Terrible X-Files Episode Actually Predicted The Future

Don’t worry: we’ll provide a quick recap of “Ghost in the Machine” if you’re one of the many X-Files fans who forgot about it or, more likely, blocked it from your memory. This is the episode where Mulder and Scully get roped into investigating a murder, only to discover that the real culprit is a rogue artificial intelligence.

After this revelation, Mulder leads the charge in trying to destroy the AI with a virus, but the Department of Defense remains obsessed with trying to secure this new power for themselves.

When “Ghost in the Machine” first aired, it was difficult for X-Files fans to take it seriously because of how outlandish the premise was. Back then, the World Wide Web was only two years old, and most people barely knew what the Internet was or how it worked. Plus, Terminator 2 coming out only two years before this episode meant that when fans imagined murderous AI, they were more likely to think about skeletal robot warriors than a simple computer program.

It didn’t help that “Ghost in the Machine” was written by two X-Files writers (Alex Gansa and Howard Gordon) who admittedly knew very little about computers and spent weeks researching the subject matter before penning the episode. Later, Gordon was particularly critical of his writing, saying that it was “one of my biggest disappointments,” one that was “easily and clearly our worst” of the first season. He declared that it was “completely unsuccessful” and later echoed the thoughts of fans everywhere: “well, it pretty much sucked.”

After initially praising “Ghost in the Machine,” X-Files creator Chris Carter admitted, “I don’t know what happened with that episode.” He thought the story was “perfectly good,” but he acknowledged that “it’s hard turning a building into a villain.” He worried that it wasn’t “cinematic,” and Gordon worried that “it’s an old idea” that they didn’t do anything new with.

What neither creator could have known at the time is that “Ghost in the Machine” would feel more relevant than ever three decades after the premiere of this X-Files adventure. Now, general audiences are much more technologically literate and aware of scary AI stuff in the real world, like the alleged case of an Air Force training exercise where an AI drone decided the best way to meet its goals was to virtually kill its operator.

That alone makes the episode’s revelation that the Department of Defense would stop at nothing to weaponize this technology feel like an eerily accurate prediction.

Speaking of dark premonitions, another thing startling about “Ghost in the Machine” is that this X-Files episode effectively predicted the public’s different responses to AI. For example, the genius inventor who creates the artificial intelligence sees it as a positive tool, and it takes all of Mulder’s persuasive power to convince him that this technology should be destroyed before it can fall into the wrong hands.

By the end of the episode, we have three reactions to AI that mirror our modern culture: the CEO wants to explore it, the military wants to weaponize it, and the conspiracy theorist wants to destroy it.

It’s possible that we’re giving “Ghost in the Machine” too much credit: as X-Files writer Howard Gordon points out, tales of rogue AI are quite old. One could argue that movies like 2001: A Spacy Odyssey did an even better job of predicting the banality of algorithmic evil.

However, the threats of AI never felt so real as when we recently rewatched this episode, and it’s fascinating that a show whose first season was largely rooted in real events of the ‘80s and ‘90s ended up predicting so much of how AI would affect our culture decades later.