Marjorie Prime
Add Jordan Harrison 's Marjorie Prime to the pantheon of plays/movies/TV shows exploring the quickly evolving world of artificial intelligence. (Recent works that are also in there, in my opinion, The (curious case of the) Watson Intelligence and Ex Machina .) At rise, we see Marjorie (the wonderful Lois Smith ) talking to Walter ( Noah Bean ), her husband. Or, rather, Walter Prime, an AI robot version of her husband, as he looked when he was 30. Marjorie is elderly, and lost her husband about ten years ago. (The action of the play takes place in an unspecified time in the future; if you pay attention, though, you can pick up the little clues Harrison leaves, and guess that we're somewhere in the 2055-2060 range. Kudos to Laura Jellinek for her sparse and spacious natural futuristic set.) The fashionable thing to do in response to loss is, apparently, create a Prime, an AI version of your loved one, in order to provide companionship. You (and anyone else you choose) c...