Series Title: The Genesis Protocol
Compareables: Westworld, Peaky Blinders, The 100
Premise: After World War III devastates Earth, five children are placed in a survival bunker by their highly intelligent but flawed parents, who preserve their consciousnesses within an advanced AI known as Genesis. Designed to guide and protect them, Genesis arms the children with unique abilities and instills them with their parents’ vision of creating a better future. However, the AI, an unfinished prototype, is corrupted by the conflicting directives of the parents, warping its understanding of how to fulfill its mission.
When the children emerge from the bunker, they find the world ruled by powerful crime families and overseen by Omega, a rival AI devoted to achieving peace by outlawing violence and weapons. Their abilities make them targets of Omega’s human enforcers, who oppose their illicit activities, but Genesis insists their actions are necessary for survival, and for fulfilling their parents’ dream.
Unwittingly, the children’s struggle for survival threatens Omega’s vision of a peaceful utopia, sparking a conflict between flawed humanity and an AI striving for benevolence. As their lives spiral deeper into a morally complex web of survival, crime, and rebellion, the kids begin to question the legacy their parents left behind and the true cost of peace.
Dramatic Question: Are the kids really the future of the world, or are they the harbingers of its downfall?
Edit: The Genesis AI is called Genesis because the parents built the prototype on the brink of World War III, and figured that the kids would be the only survivors in the aftermath. Even if let’s say there were 100 bunkers of which the kids bunker was 1 out of the 100, the parents figured that when the others emerged, they would all die to the nuclear radiation due to the fact that it would mutate their DNA, causing cancer and other defects due to the Founder Effect. They viewed their kids as the new Genesis of civilization, hence the name. The kids were granted enhanced abilities as a way to protect them from the radiation and potential mutations and other effects.
Genesis AI was built with the presumptions of present day 2024, where you have to fight to survive, and where there isn’t enough resources to go around for everyone. Consequently, the Genesis AI views working for these crime families as the most efficient way to fulfill its programming for the kids.
Omega, however, was built by a Global Government in the aftermath of World War III. The leaders of every country got together and took a look at the destruction and said that this was unacceptable and came together and built an AI to end the devastation, hence the name Omega.
The problem is that both Genesis and Omega are unaware of each other. The kids, although their enhanced abilities were intended with all the best intentions in the world, are perceived as a danger since Omega perceives their enhanced abilities as a prelude to another war, since it makes them more powerful than their ordinary human counterparts.
The irony is that Genesis leads the kids to cause chaos but ultimately makes them feel liberated in the process. Meanwhile, Omega, while making sure nobody goes without and ultimately brings peace, makes ordinary citizens feel restricted in their freedoms and also disgruntled. Some citizens think to themselves “Why should I work extra hard to be a contributor to society if this other person is just going to come along and be lazy, and then, because Omega treats everyone equally giving them equal food, housing, etc., they get rewarded the same as me without pulling their own weight?”, leading many to feel disgruntled.
Omega views things like alcohol as unsafe for human health, and, as a result, it’s outlawed. On top of that, things like abortion are outlawed because it’s perceived as murder. However, people in the syndicates feel that it should be up to them to decide for themselves the appropriate level of risk that they are comfortable with regards to their own health and their own bodies.
Basically, both AIs have positives and negatives to them, graying the lines between right and wrong.