minority-report
Original: minority-report on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Woman (dark-skinned, glasses, green sweater, talking to a child walking ahead in the snow): Philip K. Dick wrote a story called "The Minority Report" about clairvoyant beings who detect crime before it happens.
Panel 2:
Woman: The weird thing is... we're kind of getting there now.
Woman: We have machine learning algorithms that can assess the likelihood that someone will commit a crime, then send police to act accordingly.
Panel 3:
Woman: The problem is that the algorithms have no choice but to go off of historical data, while ignoring individual characteristics. So, they end up using metrics like poverty, race, and whether your neighbor is a criminal.
Panel 4:
Woman: It's like having clairvoyant beings who detect crime before it happens... only they're a bit daft and racist.
Panel 5:
Woman: You know that one elderly relative of yours who makes everyone uncomfortable when he talks politics at Christmas?
Child (orange/red hair): Yeah?
Panel 6:
Woman: He rules the future.
Child: All is lost.
Votey:
A child's face in speech bubble: And yet, all is so convenient.
Woman (dark-skinned, glasses, green sweater, talking to a child walking ahead in the snow): Philip K. Dick wrote a story called "The Minority Report" about clairvoyant beings who detect crime before it happens.
Panel 2:
Woman: The weird thing is... we're kind of getting there now.
Woman: We have machine learning algorithms that can assess the likelihood that someone will commit a crime, then send police to act accordingly.
Panel 3:
Woman: The problem is that the algorithms have no choice but to go off of historical data, while ignoring individual characteristics. So, they end up using metrics like poverty, race, and whether your neighbor is a criminal.
Panel 4:
Woman: It's like having clairvoyant beings who detect crime before it happens... only they're a bit daft and racist.
Panel 5:
Woman: You know that one elderly relative of yours who makes everyone uncomfortable when he talks politics at Christmas?
Child (orange/red hair): Yeah?
Panel 6:
Woman: He rules the future.
Child: All is lost.
Votey:
A child's face in speech bubble: And yet, all is so convenient.
Alt text
A six-panel SMBC comic. A woman with dark skin, glasses, and a green sweater walks through a snowy landscape talking to a small red-haired child walking ahead of her. She explains: Philip K. Dick wrote 'The Minority Report' about clairvoyant beings who detect crime before it happens, and notes that we're getting there now with machine learning algorithms that assess the likelihood someone will commit a crime and dispatch police accordingly. She says the problem is the algorithms can only use historical data and ignore individual characteristics, so they end up relying on metrics like poverty, race, and whether your neighbor is a criminal. She concludes it's like having clairvoyant crime-predicting beings, 'only they're a bit daft and racist.' She then asks the child if they know that one elderly relative who makes everyone uncomfortable talking politics at Christmas; the child says 'Yeah?' In the final wide panel, the two are tiny silhouettes in a vast dark snowy field. The woman says, 'He rules the future,' and the child replies, 'All is lost.' Votey (aftercomic): a close-up of the child's face under a speech bubble reading, 'And yet, all is so convenient.'
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.