This article contains spoilers for The Electric State.The Electric State has many problems: derivative plot, lackluster acting, indifferent visual style. But the most troubling issue might be the way it portrays AI.In The Electric States fictional 1994, a technological leap in 1990 allowed machines to become self-aware. They immediately rebelled against their creators, leading to a civil war between humans and machines. Lacking physical feelings of pain and fear of death, the machines seemed poised to win the war until scientist Ethan Skate (Stanley Tucci) created Neurocasters. Neurocasters allowed humans to put their consciousness into mechanical bodies, giving them the fortitude to defeat the robots and drive them into a quarantined zone.Directed by Joe and Anthony Russo and written by Christopher Markus and Stephen McFeely, MCU veterans all, The Electric State lacks any sort of originality. This extends to the characterization, the emphasis on pop culture detritus, and, of course, an uprising machine plot. The imagery and story mechanics come directly from The Terminator, The Matrix, Blade Runner, and even Star Trek, all venerable sci-fi entries. However, the portrayal of AI reads very differently in The Electric State than it does in those entries, and not just because the Russos arent James Cameron.Its because in the year 2025, AI is here. Its real. And its terrible. What once seemed like a far away thought exercise about technological evolution and human consciousness has become a fact of our daily existence, and one that raises immediate moral questions which pop culture can no longer avoid.The Evolution of Fictional AIWithin the montage of images and soundbites that serve as exposition in The Electric States first 10 minutes comes a CNN debate between a human and a robot. We deserve the right to liberty, insists the trash-can shaped robot. We deserve freedom from servitude.No, they deserve the right to work for me when I plug them in, responds the human host. And when they dont, its off to the garbage dump.The robot debater responds in horror, as if the host just suggested genocide, which suggests the beginning of an interesting dialogue. But The Electric State has no interest in exploring sentience and the develop of technology. Instead it goes onto just show images of robots battling humans, leading armies against human militaries, and scaring regular people in public spaces.None of these images will be very surprising to people who have watched a movie before. Way back in 1999, the Wachowskis told us about a synthetic world created by machines who wanted to use humans as batteries. In 1984, Cameron described a war between humans and machines after Skynet became self aware. Long before that, the covers of 1950s sci-fi magazines depicted robots rounding humans into camps and Computo killed one of Triplicate Girls duplicates in Adventure Comics #341 (1966).Sometimes these stories served to question the very nature of being. The Philip K. Dick story Do Androids Dream of Electric Sleep? (1968) and its film adaptation Blade Runner (1982) force us to consider the true difference between organic and artificial sentience. In 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), HAL 9000 becomes self aware and even defends itself when perceiving humans as a threat to its mission. The great Star Trek: The Next Generation episode The Measure of a Man (1988) contends that the synthetic life form Data is precisely the type of new life that futuristic explorers seek to find.Obviously, The Electric State has no such heady ideas. Thats not necessarily a problem in and of itself. Neither The Terminator or The Matrix are really interested in exploring the nature of being either. They both focus on action and adventure first and then on other themes, such as fate and heroism.Join our mailing listGet the best of Den of Geek delivered right to your inbox!Nor did they need to. Up until the five or so years, functioning artificial intelligence was so far away and so innocuous that it could be used as a metaphor or a gateway for another concern. We could just use machines as things to kill because killer machines gave us escapist fantasy distance. We could HAL and Data and Deckard to redefine our notions of humanity because no one was pretending that robots could stand in for people. We could contend that AI was an exploited work force for life among the stars.But thats not the case anymore. And as such, AI can no longer be a metaphor without first being AI.The Future Is Now and TerribleReal life, its contact, its you and me, declares the hero Michelle (Millie Bobby Brown) in a speech at the end of The Electric State. Were flesh and blood, yeah, but were also electricity.Its an unbelievable moment, not just because of the hackneyed construction of sequence, which is all gauzy flashback shots and a piano cover of Wonderwall by 90s touchstone Oasis. The speech at the end of The Electric State also fails because its attempt at warm-fuzzies also tries to include robots, who get their own reaction shots during the speech, presented in a simulacrum of the Spielberg awe reactions.With all of its talk about connection and meaning through interaction, The Electric State speech wants to be inspirational. It wants to urge viewers to get along with one another, to overcome the divisions and form messy connections. It wants to use the civil war of its alternate 90s as a metaphor for the divisions in our real world, with the robots standing in for random belligerents, as if every debate opponent is just misunderstood.Obviously, such empty signifiers have problems, not least of which is the fact that AI is a real and present tool in our current culture. More specifically, generative AI has replaced crypto currency and NFTs as Silicon Valleys latest cause, with everyone from Apple to H&R Block to Taco Bell using AI as a selling point.But generative AI isnt just the latest bell and whistle to get us to buy new products. Its explicitly an exploitative technology that diminishes the labor of real people for the benefit of a rich few. Generative AI works by combining and remixing information provided to it, which includes not just data and facts, but also stylistic choices and opinions. Unlike natural resources (which, to be sure, generative AI does inordinately drain, as do crypto currencies and NFTs), the opinions and facts and styles that generative AI mines all come from people. AI programs take the work done by others and remixes it into something it presents as new and original.Obviously remixing and retelling has a long history in humanity, as anyone whos read a Shakespeare play can tell you. But the functions of capitalism make the reforming done by generative AI something different, as financial compensation gets involved, something needed to live by the people who actually do the writing and creating that generative AI consumes. AI allows the rich and powerful to benefit completely from creative work without having to pay or even acknowledge the people whose labor makes it possible.AI programs like Siri may sound like humans. But they are not. Theyre tools used by the haves to exploit the have nots, and its about to get much worse. So it is perhaps time that sci-fi movies, TV shows, and the larger canon accept this emerging reality.The Real AIThe closest moments where The Electric State borders enjoyable comes from the quips traded between grizzled vet Keats (Chris Pratt) and his robot pal Herman (physically portrayed by Martin Klebba, voiced by Anthony Mackie). Even though the two fought on opposite sides of the civil war, they decided to stop killing one another and formed a bond so deep that Keats is inconsolable when it appears that Herman dies in the final act.In the movies estimation, Herman and Keats represent hope for the future, the ability to overcome differences and make bonds. Its the connection Michelle alludes to in the concluding speech. But thats because The Electric State understands Herman and all other AIs as just a different type of human.The Electric State is hardly the only film to fumble its approach to AI. Recently, the horror-thriller Companion used the mistreatment of its robots to make a point about patriarchy and homophobia. Ex Machina, made by the usually very thoughtful Alex Garland, nailed its critique of tech bros and the cult of personality around them, but too often treated its central robots as women suffering from mistreatment by terrible men.To be sure, Companion and Ex Machina are much better movies than The Electric State. Furthermore, topics such as patriarchy, homophobia, and yes, even the bonds formed between enemies deserve to be explored via fiction.But AI can no longer be used as a stand in for these issues. Artificial intelligence now exists and it is used as an explicitly anti-human, exploitative tool. To pretend that it doesnt exist, or that its something other than what it is feels antiquated, and tone deaf. At best, it is creatives in our brave new world burying their heads in the sand and ignoring the changing of the tide. Worse, however, would be using fiction to normalize this new reality as a healthy and happy thing. To suggest were all electricity. This errs closer to moral bankruptcy. Either way, its bad sci-fi.The Electric State is now streaming on Netflix.