The Good Place's Janet Is the Most Optimistic AI on Television

Science fiction is where artificial intelligence goes to suffer. In nearly every robot-adjacent story, artificial lifeforms succeed in achieving sentience only to realize that they are abjectly, unendingly oppressed. That realization kicks off an array of terrible events: suicide, submission, or rebellion leading, most often, to death. But these dire possibilities of are limited only by the humans imagining them. Our robots, androids, and AIs should have more options than ending themselves or ending us.