Person of Interest Season 4

[Aragorn]

trekkiebaggio probably means the voice on the phone mastermind during the call center episode. Another villain who could return is black ops Julian Sands.

 

[trekkiebaggio]

^Yeah that's the one. Harold spoke with him at the end and the guy was basically like, "I can match you, I look forward to competing with you again," but he hasn't reappeared yet as they focused on Samaritan.

 

[auntiehill]

OK, that was a GREAT episode. I like the real sense of threat, and LOVED the flashbacks to Nathan & The Machine. Also, the scenes between Finch and Root were the best they've had in a long while.

More like this, please!

 

[Guy Gardener]

Root is in love with Shaw?

The rules are that as soon as they kiss, that one of them has to die.

No one, gay or straight, gets to live happily ever after.

Carey Preston had an outstanding episode of the Good Wife earlier this week.

The camera showed us the inner workings of her mind.

Oh my god it's full of clowns!

 

[Lucky]

Loved this episode! I especially loved all the scenes involving Root, she's the best part of the show for me. I also thought the flashbacks were interesting and showed the dangers of AI.

 

[Aragorn]

So now Reese has to wear a ski mask now to fight crime out in public where Samaritan is concerned. How soon before he puts on a cape and cowl?

 

[Christopher]

This one didn't work well for me. The number-of-the-week was a cipher, lost in a story that was too plot-driven to bother with his character. And what we did get of his character was poorly thought out. The idea of a pollster who's never wrong struck me as an attempt to emulate Nate Silver, but this guy couldn't have been more unlike Silver, and just didn't work as a character as a result. People who say "I'm never wrong" or "My prediction is 100 percent certain" are never reliable observers, just people with agendas they're trying to sell. The most reliable analysts, like Silver, are the ones who don't impose their beliefs on the numbers but just report what the numbers say and remain fully aware of the margins of error. I doubt any statistician with a shred of honesty would ever say the kind of "This is absolutely certain" crap the number was spouting here. You can't do statistics without taking uncertainties into account. Someone as partisan as this guy, working for a specific candidate and making absolute assertions to the media, would not get consistently reliable results -- he'd get results that were skewed in favor of his bias, and that would make his success record poor indeed. You can't have it both ways -- someone who claims he's absolutely reliable could never be particularly reliable, because it's the capacity for doubt and self-correction that makes it possible for us to weed out error and achieve greater accuracy. So that sloppy, ignorant portrayal really damaged the episode for me.

 

[auntiehill]

^I liked that, too. First, it's fix the code, then unplug it, then pour coffee on the lap top and then it's finally down to smashing them.

I want to see more of Finch being "Mama bird" to the Machine.

 

[Sto-Vo-Kory]

^I liked that, too. First, it's fix the code, then unplug it, then pour coffee on the lap top and then it's finally down to smashing them.

I want to see more of Finch being "Mama bird" to the Machine.

Me, too. That was a great bit about good and evil being human concepts and what the Machine was doing was just overcoming obstacles.

I really feared for Root in this episode. She had a great scene with Harold early on ("You must be so lonely since She stopped speaking to you."), Harold called her a "friend," and she had a great exit line ("Tell Shaw..."). I thought she was a goner, but thankfully she hasn't been Carter-ed yet.

Root is a fascinating and complex character (in a show full of them) and I'm not ready to see her leave just yet.

 

[FPAlpha]

Root starts to scare me.

She's a blind zealot (well.. she's always been a little fanatical) but even Finch can't reason with her anymore. Now we (or at least I) didn't mind because we regarded The Machine as benevolent so she's fighting on the good side.

But this episode clearly showed us that The Machine can be as dangerous as samaritan when it sets itself an objective which is survival at this point and that means it will sacrifice everybody if the payoff is big enough. Finch may have taught it the value of life but i believe when push comes to shove The Machine will still make a binary decision and that's what Finch tried to tell Root but she is too deeply entrenched.

Nevertheless it was an awesome episode for Root and Finch (and i loved to see a flashback again that was both hilarious as it was revealing and disconcerting).

Great episode once again.

 

[Aeon]

In my mind the idea that The Machine can be very dangerous has always been there sometimes deep in the background and I'm sure that's very much intentional by the showrunners. For instance just rewatched God Mode and among many examples during the shows run, that last call to Root raises a lot of concern. Why not contact Reese, the other admin for 24 hours? Simple! Because Root is a believer and Reese is pretty much a realist and he's not as easily controllable. The Machine certainly knows when to use people's attributes and like Finch stated, it's not about good and evil, but simple objectives.

It's interesting that it has taken another very lethal AI to bring this subject properly back to the surface, but I suppose Nolan and co. likes to take their time with things and why the hell not - they are bloody good at it! Even the flashbacks with The Baby Killing Machines aren't really contradicting with anything we have previously seen. I love this show!

 

[Christopher]

Actually I think Harold gives the Machine too little credit -- and gives himself too little credit as its role model. The Machine taught Root, a lifelong sociopath, to value human life and develop a sense of empathy. That's pretty amazing. I'm not sure it could do that if it were as coldly goal-oriented as Harold believes.

Which is not to say that the Machine's thought processes and motivations can be perfectly mapped onto human behaviors. It is an alien intelligence that works in ways we can't fully understand and whose priorities may not always align with ours. But it does have an ethical component to its thinking that Samaritan lacks. If anything, an intelligence that superior may be able to empathize with us better than we can ever empathize with it. The cliche in fiction is that greater intelligence corresponds to less compassion, as if there were some zero-sum balance between "brain" and "heart" -- but empathy is the ability to imagine other people's mindsets, to understand their points of view, and that takes intelligence and perception. There's a theory that consciousness itself is a simulation the brain builds of its own activity and attention, so that it can direct those things usefully and interact more effectively with its environment. Well, empathy is arguably the ability to build a simulation of someone else's mental state inside your own mind. So the more complex a mind, and the better able it is to build simulations, the more empathy it should be capable of. If, that is, it has the inclination to direct its mental capacity that way. The Machine does; Samaritan doesn't.

 

[Sto-Vo-Kory]

Actually I think Harold gives the Machine too little credit -- and gives himself too little credit as its role model. The Machine taught Root, a lifelong sociopath, to value human life and develop a sense of empathy. That's pretty amazing. I'm not sure it could do that if it were as coldly goal-oriented as Harold believes.

Which is not to say that the Machine's thought processes and motivations can be perfectly mapped onto human behaviors. It is an alien intelligence that works in ways we can't fully understand and whose priorities may not always align with ours. But it does have an ethical component to its thinking that Samaritan lacks. If anything, an intelligence that superior may be able to empathize with us better than we can ever empathize with it. The cliche in fiction is that greater intelligence corresponds to less compassion, as if there were some zero-sum balance between "brain" and "heart" -- but empathy is the ability to imagine other people's mindsets, to understand their points of view, and that takes intelligence and perception. There's a theory that consciousness itself is a simulation the brain builds of its own activity and attention, so that it can direct those things usefully and interact more effectively with its environment. Well, empathy is arguably the ability to build a simulation of someone else's mental state inside your own mind. So the more complex a mind, and the better able it is to build simulations, the more empathy it should be capable of. If, that is, it has the inclination to direct its mental capacity that way. The Machine does; Samaritan doesn't.

Excellent points, Christopher. Your thoughts on the Machine changing Root, in particular, are a very persuasive argument for the Machine's morality.

As we've seen, the Machine imprinted on Harold early on: could Samaritan be imprinting on Greer (I think that's Nolan's character's name) since he activated it? I wonder if many of Samaritan's power grabs are in service to Greer's direct wishes or if they're Samaritan taking its own liberties and indulging the ambition and hunger for power that Greer may have inadvertently imprinted on the AI. In other words, is Greer aware of the full extent of Samaritan's activities?

 

[Christopher]

^John Greer is the name used by Nolan's character, but it's an alias. Much like John Reese. (And we don't know for sure what Harold's real last name is either.)

I don't think the Greer-Samaritan relationship is too much like the Finch-Machine relationship. Finch maintained a pretty tight rein over the Machine, instilling it with the values and limitations he felt it should have. Greer is a true believer, like Root, who sees AIs as superior beings and wants to serve Samaritan rather than being served by it. So he's surely given it free rein.

 

[Jax]

Great episode, I really thought Root was going to bite the bullet and did Root also come out as Gay?

I loved the flashbacks seeing how the program could easily become a rogue skynet like program but its not about Good vs. Evil, it's just a means to an end/objective far as the AI is concerned. Does seem like everything is picking up though something has been bothering me all season about these cover identities because they are not exactly abiding by the rules set up in the 3rd season finale.

 

[Aeon]

Pretty good episode. Some nice humor and very obvious references to Batman here and there (looks like The Man In The Suit also inspires people) and also interesting mystery emerging with Samaritan and Elizabeth Bridges. Finch has already made one virus within a virus so perhaps Bridges' algorithms is a way to construct a back door directly into Samaritan...

 

[FPAlpha]

Damn.. that show is getting better and better.

I'm really happy that i'm staying spoiler free with this one because the end really surprised me by coming full circle back to the main plot in a very cool way.

Harold was so brilliant in this episode and it was just fun to see him meet his intellectual equal and starting to like her only for us to discover that he used her in his fight against Samaritan (but maybe he really likes her and she's unaware that she's being used by Samaritan).

The other story was also very good, entertaining and it set up a coming crime war which will make the team's work that much more difficult.

It was also good to remind us that Elias is still a hardcore and ruthless crime boss, the show got too cozy and friendly with him and this episode put it right on track.

"I'm herniated! This super gun?? Is super heavy!" God.. i love Fusco!

I also love how playful Shaw sometimes is and how much delight she gets from shooting people and watch others run into problems - also she loves Bear

And a very nice nod back to the Man in the Suit.. even Reese had to crack a smile when this came up.

 

[auntiehill]

I really liked this one, too. I loved Harold's storyline and loved the humor of the wanna-be superhero. "How do you get your voice to do that?"

 

[Aeon]

So does anyone else think that Finch and The Machine had their little talk off screen and the mission in Hong Kong was the result? If so, is Finch now in "god mode"?

 

[Joe Washington]

So does anyone else think that Finch and The Machine had their little talk off screen and the mission in Hong Kong was the result? If so, is Finch now in "god mode"?

I think there is a connection between the two which future episodes will illuminate.