AI seems to be in the cultural zeitgeist of late with films like Her, Ex Machina, The Machine, Chappie and Avengers: Age Of Ultron all dealing with the topic. Why do you think the subject has become so prevalent in fiction in recent years?

We blame Siri. Consumer technology has become so intuitive and communicative that we can almost interact with it like we do other people. It plays a growing role in our emotional lives – expressing ourselves through social media, dating apps etc. But as it becomes more user-friendly, it also becomes more mysterious and powerful. We have less idea how it really works than ever – and we’re not encouraged to find out. We’re not encouraged to start unscrewing our phones. Our technology seems to understand us more, even as we understand it less. That gap causes a curiosity and unease, we think, which is giving rise to this boom in AI stories. Which, as Alex Garland has noted, is happening in the absence of any real breakthroughs in “true AI”.

Do you think that TV audiences are becoming more receptive to emotionally complex sci-fi dramas like Humans and Black Mirror? If so, why?

People are always receptive to thinking about the future (and being scared/worried/thrilled/amused by it!), although it helps that both shows take place in largely recognisable worlds. There is a strain of resistance to sci-fi in British TV commissioning, but people who are nervous of the term usually actually mean “space opera” rather than “sci-fi”. We’re more the speculative science fiction of ideas, the kind that doesn’t go to other galaxies but puts the scary weird idea right in your living room.

Humans‘ emphasis on familial tension rather than action is what sets it apart. Its domestic setting makes it about families, relationships, work, and sex rather than say, robot armies and explosions. Would you say that sense of intimacy has been missing from other AI dramas up until now?