Courtesy of NBC
We would've understood if you were confused at 10 pm on Thursday. Because if you tuned in to the Season 26 premiere of "Law & Order," you might've thought you'd accidentally switched the channel to CBS' "Cupertino," which aired at the same time.
Both are legal dramas. Both feature actors you know and love. And both spent this week's episode entrenched in the ethically messy world of Big Tech. Meanwhile, Det. Vince Riley (Reid Scott) was still around, and there was no mention of Assistant District Attorney Samantha Maroun's (Odelya Halevi) big news, so looks we'll have to wait until later in the season on those fronts.
In a moment, we'll want to hear what you thought of the premiere. (And seriously, check out "Cupertino," too. It's good.) But first, a quick rundown of the episode's highlights.
When a man turns up dead after fighting with his girlfriend, we're led to believe that he was cheating on her. But after Riley and Walker start poking around, they realize the dead guy was a software engineer at an Artificial Intelligence company, and that the other woman in question — Eliana — is actually an acronym for the company's AI: ELIANA, or Evolutionary Language Inference Automated Nanoadvantage. And ELIANA was taking up a lot of his time and brainspace, hence his girlfriend's annoyance. (Side note: Yep, that's "Mad Men" alum Vincent Kartheiser as Chuck Klein, the smug CEO of the AI company.)
Big Tech wins again
Courtesy of NBC
Anyway, when the police track down the man who fatally shot the software engineer, they learn it was a hit job arranged and paid for anonymously, online. And when one of the dead man's co-workers whispers to the cops that the dead man had reservations about how ELIANA was getting too powerful — and how he'd written code to try to control her — they realize that ELIANA (!) likely hired the assassin.
Armed with this information, the District Attorney's office proceeds with prosecuting Chuck Klein for Murder 2. "He knew, or should have known, that this ELIANA was going to kill someone someday," an angry Baxter huffs. "If AI is going to take over the whole damn world, we need to hold the human beings that create it accountable." Price isn't as certain that this is a good idea, though; he and Maroun quietly discuss how, if they fail, they've basically drawn a legal roadmap that every AI company's boss can use to get out of trouble.
The trial proceeds, and even though a witness testifies that Klein is a scumbag who once compared people to ants, the jury finds the CEO not guilty. Afterward, Baxter commends Price on a good job, but they both agree that the law is nowhere near caught up to "this new reality."
Now it's your turn. What did you think of the episode? Grade it via the poll below, then hit the comments with your thoughts!
