At Lincoln Center, audiences are preparing for the curtain to rise on Ayad Akhtar’s anticipated theater production McNeal, featuring Robert Downey Jr. as the lead. This production notably includes a supporting role for ChatGPT. It reflects on the ongoing discussion among playwrights regarding the implications of artificial intelligence, a dialogue that dates back over a century. In 1920, well before the famous Turing Test and the 1956 Dartmouth conference that coined the term "artificial intelligence," Czech playwright Karel Čapek introduced the world to the concept of robots in his play R.U.R.—Rossum’s Universal Robots. Čapek’s work is recognized as the first to employ the word “robot” and can be considered an early depiction of AI-related trepidations, as it presented a narrative of an android uprising that nearly eradicates humanity, leaving only one survivor.
Also being performed in New York City this winter is a small production called Doomers. This play is a dramatized account inspired by events when the nonprofit board of OpenAI ousted Sam Altman, only to reinstate him following an employee revolt. Unlike the grandeur typically associated with Broadway shows, both McNeal and Doomers delve into themes that resonate in the tech industry, government discussions, and informal gatherings at the NeurIPS conference. The productions explore the concerns surrounding the influence of superintelligent AI on human creativity.
Doomers is penned by Matthew Gasda, a playwright and screenwriter whose work often addresses contemporary topics. His previous plays, such as Dimes Square and Zoomers, focused on New York’s youth culture. Upon learning about the OpenAI incident, Gasda saw it as a chance to explore more significant themes, drawing parallels to the dramatic narratives of Shakespeare. The two-act play features separate casts: one illustrates Altman’s exiled team, while the other focuses on the board’s realization that their power play is unraveling. Characters engage in discussions on AI’s risks, potential, and ethics while expressing concerns about their situations.
The narrative doesn’t offer a definitive solution, concluding the first act with characters drinking alcohol and the second act with them consuming mushrooms. Gasda indicates that this is deliberate, suggesting the play’s message is that its characters are avoiding the responsibility of AI development. He introduces a darker twist, hinting that the fictional LLM might be manipulating the characters, leaving it to the audience to determine its plausibility. Doomers continues to be staged in Brooklyn with plans to open in San Francisco in March.
McNeal, a Broadway production featuring a renowned movie star, Robert Downey Jr., who has portrayed characters inspired by influential figures like Elon Musk, is an ambitious work incorporating AI as a character. It presents screens projecting prompts and responses. Downey’s character, Jacob McNeal, is a self-absorbed novelist and substance abuser who succumbs to the enticement of instant talent provided by a large language model, ultimately losing his integrity.
The playwrights express their concerns about AI’s expanding role in writing. In an interview with The Atlantic, Pulitzer Prize winner Ayad Akhtar mentioned that extensive experiments with LLMs enhanced his playwriting, even attributing the final lines of McNeal to ChatGPT. He asserts that if a play centers around AI, it is logical that AI would contribute significantly to its creation. Conversely, Gasda, who credited ChatGPT and Claude in Doomers, fears AI could appropriate his words, prompting a potential return to analog writing methods to shield work from AI companies. Gasda has completed a novel set in 2040 about a writer who sold all his works to AI, leaving him creatively bankrupt.
