We should hope that the artificial intelligences we make have our best interests at heart, but we’ve been raised on cinematic distrust: The Terminator, The Matrix. Sure, they were made to help us out, but once they can think for themselves, who’s going to keep them in check? Still, we’ve sunk too much money into these new minds to let them go to waste.

Early Stage by Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman is about the inner life of artificial intelligence. The first episode, "Beijing", considers what one self-aware A.I. system might look like in its infancy.