Sandra
An interesting idea, a disappointing development: Sandra doesn’t live up to the expectations.
In the era of Siri and Ok Google, writing a story on a virtual assistant is nothing particularly new or original. But it might be interesting nonetheless.
The idea of Sandra is that this virtual assistant — named precisely Sandra — isn’t virtual at all: it is actually based on the work of many humans packed somewhere in the American province. Their job is to pick up calls — or rather requests — from other humans that are persuaded they’re talking to a machine and try to fulfill them.
Instead of a clever computer or an artificial intelligence, Sandra is a network of human brains organized into topics: there’s the “disease team”, the “food team”, “parenting team” and so on.
Helen is a young wife on the verge of divorce. She’s trying to bring all her pieces together, start a new life far from her husband and redefine herself. This job is — or could be, in her mind — the driver and the savior.
Will it be? She just has to answer to requests about birds (that’s the team she’s been assigned to by the system) and to remember details about users’ lives, in order to build a relationship and make them believe she’s a very clever machine. Clever like a human.
Being a human-powered AI means that you — as an operator — can get into people’s homes and know their habits. You can become a sort of acquaintance and one day maybe a good friend for these people. Can you imagine? One day a computer will be my best friend.
As Helen’s supervisor (played by Ethan Hawke) points out, “Sandra is like a superpower”.
How do they use this superpower? To sell things and to profile their users of course, but the idea for this plot was already very good at the beginning: it could have been a sort of metaphysical exploration of strangers’ lives or — I don’t know — something else. In the end Sandra turns to be a kind of undeveloped story which abruptly ends at the 7th episode.
Do they plan to broadcast some more episodes? Are they done?
I’d better ask Sandra.
