[RheingoldRiver]

It's really interesting to me how precisely you can date modern tv shows.

- Do computers exist? Does everyone have a computer? Is the idea of searching the web a novel thing? - Do they have cell phones? Are they smartphones? - And now the new one, are they mentioning LLMs in some way?

Like one thing that really dates The Expanse imo is the complete lack of AI technology in the books/movies. It was probably an artistic choice, but it's completely unbelievable now in a way that wasn't a problem 4 years ago.

[jimbokun]

There is an episode of Columbia where he asks a receptionist for information about an employee. Instead of making a phone call to get the information, she kicks off a computer query on one of those teletype systems.

The gag is it takes seemingly forever for it to print all the data about the employee to paper, while Columbia fidgets and waits awkwardly to finish, repeatedly asking if there’s a faster way to get the information.

New tech at the time was often a plot point of the show, like using call recordings to fake the murderers location at the time of the murder, editing video surveillance, etc.

[thinkingemote]

Columbo (the tv detective show) in "An Exercise in Fatality" the scene lasted 7 minutes and it hilarious!

[dylan604]

I think any scifi talking about LLM is just doing it wrong. Nobody watching a scifi cares about AI other than it's doing things--good or bad depends on the script. Imagine if Ripley and Dallas having a scene discussing if Mother can be trusted or if it's hallucinating. What if HAL told Dave that LLM isn't fine tuned well enough so he's sorry he can't do that at this time? I'll tell you what, that scene would be on the cutting room floor, and if left in, the audience would be snoring.

[Ekaros]

I think HAL is actually perfectly done example of AI. As we currently see with many recent issues. It is trained over reasonably long time and then it is fed too many directives. HAL is exactly following the instructions and survival of the crew is NOT the top priority.

Edit: added NOT

[kstrauser]

I can see the complete absence as being more realistic than a partial or limited presence. If there were a Dune-style Butlerian Jihad, AI could be banned altogether.

[falcor84]

I can't imagine any of the factions in The Expanse upholding the ban on AI while researching in secret an actually alien substance.

[hef19898]

Not sure about that so. AI at the moment is a hype around LLMs. Given what the tech in the Expanse is doing, it is easily possible that AI is used as just another tool for everything from automated med bays to ships diagnostics.

Edit: Another great example of how computers are used is Perry Rhodan (a German SciFi series going since the 60s, and a rather good one). There, in books written up tobthe 70s, they have positronic computers (and other tech that beats everything Star Trek, Star Wars or any other sci fi universe I know has), and computers are still used with punch cards and stripe print outs. Even the ones salvaged from civilisation being millenias ahead tech-wise compared to humans. Pretty funny detail.

[shiroiushi]

They did the same thing in "Space: 1999" which came out in 1975. Computers were printing out receipt paper instead of using proper displays. It was very curious to me, because IIRC, real computers at that time already had displays. And Star Trek, which came out in the decade before, didn't have printouts either.

[probably_wrong]

Interesting to me is that I saw exactly one series taking place in the "real" world where the story acknowledged COVID.

[RheingoldRiver]

I think that'll get way more common with time, eg no one would acknowledge September 11th at first but now I think if you watched a tv show set in the year 2020-2024 they'd acknowledge that as part of the history. There's 2 reasons I can think why you wouldn't want to include a recent event, the biggest one obviously is that TV is escapism and people don't want to see their troubles highlighted in their escapism story (and also advertisers might not want their products displayed on anything mentioning traumatic recent events), but another is that when you're writing for a tv show in the modern worlds, you don't really expect to do as much creative worldbuilding as you would for a fantasy show. But if you include recent events that are going to cause a huge geopolitical ripple, you won't be able to predict as well what happens next.