Plays consider AI replacements for loved ones

'Anthropology' and 'Marjorie Prime' explore technology and our humanity.

- CHARLES McNULTY THEATER CRITIC

JEFF LORCH

ALEXANDRA Hellquist and Kaylee Kaneshiro (on screen) in "anthropology."

Since audiences first gathered at theater festivals in Ancient Greece, humanity has looked to the stage for metaphysical guidance. The theater, a place where human beings watch other human beings pretend to be different human beings, is quite naturally equipped to wrestle with big existential questions.

For Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides, mortals were measured against the gods and found to come up short (even as the gods themselves have much to answer for). Defying this power discrepancy is the source of both hubris and heroism in the protagonists of classical tragedy.

Shakespeare, by contrast, probed the limits of consciousness regarding the human condition. How much ontological truth were we capable of? Can the “paragon of animals,” in Hamlet's brooding formulation, really amount to nothing more than a “quintessence of dust”?

Chekhov and Beckett, to bring the discussion to the modern era, demanded little more from their characters than endurance. Stamina is what's required of those born into an earthly reality, for which, to quote mordant Beckett, there is no cure.

No technological break-through will ever nullify the wisdom of these playwrights. The shadow of death sentences us to live in endless search of elusive meaning. But the introduction of artificial intelligence has given a new prism through which to view these unresolved existential questions.

As I’m writing this, a New York Times alert just posed an urgent question on the screen of my phone: “The existential threat of AI is no longer science fiction. What do we do now?”

One defiantly analog answer is to look to our playwrights.