• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, May 8, 2023

Artificial intelligence and law enforcement are not a good combination at all.

That’s the gist of a new FBI drama coming to Hulu this week. The show -- “Class of ’09” -- is about an AI future in which crime in America is substantially tamped down with the use of advanced AI tools.

This raises the question: At what price to individual freedom?

With a storytelling technique that time-shifts backward and forward to the past, present and future, “Class of ’09” traces the lives of a group of young FBI agents, starting with their days together as trainees in 2009 at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia.

There, they meet and socialize in the Academy dorm where they behave like typical college students, although they are all somewhat north of college age.

In one of the first scenes, while they are assembled in an auditorium for an orientation, one grinning male agent-in-training actually writes a note and passes it to a comely female agent as if they’re in middle school.

The goo-goo-eyed flirtations continue at various times when the show shifts back to the Academy in 2009.

In this way, the back history of this Class of ’09ers is positioned as necessary for us to understand the characters as they evolve into the present day of 2023 and beyond (the future year is not specified in Episode One).

While watching the first episode, I found it unnecessary. The agents’ life stories had the effect of dulling a show that came alive only in the present day and future.

Whenever the year or decade of the show’s “future” scenes, we learn late in Episode One that by that time, the FBI has had AI technologies in its crime-fighting arsenal for about 10 years.

This is revealed at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing convened to hear testimony from the FBI director who ushered in this new tech era for the Bureau. 

He wants to extend his tenure another five years, and the committee wants to hear why they should keep him on.

And so he makes his case. “I have overseen one of the most radical changes to the way the Bureau operates,” testifies Director Tayo Michaels (played by Brian Tyree Henry).

“I’ve integrated ground-breaking technology to the investigative process -- artificial intelligence that misses nothing and judges everyone as equals,” he says.

“And as a consequence we have all enjoyed one of the steepest periods of criminal decline that this country has ever seen. We can now say that not only are we one of the greatest nations on Earth, we are also one of the safest.”

Michaels, who is also a member of the Class of ’09, seems mild-mannered, pragmatic and soft-spoken. But does his demeanor mask some sort of sinister purpose?

“If the system is so great, why do you need five more years?” asks one of the committee members.

“Progress,” he says. “It’s like a child, isn’t it? You must protect it. You must keep your arms around it, and that’s why I’m here.”

Like all such AI fiction, “Class of ’09” is descended from HAL (which stands for Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic computer), the famed artificial life force from “2001: A Space Odyssey.”

That was long before the current AI moment we are all experiencing now. Have you ever noticed that in every single movie or TV drama since “2001,” mankind has never, ever benefited one bit from AI?

Based on that, it is reasonable to assume that the FBI’s AI in “Class of ’09” will come to no good.

“Class Of ’09” premieres on Wednesday (May 10) on Hulu.