By Rob Eschmann

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey  features an unexpected twist in perspective, reframing the legendary Trojan Horse as a war crime that contributed to the fall of Greek civilization. This creative decision makes the 2,700-year-old epic more relevant than it has ever been, speaking directly to some of the most pressing issues of our time.

The film highlights the deep connection between Greek culture and “Zeus’ law,” which demands that people show hospitality towards strangers, any of whom could be gods in disguise. When the hero Odysseus, played by the always impressive Matt Damon, invented the Trojan Horse, he made a mockery of Zeus’ law by using a gift offered under a banner of peace, a gift offered to the goddess Athena, to burn Troy to the ground and enable the massacre of countless civilians.

Throughout the film, Greeks are fearful of attacks from the mysterious “people from the sea,” thought to be outsiders and barbarians that threaten to destroy Greece. Later we learn that the people of the sea are just Greeks who have shunned “Zeus’ law.”

The Trojan Horse serves as a metaphor upon a metaphor. Not only is the horse a pretty gift that led to the destruction of Troy, it is a clever invention that brought on the destruction of Greek civilization because it facilitated the rejection of Zeus’ law, leading to the cannibalization of Greek cities by its own citizens.

Big tech, from social media to generative AI, can be seen as a series of digital Trojan Horses. It offers gifts that promise increased connection and productivity but come with a hidden cost: the quiet reshaping of the social and moral order of society.

Nolan’s interpretation of The Odyssey can be read as a statement on technology:  Profit-driven practices in big tech, from social media to AI, erode the social contract, deepen inequality, reduce human agency, and weaken democracy. We are becoming our own worst enemy, cannibalizing the environment, and trading the human capacity for art, thinking, writing, and creativity for automation. The film asks viewers to reflect on the implications of our technological marvels: “the AI from the sea.”

In a year packed with highly anticipated blockbusters, none surpasses The Odyssey, the first film shot completely on IMAX cameras. Tickets for screenings at 70mm IMAX theaters sold out for weeks in advance (including overflow showings at 6am and 3am), with tickets reselling on eBay for more than 10 times their original cost. Nolan has brought a sports and Beyoncé-level craze to the theaters, seemingly breathing new life into the space that many have been saying is dying due to streaming.  

The film lives up to the hype, with strong performances from a star-studded cast, practical effects that bring joy to film buffs, and visuals that truly maximize the impressive IMAX format.

The opening scene shows a bard, played by rapper Travis Scott, singing the story of Odysseus’ brilliant plan to conquer Troy by hiding Greek soldiers inside of a wooden horse, left outside the city as a gift to the goddess Athena, played by the beloved Zendaya.

Odysseus is universally lauded as a hero for his tactical brilliance and honorable ways. He even hunts with honor, strumming his bow like a harp before he shoots an animal in order to alert his prey to his presence and give it a fighting chance.

Here lies the contradiction. The Trojan Horse represents the opposite of honorable combat, and Odysseus does not see his trick as being deserving of praise. Instead, as Odysseus spends a decade fighting gods, monsters, and magicians on his way home, we learn that his greatest struggle is with some form of PTSD. He sees himself as a war criminal, the greatest breaker of Zeus’ law, and the origin of the barbaric “people from the sea.” When he returns home and defeats dozens of suitors in his home in heroic combat, he insists that this heroism will “only be sung” about. His wife, Anne Hathaway’s Queen Penelope, the heart and standout performance of this film, questions this statement.

Penelope: Why will the stories only be sung?
Odysseus: Because song will be all they have to remember those of us who could write.
Penelope: Civilization will rise again.
Odysseus: And dawn will break over the darkened world. And our mistakes will once again be forgotten.

As a writer and professor, I worry about the effect AI is having on young people. Will we have a generation of young scholars who do not know how to craft an argument, because they only know how to craft a prompt? Even those who use AI more “responsibly,” writing a first draft of a paper, and letting AI “clean it up,” lose something tangible.

Sheep in the Box is a Japanese drama in select theaters about a couple who adopt an AI robot child that looks and acts like their late son, killed in a tragic accident. The film avoids the more sensational elements we’ve come to expect from films about robots gone rogue, and instead focuses on humans who accept autonomous AI as the inevitable future of humanity. 

The AI child’s mother is an architect who saves all of her old models, even after she has moved on to new designs. When the child asks why, her answer is that she enjoys the “struggle” of creation. The failed or rejected designs are as much a part of the creative process as is the final design. 

It struck me that this is part of the problem with AI in writing. Perfection comes too quickly. Without the struggle, or the process, there is less humanity, less individuality, and less chance for unanticipated beauties to emerge from the mess of struggle.  Writing is rewriting.

At the same time as tools are being offered to automate forms of creation that are best built with sweat, some of the most powerful companies on the planet dedicate enormous resources to turn people into money-making drones.

The Social Dilemma is a Netflix documentary that investigates the effects of social media on young people, and society. It details the ways social media companies have used advanced neuroscience to make social media apps addictive. The more time social media companies can get us to spend on their apps, the more money they make off us. 

Gen Z is spending 5 hours a day on social media, and only 10 minutes a day reading. That’s 30 times more time in the apps than with a book. This feels like a hijacking of an entire generation. Reading test scores have been in decline, especially for the lowest performing groups.

Of course, it’s possible to find informative content that can promote critical thinking on social media, or from podcasts or video creators. Many activists use newer media to challenge dominant narratives.  But it can be more difficult to track misinformation on podcasts or long-form videos, because these are personality driven mediums and largely unmoderated, formally or informally.

On the other hand, writing leaves a permanent record, ideas that can be traced. Readers can identify written arguments and respond to claims with evidence in a way that is difficult to replicate when reacting to a two-hour video. There is something lost when written arguments are abandoned.

The bards sing of the big tech revolution, the leaders of these companies, and all they’re doing to change the world. While all technology isn’t bad, the persistence of profit-centered decision making in the tech sphere is making it increasingly difficult to balance the scales of societal impact. Right now, it feels like they are sucking the well dry, ignoring their roles in creating and exacerbating some of the biggest social problems of our time.

The Odyssey is a reminder that empires fall. And sometimes we bring doom upon ourselves. What are we willing to give up for the convenience of AI and social media? Our water? Our air? Our intellect? I am uncomfortable sacrificing scarce natural resources, human life, suffering, or potential so that big tech can make investors richer.

I want to live in a society where people read and write and sing and dance, and not just when cameras are rolling. I don’t want my children’s brains to be rewired by corporate psychologists who design apps to generate adolescent consumers. I want them to read and reread, write and rewrite, and learn to find their individual voices, independent of that loud mechanical voice built upon the stolen work of millions of writers and thinkers and artists used to train AI.

The malice of a Trojan Horse is that it is embraced by the people it aims to destroy. I’m worried that in the future, they will only make podcasts about the dawn of the AI age, because no one will be left to write (or read) about all that humanity lost.