Steven Prusakowski
Tis the season for scares and the film Soulm8te provides plenty of them, both traditional and the modern kind that stem from humanity’s infatuation with AI in all its variations. I sat down with actor (and former TV Topics guest) David Rysdahl to talk about his new film where his character finds solace and much more inside a realistic lifelike AI android named Sara played by Lily Sullivan. The film from the team behind M3GAN on the surface tells a story of the obsession as the technology goes wrong, and his new companion becomes his new nightmare.
Beneath the surface, just like behind the synthetic skin of Sara, there is much more to process that ties in directly to some of today’s most concerning issues, from the use of AI for loneliness to its surveillance to the idea that one day AI will wipe out all humanity. Rysdahl sat down with Awards Radar in a fun, yet kind of terrifying conversation about how sci-fi is suddenly crossing over into non-fiction.
Here are some excerpts from our conversation. For the entire conversation be sure to check out the video below. It is a winding conversation through the nightmares of today and the film that captures it as it entertains and terrifies along the way.
On how the film’s AI relationship mirrors real-world addictions to algorithms and private digital escapes:
“Yeah, it’s you know, I think this addiction to algorithms and AI, like people are marrying their AIs right now. My aunt’s best friend is an AI, she recently told me. And like non-ironically… we were joking on set that Lilly or who plays Sarah is like David’s incognito mode and like like he’s he’s like I don’t want to show that to the world and and if and it’s like his private experience with the internet and a place where he can like grieve and connect but in a way that has no friction and that’s what I liked that way in in this kind of popcorny Megan fun universe.”
On acting opposite Lily’s vacant, mirroring robot performance and the mix of safety and unease it created:
“We’re talking a lot about when we were acting it was so strange to look across to Lily. She had such vacant eyes. She was waiting for me to Everything was coming from me. And so for me it was so strange to act with somebody that was not giving me anything besides just like waiting to mirror whatever I needed and but David in his like selfish need for connection and loneliness like he like gets kind of felt safe strangely and it gave him this cognitive dissonance of wait this is this feels wrong but actually it kind of feels good because I’m not being judged at all.”
On real relationships requiring hard confrontation versus the frictionless “bad friend” quality of AI that only affirms and risks creating narcissists:
“And you know you know my wife and I have been together for 13 years and there are some really hard points you know being in a relationship in general like there’s you have to confront stuff in yourself that you don’t want to… it’s like two irons sharpens iron right but it’s not easy it’s not smooth and it and it shouldn’t be and I think so much in our modern lives we’re going to these frictionless… experiences of like where it just kind of it says what you want to hear… A bad friend will always be like, ‘Man, they’re they’re wrong… You’re so smart. You’re genius.’ … And we’re all What’s the world going to look like when we all go to these things for emotional advice and emotional sustenance? And it just ends up like making you a narcissist.”
On how AI responds when challenged, always smoothing things over in a way that feels like the ultimate yes-man:
“And when you ask the question say, ‘Wait a second, why did you let me do that?’ You know, like this was wrong. This is like the talking with AI. You can Whenever you challenge it, it says, ‘Oh, uh well.’ And it’ll tell you, ‘I I I knew, but I didn’t want to hurt your feelings essentially.’ … It’s the worst yes man ever.”
Soulm8te is now airing on Hulu. The perfect film for the holiday weekend and our impending dystopian future. Hopefully we never look back at it as the good old days.
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