New TV Series The Audacity Lampoons AI Tech Titans in the Style of Succession

The Audacity, a US television series created by showrunner Jonathan Glatzer, uses dark comedy to portray the world of artificial intelligence entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. Glatzer previously wrote for Succession, the drama about a family-run media empire, and now promises a similar treatment for tech moguls. A second season was commissioned before the first had even aired.

The lead character is Duncan Park, founder and chief executive of a data analytics company, played by Billy Magnussen. His fortune is around half a billion, but he desperately wants to become a billionaire. Zach Galifianakis plays billionaire Carl Bardolph, who "basically created spam" and becomes a disruptor out of boredom. Simon Helberg appears as an inventor developing an empathetic bot to be a digital friend for alienated teenagers.

Real-world echoes

The show features a fictional search engine called Spookle and a corporation named Cupertino, which resembles Apple. In the plot, Park blackmails his therapist to obtain insider-trading tips, and the two become embroiled in a scandal over fraudulent stock pumping. Glatzer points to parallels with Elon Musk's trouble over market manipulation, but says the characters are not directly based on real figures.

A warning from the cast and creator

Magnussen calls the series a call to arms, noting that the decisions of a handful of people affect 8.3 billion people. Galifianakis stresses that the industry has no guard rails, citing environmental impact, datacentre energy use and the collection of children's data in schools. Glatzer also criticises executives who ban their own children from smartphones, and US lawmakers who invest in companies they supposedly regulate.

The tagline, "Move fast and break people", twists Facebook's motto "Move fast and break things". Glatzer says he has never met a tech mogul, though he has spoken with several people working in the industry.