information age. The idea that somehow rather IT belongs to them because they have these super huge startups, I think is a salacious. I also would say in in defense that, you know, the steering committee is all of us and the collective unconscious.

And what we decide to do, you know, we all know where we're at right now. The reason I wanted to be doing this play during this selection, as I feel that we are at critical juncture after critical juncture, and in a way, any good piece of theatre is a metaphor for the times we find ourselves living and breathing in. So I just think that the problem is when these individuals believe that they are the arbiters of managing this, meanwhile wanting and or needing to be seen in a favorite able light, that is a massive fucking error.

And IT turns me off and makes me not want to engage with them because they are not being truthful. This play is about someone who is no longer interested in being seen in anything like a favorable light and is therefore it's able to enter the realm of truth, whatever that means for him. Yeah.

you're actually right. They love being. They cannot stand being seen as villains or even slight baLance, even slight criticism.

you know yeah and and i'm not saying that seems a violent or that any of the movies, but to pose the question like that is so fast, well, that I just IT boles my mind.

I give me a break.

Give me a break. Therefore, tipping our cognition. So mean, like what would we .

do if we we were then say, god, I don't know. I don't know if you should put me out of business.

This is decision within the social hierarchy. It's not my place, is my places to play the role that I play, Robert, it's not it's not to put myself in the place of samon. And you know, I mean, it's like I have a role.

I don't feel like you're flying off the handle enough. I love seeing you at your fire. Y best, I feel your a way to control right now.

Well, interestingly, when I one time was in mark egbert and he said, all of us together as a community should decide on the standard and I said, well, why do you control everything? then?

Why do you, why do you have controlling share shares in facebook and therefore, all decisions are made by you? And therefore, why don't you give me control of IT with you and then we'll do actual control is like, well, you want me to give you my stock and is sure he has all the power and you don't. So you can't have a real discussion about anything.

I don't think he has any more power than I allow him to have. And that might be a bit naive, but I also know that things tend to organize at a higher level post chaos. We are in chaos right now.

And a lot of this has to do with what is our sub intentional attribute, what what do we mean to create? And even just looking at how ham strong, I think everyone feels at how down to the wire the future of western democracy is coming. And yet we go weight.

What can I do with stop ringing your hands and roll up sleeves? I go, I feel like I should be out, you know, stumping for, do caucus, knowing he's going to lose this. We're in a new era where I believe that weed ultimately will rest control of these things because the few may have had too much power for too long. I don't know how it's going to happen, but I feel that mcneal, particularly people, are leaving the theater feeling a little bit less terrified and a little more hopeful because they're feeling that this was ultimately a human story about a modern issue.

And let me finish talking about a little more about the play. That's about power. What you're talking about is power. So bar you said a is integrate, ted, obviously the set design, and we talked about tex proms.

There's also A, I generated deep fex of Robert on screen, which is intermixed with the other, I think mala harden, who plays new york times editor of some sort, would you say I becomes a character itself? Use those there on the screen quite a bit and it's disturbing. And this has that A I disturb ponies to IT.

I don't know all my AI stuff. When I wrote my book, they made A I fix of my book. You ve got a lot of attention and every photo of me on the cover looked pony like. I don't know what else to say. I'm not easily made into a point character, but is IT a character ourselves and how do you direct that A I character? What's your relation to and why did you put that there besides freaking people out?

Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I I think there are all extensions of the the mind of a doctor. So in the sense that i'm interacting with the larger sort of questions he's asking, then their tools, the tools are different kinds of ways of which to deliver that information. But I I think ultimately, there was no actual character that was A A I that I would specifically direct, but there were tools that the A I offered to keep enhancing and developing and pushing this story forward.

And the point of those pictures is to show the magamed tion.

yeah, well.

I was by design in the script, in the sense that one of the things that I wanted the play to do, as I wanted IT to exist within this neither space between the a part of our relating to human faces and the actual live experience of relating to a human face on a stage. And and the fact that we had robber a face that everybody knows right, actually helped ah yeah made that so much richer. And how to create, as you said, we're inside an iphone.

How do you create a live experience of the virtual experience we're having of each other? And so the A I is Operating, the deep fakes are all Operating in a way to kind of destabilize that reality. But also, A I is Operating as kind of metaphor for the unconscious, because A I pollutant ates. But we also allusion inc.

That's correct, which he does throughout the place because it's not clear when he's an A I.

but it's not clear a computer pollution inao if it's actually a psychic pollution.

Well, you talk about halcon cities with the drugs is is using tubes. Yes, let me ask you this question. Some of the images IT took a trip into uncanny valley in on is when, you know, something isn't real or not, especially as hair. I kept fixing on robberts hair in those pictures, which was spectacular and yet disturbing. At the same time, IT seems like I was intentionally the word uncanny appears a half a dozen times in the script T I think I counted all of them um that's an unusual word also, by the way, um to use talk about what you're doing here um and why you you want to create and Robert tries to create a hallus ic kind of situation going .

I mean the the experience of art is a kind of ordered fluctuation, is an ordered collective fluctuation. Is one that you know we draw the audience into a kind of collective dream and we move them deeper, hopefully, into something that is a value of emotional richness, or what have you? So again, the metaphor of alternative reality, or something uncanny, him, to a quote, the sort of in time, like, you know, the familiar, which is made unfamiliar in some way, that's that's the province, I think, of all are at least what i'm trying to do. so.

So Robert, these images are deep fakes of you and others. They use generator to create these digital replicas.

Which is obviously I said one of the issues in the twenty twenty three hollywood act actors strike and writers to um you and your fellow open hymir actors and by the way, congratulations on well deserved Oscar very publicly walked out on the mere to join the strike um are you concerned about IT yourself you you kind of said you aren't in the creative process because but tony stark died in inventors and game they could resurrect him without you existing now given how much body work you have and do you have a writer or protect your lightness, something you want in your contracts going forward? And for those who don't know robberts coming back as because I am an embassy, you person as doctor due, my kids are very upset by this if I and which it's kind of interesting it's you're kind of one Ellen's journey right now from a hero to a villain. But talk about this idea of you being recreated and how you feel about IT involving the process.

right? Well, first of all, I am not on elan's journey.

Second of dom is not nice.

Well, but there's more to the story than just the next chapter that i'm aware of. And I could say bar with you about. I will say this, there's two tracks.

One is how do I feel about everything that's going on? And my answer is, I mean, I feel about IT minimal ally because I have an actual emotional life that's occurring that doesn't have a lot of room for that. And to go back to the mcu, i'm not worried about them. Hydra king, my character soul because there's like three or four guys and gals who make all the decisions there anyway, and they would never do that to me with or without me.

But future executive certainly will you .

and I would like to hear state that I intend to sue all future executives.

Just be dead. Ri.

but my law from will still be very okay.

This thank you for that.

But I am sag has been has been aggressive in in a wonderful way about sort of trying to car about these. That is something the author skilled is also trying to do in and other creative industries. And so I mean, I think a lot of these issues, as I think altman was eluding to in his the fossil question, is that some of these things are gonna get worked out and and we don't know what the answers are you going to be. You know.

whether IT is fair use or whether IT isn't right. Some of them are being sued. Some of them are doing deals. That depends. And I think a lawsuit is an negotiation anyway. But is speaking about IT, but three of the top dealings in this player, well known hollywood actors, number of other performing on brother with the money, that's not a new fresh thing but is this a way to be more authentic? Because as you said, life theatre is not A I even though you're bringing A I into the theatre but it's is you .

cannot replicate um I I i'd have to turn over the robot. The experience for an actor of working on film and being shot in sort of fragments and then having a put in a uh some sort of a suitcase and taken off somewhere to be made is very different than the experienced daily of walking a theatre, working with others and repeating at night after night and expLoring IT over over again.

So if, if, if hollywood actors are fun in their way to the theater is partly because to develop and hold under the core of their work and Brown and practice and become muscular and strong. One of the things you can do is step on the stage and repeat night after night, this experience, and explore and use your tools consistently. And that, I think, is something that for somebody loves acting, you don't get to experience in the same wave if you only make and a and television. So I think I think if IT isn't from an artist point of view, that any great actor who loves this work has got to find themselves on a stage in some way or another to be able to experience what it's like to practice at that level.

right? And you talked about that, Robert, when I when I came back stage, this idea of IT being different, then I take, take.

take kind of thing. And when Jessica chastain snuck in, didn't tell me and let me know, she's seen the play that was very meaningful when jeremy strong and bradlee Cooper were kind of my my twin OTA going into and being in the experience now knowing that at norton is coming tonight and and to cross uh a mediums seeing what he did in birdman playing the ultimate serious lead actor, i'm like, this is one of those kind of verify ed, a dialogues that I get to be and not just with the audience and and and you and everyone, but also my peers.

So there's a different kind of creed, obviously, that comes when you're on stage because we know that it's a different kinds sacrifice. But you know, look, IT also ain't that deep. People do IT because they want to do IT.

They want the chAllenge and they hope IT goes well. And it's been absolutely revolutionizing for Susan downer, producer, my wife and me and all of us. I think we've created this kind of this pressure tested bond together all the Better because of the a of the disparate aging reaction by many of our critics.

Will be back in a minute.

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I I think really is a play about power again, as I said, make the kind of personifies the end of this strike White milita um he gets called to task for sleuthing inds masjid I bad parenting, womanizing ing at one point even mits to a Young black female near times reported that the envy former hollywood producer convicted serial sex and or harvey White stain, which is really something many people wouldn't do and he's doing IT to provoke and create controversy with her he did at several times insulting as A D I higher, or I think in different things like that what he kind likes, he kind of likes to these up to these hydrants. Ks, but talk about the shifting of power, dynamic and society, because you really do address them. And this play quite a bit is really a shift considering, uh, Donald trump is pulling neckin neck with vice president Harris.

I don't think that the social moment we're in is resolved. I know I think that there is a very real divide about how we are approaching all of these issues and of these power issues. And I think that part of what's getting sort of unfortunately, demoniacally worked out in our political landscape is, is the kind of shadow of all of that.

So the play has to engage that I never do, and I never write anything to sort of correct the world. It's not like I want present a vision of the world that is a Better vision than the world that we live in. I, as bartlet earlier, holding the mirror to nature, holding the mirror to what we are now.

So, you know, the death of a White, male author at a time when many would hope that such authorship should die, doug tAiling with this death of a human author in a large s because of the aben of A I. And that's the larger piece of IT that's getting sort of pushed into. And and there's also a political commentaries, I mean you know his famous book is about very gold water, a very famous american loser who has shaped american history you know deeply also from the southwest like jack bignell.

Um so there's no there's a lot going on there that i'm that i'm trying to lude to and trying to make commentary about. But of course, it's up to the audience to to draw further conclusions from that. I I always .

think a lot of people fashion the cells is bold truth. Taylors are just a girl and tooth tellers when they're just an i'm like but .

I think in this but I think an artist like us to ask ki, for example, who is is somebody who is a contrarian within his own society and is fashioning extraordinary dramatic experiences with profound human truth, is also Operates in opposition to the prevAiling sort of values. So I think that's a vision of the artist, which is real. It's not we can say, yeah well, they're just jerks and all of that but they're not really I mean.

that's yeah let that big idea on must question. And i'm just curious, Robert, how do you feel about him thinking his he's cosplay tony stack almost all .

the time call back on the little IT yeah a few times um I think that um you know as a um almost six year old recovering White american ale, I just wish that he would control his behavior a little more but that's not on me um I I I know that this idea of uh it's all OK because we've gotten get to mars doesn't really hold water with me but again, you know you have to look at all that he's done that demonstrates why he's valuable, able and again, nowadays, separating the individual from their behavior is a tough thing to do because hello, other people. And that has been hijacked in this information age to divide us rather than allow for discourse, debate and dialogue.

But when you talk about this, because one of the things, even though jack music tragic character power is still being predominate, held by a few people, include, especially in A I if you meet them you'll say it's the same the same people I always say um uh that they think it's A A meritocrat and it's a mirror gracy right? They just did beauty, how funny you are all the same. And I don't think that's necessarily a good thing because I think diversity does breed really interesting outcomes, uh, not just racial, not just gender, but age conservative.

M location .

verb like that. Do you when you think about is A I then a net positive because IT doesn't have that right to just reflects IT vomits up what we give IT. They can't exist without us. It's fuel almost like soil Green as people. You've got the reference.

Thank you. Yeah I I don't know. I think I think if IT is holding a mirror to nature and if we are truly like we are in the american thear trying to explore questions of diversity, who's doing the work, who's hearing the work, what the questions of the work are, then um that mirror will see that you know we will reflect that in some way that that's a separate question from the more complex dynamics of who really has the power over the technology and is really wheeling IT and is really monetizing IT and using IT against us or using IT to manipulate us. That particular question, which goes again back to social contract, is up to those people to be able to be willing to give away their power or share their power to ask a larger question about .

how we all can be Better through IT or cara or camera for us to concoct or fashion an idea of a collective good as an american people, which we can somehow induce our government to see, really, because regulation is the thousand pound gorilla, is the only corrective to .

any of sure, of which there isn't any revote.

But that's the larger point. That's what I mean is that it's very know not to pick on sam altman, who obviously is doing extraordinary things. But that's why that question is possible because it's not up to me. It's that it's like this question.

I'm setting him to your play. No, no.

no, no. It's it's not that I didn't like this question here is, is that I think IT points up IT points up a rhetta c that that feels misleading.

We're on the are not .

at the same level. So it's not pretend that we are also .

it's also about shared narrative too because the the one thing that happens in the theatres, everybody comes in the same room and they share the same narrative. One of the biggest problems with their eyes can mute the narrative and everybody he's got a different story. And that's leading to the sort of monkey nature of a of a foul democracy because we're not able to have these conversations.

But just just a sort of like retaliation ate the lens here for a second. All of that's true. And yet now we are still living in as as I often say, about capitalism.

It's easy to criticize capitalism and IT. It's even easier to enjoy its benefits. And that's the paradox that we live in.

And so we're talking about some very thirty five thousand foot view stuff right now on the ground. A I is changing all of our lives and is going to continue to do so. And so what does that mean? What does that mean for us as writers?

What does that mean for us as artist? What is that? So that kind of a separate issue on some level from the larger issues that you're discussing. And so in a way, I think that the place an attempt to live inside that space, inside that in between space .

where you're doing, it's interesting because I think one of the things I always advise people when they ask about A, I sort of like asking me what's the internet? And I was like, it's everything and now they asked me what's I said it's everything that just try IT see IT try IT you're .

like IT you think you said not in an exchange I was having with you that we are on the verge of a cambridge.

an explosion and I think .

I an extraordinary metaphors think it's exactly right. That's I think within the creative industries, so many of us have our heads buried in the sand right now.

They have just couple questions, one for each of you left or two maybe, Robert, you're probably invested in A I focus companies for a while. why? Tell me why that is. They are negative concerns, something you are .

worried about. Well, IT always comes out again to not the technology or the a opportunity to line my pockets. As much as who are the people involved with this.

Do I think they have a moral psychology? For what reason they deploying this? Is their steering committee sound? Um I do I have something to learn from this experience? Can I be additive? So i'm a little more agnostic about these things that always comes down to teams. And by the way, like minded is not the goal. I think that the idea of being able to adjust vastly divergent points of view, or what helps us stretch and grow, so I would never sign up to put my name and my time and energy, let alone money, into something that I thought wasn't going to bring more order or more possibility. But that's just me yeah.

Then I would do not advise against the optimist robot, which was. You can do Better. They do Better of robots over disney.

Just say, no, I have one more question for each of you and I. You wrote about post trump american homeland allergies and the naratu struggles dealing with a very much pro trump father. I have a very much pro trump mother and several relatives.

We are either in a post trump or a part two america, depending on the election outcome. Did your work seep into this play? And where's IT seeing now? Given the current moment.

they have drawn on a lot over the last half decade or so. Decade really is is the roman republic and the collapse of the roman republic. And I think that the parallels are so remarkable in terms of how the republic came apart uh and how what's happening to our own our own democracy.

And I think no, a lot of damage and has already been done so. So which is to say that we are in a multitude ade process of an erosion of the institutions and the practices and the beliefs and the collective ideas that have held us together. And and and I think that whether trump wins or doesn't win, obviously, there are ramifications in both in both ways.

But we are still having we still have to deal with the rod and the road is only getting worse. So yes, all of that is, is actually part of the play. There's a subliminal and not so subliminal reading of our political situation in the play. But you know it's i'm just an artist. So but your last question.

this seems like a whole later place. Focus on political society, moment at link, concentrate elsewhere. Recently, do you see interest in these kind of political shows winning after election? By the way, everyone's up to their eyeballs and politics at all times. You can't go to waagen without discussing politics. You know I know you're in prep for hello i'm dolly the doi part of musical thank the lord, which i'm very decided about.

How do you think the theater world react to either the nation's first female president and A A woman of color or alternative trump two point out, what is that? What happens in the theater? Or is IT a lot of hello dice? No.

no, no. I think in a camera, president see, the theatre will go on much as we understand IT now and there's interesting artist coming up. What the theater can do in circumstances which are likely under trump is hopefully uh, push the discourse into rooms where everybody can have these conversations or protest questions that are there.

And that has been seen over the centuries to emerge in such repressive circumstances with healthy eater can Operate. This is especially true. And like you know germany and authorities, or you know post colonial africa, wherever where theatres had a very large role. And I think that's liberal to emerge in a trumpet tip on o and by the way.

I do this to republicans, I have to do to its commoner just it's camera, not camera. We're confabulating .

camel lot because we missed out on cama lot one point now, which by the way.

I just need to be Chris walls, but his book IT wasn't so cm a lot.

I was actually going, na talk about how important IT is for me, my absented ballot. That's what matters in the midst of all this is are you doing your civic duty and simply not getting so distracted that you forget to do what you can.

the actual thing. So last question, at the end of the day, the question of what is truth, what is a lie? You can tell the difference is central to this play.

And by the way, the idea of truthful lie is my favorite idea right now. I'm thinking about quite a lot. Micky el ends with an AI generated senate, which is not A I generated, correct?

No IT IT wasn't A I generated. But but it's it's, it's on my mrs. Of an A I generator, I mean epo, gue and the final two lines, the final complete was something after many, many, many weeks of experimenting, I was finally able to get uh, one of the chat pots to to create a you forced.

you were doing a lot of force prompting. So robbert, if you don't mind, can you help me here? I can read IT.

but i'm not an actor, not to about to your desires, nor flatter, but to craft a truthful lie that might still matter.

So what is the truthful lie to you that might still matter?

The truth, lies, everything is so subjective and rigorous, honesty can be very elusive. But we've know when we are being true to ourselves and when we are not. And I think part of that must include making space for other people because we've been so divided that I think we forget that we're all part of one big brain that is trying to solve one really complex problem, which is, how do we continue to survive and not destroy ourselves?

Art is the truthful lie, cara, as as nature one said. H, art is the lie that makes life bearable.

So many quoting here. I like this guy, but that's where of you .

with your truthful ee well every time you step into a or you every actor is lying, everything they do is a lie, everything they make up, everything they have to come up with, its all a some version of a lie and the really ironic and crazy thing for actors is the one thing that's hardest to play on stage is when you are actually lying on stage, it's very hard to do well. And so I always find that kind of territory quite fascinating being in the theatre um because we're living the truth fly day after .

day absolutely all right, we will end on that is a wonderful play. I really made me think a lot um and it's been a lude ming and not a dumper fire. Yeah, I pay attention.

I actually read the play anyway. I really appreciate all of you. It's a great effort and i'm excited to see out as evolves. So I think it's probably evolves every night in a different way, which I think is the most wonderful part about IT.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

On with kris wish er is produced by Christian castle resemble cattery welcome Julie mayer, Megan bernie and kin lunch special thanks to korean rough and kate gallaher. Our engineers are recon and fernando arra and our thing music is by tracking mics. If you already following the show, you are interested in the human experience as flawed as IT is, if not calling doctor doom.

And actually, i'm super excited for our downy junior and play that role. Go wherever you listen to podcast search for on with care, swish share and hit follow. Thanks for listening to on with cra swish er from new york magazine. The box media podcast network and us will be back on thursday with more.

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