Cupertino, made by CBS
By Dennis Broe
The smartest show of the fall TV season by far, if such a season still exists, is CBS’ Cupertino, a scathing and starkly intelligent look at Silicon Valley, its ethos and the tech billionaires that are now running not only our tech and entertainment but are deeply entwined with the government and the Pentagon, with personal surveillance and with the war industry.
The series plays on popular sentiments, either against or for reining in an industry which is taking over our lives. So, given that the parent company of CBS is Skydance/Paramount – owned by David Ellison, son of Larry Ellison, who owns one of the big six AI companies Oracle – how far and deep will this critique be allowed to go?
The pilot begins with firings, which are now becoming common in the Valley, of two employees, both for spurious reasons. Michael, an experienced African American lawyer, is fired from the start-up he pioneered, by the co-founder who wants Michael’s share of the equity. Olivia, just out of law school, is fired because her boss, clumsy, incompetent and aggressive around women, has sent her nude photos and gets upset when she refuses to date him.
The two team up, initially, in an extremely well-written pilot, and plan to sue their companies for the firings. In addition to the harassment, Olivia realizes her company is using her bosses’ inept assignations and her responses, including her likes and dislikes, to train the company’s AI “companion.”
Michael, on the other hand, is warned off his lawsuit by a lawyer, already bought off by his now former company, and told that in the tech industry “lawyers don’t sue, they get in on a startup; you’re in the gold rush, don’t sue the gold mine.”
Another Gold Rush?
That line points to the fact that tech, following Hollywood and now partially controlling it, is the new California Gold Rush. It could ultimately end up in a series of mines with no more gold left in them, as the industry itself implodes from lack of interest. It also points to an ethos where ethics are simply abandoned in the blind pursuit of profit.
The show also knowingly mocks the milieu that surrounds the gold rush, as one after another of the working people Michael and Olivia encounter attempt to cash in themselves by creating their own strike-it-rich app – like the Italian secretary Christy, who promotes her cousin’s “pitch deck for a ride share company.”
This echoes the Hollywood moment where everyone, even a dentist, has a script ready to show in the trunk of their car. The Valley lifestyle, a super healthy and super expensive diet that represents the hope of the tech bros to live forever, is mocked as Christy offers an army of corporate execs “organic celery juice.”
This is a standard TV genre, a lawyer show with a twist, as many of the crucial questions around AI, including that of fair use—that is, whether AI uploading of the world’s knowledge is piracy and theft— may be fought over in the courts.
Michael and Olivia decide to open a law firm for the little person, not being represented by the Valley’s teams of corporate lawyers. In this, they are aided by Christy and her extended family. This working-class family, including an electrician who causes a temporary blackout so they can access company files, help them in their struggles against their corporate foes.
The series wisely plays off discontent with AI and the sentiment that our society, rather than being enhanced by AI, is losing control, and being programmed in a world that is being remade without popular consent. Cupertino takes its place alongside Mike Judge’s Silicon Valley as a wise riposte to the industry, though a decade of tech dominance later, its mood is darker. It’s much smarter and more politically attuned than the idiotic The Audacity, which simply wallowed in tech bro foibles and then had the nerve to call itself a satire.
Silicon Valley
The question though becomes how much pulling of its punches will be necessary to accommodate its Oracle owners. Episode Two mentioned the involvement of the industry in weapons of war, but only as an aside. The third episode went astray, outwitting itself as an AI model hires Michael and Olivia to require restrictions being put around it. This follows the errant line that the problem is the technology, the machines on their own taking over our lives, rather than the profit system under which the technology is being designed.
The larger AI questions involve issues such as whether so much of the Earth’s resources, including fuel and water, should be devoted to this technology. Also whether the companies sucking off our society’s financial resources, as they inflate the balloon by investing in each other, are simply constructing a bubble that when it explodes will occasion a horrible financial crash.
Finally, there is the big question of what to do about the job losses, both now and coming up, caused by a massive use of AI. This last question suggests that while it is talked about as a boon to humanity, the technology as it is being deployed is merely a huge strategy for immiserating both skilled and unskilled workers.
The behavior of Skydance and the Ellisons in the Warner’s/Paramount merger, and the Oracle ethos itself, do not bode well for the show being able to tackle these issues. Skydance made a series of promises which are all temporary and can easily be reneged on to allow the merger to happen, including releasing 30 films per year, thus supposedly guaranteeing jobs in California.
However, because of the massive debt both Warner’s and Paramount carry, one estimate is that instead of creating jobs, over 10,000 workers from both companies will lose their jobs. Meanwhile Oracle has laid off 21,000 workers in the last year, as the tech companies take the lead is showing how AI can eliminate jobs.
The company also has an ideological bent which places it alongside Rupert Murdoch in terms of a right-wing slant in overseeing news and entertainment. Larry Ellison is a noted Zionist and the largest private funder of the genocidal Israeli Defense Force. He has deliberately assembled a media empire, including Tik Tok, CBS and now possibly CNN, partly for the purpose of stifling dissent on issues of war and of course on promoting the rationale for his own company’s tech dominance.
Under this weight Cupertino will strain to be a relevant series, but it has made a valiant start, and it is hoped the series will fight the good fight not only against Silicon Valley but also against CBS’ own corporate owners.
