SLIGHT SPOILERS AHEAD
Psycho-Pass (2012-2013) doesn’t tell any groundbreaking cyberpunk story. Instead, it just notices how things are going and takes them to their logical conclusion. Media like it create fictitious realities hundreds of years in the future, but writer Gen Urobuchi only needed to look toward 2026 to see some of his worst fears become manifest.
His series warned of what was to come, but it was still speculative and “cool” enough that it didn’t create fear, social friction, or change the status quo. Instead, the topics it grappled with, AI and a massive surveillance state, were so speculative that viewers wrote off the series as more fantasy than reality.
Psycho-Pass is an omen and plea to prepare and fight back against the burgeoning dystopia under the thumb of an algorithm. Well, 14 years later, our backs are up against the wall. Those in control of technology dictate laws, public policy, and justice. If we don’t resist and revolt today, doing so becomes impossible tomorrow.
What Is Psycho-Pass?
While the world of Psycho-Pass now includes six films, three anime seasons, different manga and light novel stories, and a couple of video games, only the first season really had something to say.
Writer Gen Urobuchi has a history of creating deeply human stories in deeply hostile worlds, and the gap between our world and the futuristic world he created for Psycho-Pass is razor-thin. Psycho-Pass wears its bleak science-fiction influences on its sleeves, but what separates it from its dystopian contemporaries is that the conceptual antagonist and ethical dilemmas are not speculative.
In Psycho-Pass, and in our world today, the predictor of criminality, the sovereign judge, jury, and executioner is an algorithm: the Sibyl System. In Psycho-Pass, the comfort of a crime-free world comes at the expense of living in a surveillance state controlled by this system that has an army of skeletons in its closet.
The Sibyl System
In 2112, Japan closes its borders while the Sibyl System begins governing everything from employment to food production to healthcare to art and more. Initially, the viewer doesn’t know much about this system. Instead, we just see the world through the eyes of novice Inspector Akane Tsunemori in the Public Safety Bureau’s Criminal Investigation Department.
In the first episode, she responds to a hostage situation, and we learn about how Sibyl judges everyone: their Psycho-Pass, determined by constant scannings and evaluations, assisted by cameras covering the country.
A Psycho-Pass reading is essentially a person’s mental wellbeing and criminality, boiled down to a color and number. Sibyl reads someone’s Psycho-Pass and determines whether they pose a threat to the public (or to the status quo). If they are a threat, the system may order them to receive treatment, inspectors may arrest them, or inspectors may kill them right there if their assessed threat level is too high (regardless of whether or not they’ve actually committed a crime).
Sibyl is an algorithm like ChatGPT determining who lives, who gets locked up forever, and who dies. The public believes it to be an omniscient AI system with no capacity for human bias, but we soon learn the true identity of this “infallible” system: a hivemind of literal brains from sociopaths, judging the society around them “objectively” and without empathy.
It’s a scary science-fiction dystopian thought-experiment, and Psycho-Pass does a great job of illustrating some of the darkest aspects of this system:
- Immediately marking people (and children) as latent criminals with a 0% chance of rehabilitation, and then putting them in prison.
- Actively incorporating new serial killers and sociopaths into its ranks.
- Exiling or eliminating anyone who could challenge its position.
Worse than the blatantly evil aspects of Sibyl is the banality of evil it has created in the populace. Sibyl suppresses free will to the point where the actual machinations of crime are foreign to them, only understanding crime in the abstract. For example, they can see a man murdering someone in front of them, but it doesn’t even register as “wrong” to them because in their society, the only thing permitted is “correct.”
The society Psycho-Pass paints is grim, and it begs the question: who is more good in the world, someone incapable of doing wrong, or someone supremely capable of doing wrong that chooses not to?
Psycho-Pass In Our World
It’s a legitimate question, and the answer Psycho-Pass proposes is that goodness and justice require action. The society in Sibyl is not good because there is no crime. A “moral society” cannot exist while depriving citizens of freedom and choice.
Crime is a thing of the past, or at least it is out of sight and out of mind. Instead of justice and freedom, the population simply escapes discomfort, and this exchange has made Eustress Deficiency the new number one cause of death in Japan. A person has lived so much of a stress-free life to the point where they don’t have a personal reason to live, and their nervous system and vital functions simply shut down.
Psycho-Pass illustrates a gross and frightening world, but it’s really our world with our problems left to fester and further immerse themselves into society.
AI and Surveillance
Beyond the environmental effects and elimination of jobs, AI is removing the need to think critically. AI tools disguise cognitive offloading as convenience, and now billions are comfortable and numb, trusting algorithms that are programmed to perpetuate a positive feedback loop. The AI itself has ulterior motives, but they’re not as transparently malicious as the people who brought them to life.
The algorithm rules in Psycho-Pass, but it can only see and control everything because Japan has also become a surveillance state. The growing presence of cameras and 24/7 surveillance in our society is only bolstering the perceived normalcy of these systems. You are monitored wherever you go, and our devices also routinely track our behavior, and where does that data go? Directly to the highest bidder.
AI and surveillance work hand-in-hand in the service of capital, the status quo. Those in charge of AI systems, of companies like Flock and Palantir, have so blatantly folded themselves into positions of power to the point where they dictate public narratives and buy policy changes that work in their favor.
Datacenters have also become a necessity to prop up this empire, and while public opinion is heavily against new developments, spying technology, and new wars, the Silicon Valley motto of “move fast and break things” chugs along.
In Psycho-Pass, prosecuting those with “the propensity for crime” was a cover to eliminate dissent. Today, the government creates new criminal designations to further quash opposition while also further inflaming culture wars that deflect from real narratives:
- ICE detained Mahmoud Khalil for protesting and demanding Columbia divest from further funding Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.
- Ticketing and arresting Foods Not Bombs for feeding the unhoused.
- It is illegal to participate in BDS against Israel in over half of the US states.
- The CEO of Flock calls non-violent activists “terroristic” for advocating against the use of their cameras.
Empire is held together by duct tape and a dream, and the average person is incapable or unwilling to do anything about it because actual praxis is alienating and painful.
The Path Forward: Surrender, Incrementalism, or Revolution
The most obvious option in the face of this worsening problem is to give up and die. There’s nothing you can do, so why make yourself uncomfortable by paying attention to the hurt that exists in your neighborhood and around the globe? This is the blackpill, the nihilistic option.
Inspector Akane Tsunemori eventually learns the truth of Sibyl, but believes destroying the system entirely would lead to mass violence for the powerless and unguided population. She believes in incrementalism, working within the system to right its wrongs and steer it in the right direction; to her, it’s a tragic necessity to keep more people alive. Ultimately, she believes it will minimize human death and suffering, but this creates questions about whether life is worth living if not truly free.
Revolution is the other option, but it’s certainly one of the most uncertain. This path relies on the hope that humanity is, at its core, empathetic and morally just. Revolution and the complete dismantling of the status quo is not prudent in the eyes of Akane, but it is certainly more possible and preferable in our society.
If we’re not ready for revolution now, how much longer must we wait? How many more cities like Flint need to have poisoned water? How many more cities like Gary need to lose power because capital goes toward datacenter development instead of basic infrastructure? How many more of the sick and elderly need treatments denied by AI because companies prioritize dollars over people?
While Akane Tsunemori may choose the path of incrementalism, Sibyl is still a cold, calculating, and cruel system. She may be warm and kind-hearted, but that can only go so far. Writer Gen Urobuchi seems to have created Psycho-Pass as a warning, and while we didn’t listen at the time of release, maybe we can listen now and not make the same mistakes as the people before us. Maybe we can see the problems in front of us and realize that healing requires addressing the root cause of the problem instead of a bandaid and a promise for the future.
