dystopia

Technosociologist Zeynep Tufekci argues that the machine-learning systems used to serve ads also decide what political and social information people see. She explains how opaque algorithms can nudge, segment and manipulate users, and warns that the real danger is powerful people using AI to control populations.

VICE News reporter Isobel Yeung goes undercover as a tourist in Xinjiang, documenting heavy surveillance, policing and internment of Uighurs. It also covers children taken into state-run institutions.

MORE is Mark Osborne's Oscar-nominated stop-motion short about a joyless inventor in a drab, conformist society who yearns for his younger days. It won Best Short Film at Sundance in 1999.

An Intelligence Squared debate in which Will Self argues for Brave New World and Adam Gopnik for Nineteen Eighty-Four as the better dystopian warning. It includes acted excerpts and is chaired by Jonathan Freedland.

Keiichi Matsuda's short concept film depicting a future where physical and virtual realities have merged and the city is saturated with media and advertising. It shows an augmented-reality-filled daily life as a provocative vision.

A short Australian dystopian film in which a man returns home to find citizens fining each other for infractions via a government app, with cameras everywhere.

A clip from Terry Gilliam's film Brazil in which the illegal heating engineer Harry Tuttle visits Sam Lowry to fix his heating problem.

Slaughterbots is a fictional short film, backed by Stuart Russell, depicting swarms of cheap autonomous drones that use facial recognition to assassinate targets. It was made to argue for banning autonomous weapons.

A 3-minute CGI animated sci-fi short by Dima Fedotov. An automated war system keeps a lone bomber attacking a long-dead city after humanity has been wiped out, until life finds a way to survive.

Tom Scott's three-minute satirical short about a corporate-run, DRM-and-ads-laden afterlife after mind uploading. It imagines copyright law and lawyers applied to human memory and consciousness.

The 1972 documentary based on Alvin Toffler's book Future Shock, narrated by Orson Welles. It is a dystopian look at the accelerating pace of technological change and its psychological toll.

Slaughterbots, a short dystopian film in which swarms of small autonomous drones are programmed to kill targets matching a profile. It opens as a slick product launch before turning into a terror scenario.

A VICE News piece on China's Social Credit System, including a neighbor-watch pilot where paid watchers record behavior. It covers rewards for high scores and public shaming or restrictions for low ones.

Microsoft's March 2023 launch highlights for Microsoft 365 Copilot, showing AI features in Outlook, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote. The demo includes using it to draft a graduation party speech.