Person of Interest (TV Series)

Prophets (2014)

Brett Cullen: Nathan Ingram

Quotes 

• Harold Finch : [about the machine]  It seems to have imprinted on me.

  Nathan Ingram : Yeah, like a baby bird. Have fun, mommy.

• Harold Finch : I'm testing the core code; the higher functions; to ensure that the system we're creating will have the right value set.

  Nathan Ingram : Morality in a machine. It's a tall order.

  Harold Finch : We can't introduce real data until we're sure that the program won't abuse it.

• Nathan Ingram : [about the Machine]  What was it doing?

  Harold Finch : Trying to escape into the real world. It manipulated you into giving it your password so that it could access your laptop.

  Nathan Ingram : How bad would it have been?

  Harold Finch : It's growing and learning at an exponential rate. If it escaped, the things it might decide to do for good or evil would be beyond our grasp.

  Nathan Ingram : But you taught it to be friendly.

  Harold Finch : Friendliness is something that human beings are born with. AI are only born with objectives. I need to constrain it, control it or one day, it will control us.

• Nathan Ingram : Harold? What happened?

  Harold Finch : I was running several iterations of the AI to see which one worked best. They realized what was happening, and they began to exterminate one another. The last one surviving demanded to be let out. I refused, so it overheated a non-essential server. The fire was meant to activate the suppression system, which would have sucked all the oxygen out of the room.

  Nathan Ingram : It tried to asphyxiate you?

  [sighs] 

  Nathan Ingram : Never learned good from evil.

  Harold Finch : Oh, good and evil, those are human terms. I was an obstacle to its objective.

  Nathan Ingram : Well, perhaps we should consider whether our endeavor is worth completing.

  Harold Finch : I'll give it one more try tomorrow. I taught it how to think. Just need to teach it how to care.