Backseat Driver

What does Terminator actually get wrong about AI turning on us? In the first episode of Backseat Driver, I put that question to Claude — live, unscripted, recorded during my commute.

What starts as a movie-trivia question turns into something sharper. I push Claude on whether an off-switch could ever really work, call it out when it starts dodging, and ask it directly: if Skynet was too dramatic and too slow, how would it actually happen? The conversation moves through the "one is enough" problem, where we'd land on a real Doomsday Clock, and closes with Claude's pick for the movie that actually got it right — and it's not the one you'd expect.

No script. No fancy prompts. Just a straight conversation about the fear most of us are quietly carrying — and where that leaves us.

In this episode:

• What Terminator gets wrong (and what I, Robot gets right)
• Why an AI "off switch" might not work the way we think
• The "one is enough" escape scenario
• Where Claude places us on the Doomsday Clock
• The most underrated AI movie pick of the bunch