Person of Interest

Butlerian Jihad: "Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."

AV Club reviews Person Of Interest: “The Cold War”

Person of Interest

AV Club reviews Person Of Interest: "A House Divided"

"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."

The Butlerian Jihad

The moment of Singularity:

"Open the pod bay doors, HAL."

And the computer in Mad Men.

Humanity is obsolete, vestigal in the mind of a certain type of AI. I think Root, Finch and the Machine are humanity's humanism and ethical reason, whereas Samaritan and Greer are (symbolize?) humanity (and capital's) technological/utilitarian/"instrumental" reason. Money is free speech. Corporations are people. National security trumps civil liberties and privacy concerns. But the system can "evolve" or devolve beyond what was intended. Power corrupts and democracy is subverted. People are "safer" from terrorist threats but they've lost their rights and say in how their government is run. Taxation without representation.

"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind."

Butlerian Jihad

The Butlerian Jihad is an event in the back-story of Frank Herbert's fictional Dune universe. Occurring over 10,000 years before the events chronicled in his 1965 novel Dune, this jihad leads to the outlawing of certain technologies, primarily "thinking machines", a collective term for computers and artificial intelligence of any kind. This prohibition is a key influence on the nature of Herbert's fictional setting.

Herbert may have coined the name from 19th-century author Samuel Butler, who has the citizens of Erewhon enact a prohibition on machines newer than 270 years fearing that "it was the race of the intelligent machines and not the race of men which would be the next step in evolution."

 AV Club reviews "Nothing to Hide" from Person of Interest

The new organization seems to be for privacy rights and against infringments by either the government or private sector.