Notes for season 3 episode 22, “A House Divided“
06:12 Root’s irregulars, three of the hackers recruited in previous episodes, are huddled in the back of a delivery truck like a cheap version of Sneakers.
06:58 Shaw gets handed the same model sat-phone she had in her first episode
08:46 We see an establishing shot (via cctv) of One Grand Central Place (formerly The Lincoln Building), suggesting that that might be the building housing Finch’s safehouse?
11:08 As well as being a bakery snob, Reese also has strong opinions about local coffee shops. Reese and Root sit behind three Dell 2009W monitors.
27:00 Someone triggers the Watch_Dogs blackout ability, and Manhattan loses power. This would happen for real five years later.
32:20 Greer reveals his plan is not to control Samaritan, but to serve it. Creating something similar to the RPG Paranoia, with Decima as Troubleshooters. He cites the base instincts and corruptibility of human leaders as reasons to trust an AI.
We see a refection of this in how people talk about AI-related processes (or “algorithms”) lacking bias and prejudice, as a sort of responsibility-washing. But automated processes can only reflect the data they’re given. Data which is heavily influenced by years of human bias and prejudice.
Greer taking a risk with alignment, but I imagine he’s expecting that (for a US government project running late 2001 to early 2005) the AI will have been trained to align with the government of George W Bush’s first term as President. An ideologically pure and incorruptible version of the right wing. All of the Tory, none of the sleaze.
33:00 Ok, so the Vigilance plan involves using an elevator during power cut? They later lampshade this by radioing “Coming down, start the generator.” but it’s such a clumsy corner the writers put themselves in.
37:36 “Your men should really encrypt your text messages.”