As Ayad Akhtar’s “McNeal” starring Robert Downey Jr waits for the curtain to go up at Lincoln Center, the writer ponders AI’s encroachment on the arts.
He notes that playwright Karel Čapek’s 1920 “R.U.R.”, which introduced the word “robot”, portrays androids slaughtering all of humanity bar one soul.
Much more recently, a production named “Doomers” by Matthew Gasda depicts a nonprofit board letting Sam Altman go, then rehiring him, and it has a thinly veiled link to AI theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky and a venture capitalist.
Akhtar himself has admitted to using AI to refine his play, with some of the technology even getting a credit, leading Gasda to worry that human writers may have to keep their work on paper to avoid AI theft.
Yet both agree that theatre is probably the least threatened art form, relying as it does on live performances and a connection with an audience.
