The others on my list of acceptable jurors were medical-industry workers, clerical workers, graphic designers, a psychoanalyst, a French translator of movies and television shows, several out-of-work actors and set builders, and three screenwriters. These were not all Fox viewers, of course. In fact, there was a wide diversity in their answers to the juror interrogatories. In contrast to jurors like number fifty, who had no laptop or home computer, the actors and screenwriters had multiple digital devices. But what was common among the potential jurors whom I found acceptable was the possibility that their jobs would someday be replaced by AI-generated creations. I was going to give them the opportunity to make a stand against that.
Of course, the Mason twins knew who I was looking for. They had a whole jury-selection team working for them, fronted by the psychologist sitting at the defense table next to them, and they had their own list of favorites. Each team would now attempt to fill the box with its top choices while knocking out those of the opponent.
The judge was giving each side six peremptory challenges, meaning each of us had six bullets we could use to get rid of potential jurors with no explanation at all. After that, jurors could be excused only for cause, whether that was bias or conflict of interest or anything we objected to in their answers. So there was a strategy to it. I had a list of twenty-one acceptable jurors, which meant twenty-nine were not acceptable. I had ranked my favorites and my rejects. It was now my job to put as many of the twenty-one on the jury as I could.
High in my rankings of jurors to reject were people in technical careers that seemed safe from AI encroachment and possibly even in a position to benefit from its rise. There was a high-school football coach I knew I could not allow on the jury. An operator of a real estate search engine was another. Anyone who worked in the tech companies located in what was known as Silicon Beach had to go. I expected that high on the Mason list would be a potential juror who said he was a television producer. Use of AI in media production had been a hot-button topic in the recent writers’ and actors’ strikes that had crippled the industry. Soon scripts would be generated by machine instead of humans; digital screens filled with AI-produced images would save the cost of hiring actors and building sets. Profits might soar for producers, but that was why I had put the actors, set builders, and writers on my list.
The juror-selection process was meticulous. The judge would randomly select a juror number and proceed with her questions, elaborating on those in the questionnaire. She would then ask the lawyers if they had additional questions, and, a bit like playing the telephone game, we would ask the judge to ask the juror our questions. Ultimately, the judge would ask the lawyers if the juror was acceptable. An accepted juror wasn’t safely on the twelve-person panel, however. A peremptory challenge could still be used to excuse a juror at any time during voir dire.
This process lasted through two four-hour sessions broken up over two days. It was all-consuming. When I got home the night after the first session, I holed up in the back room of the house with my questionnaires and charts and lists. I spoke little at dinner with Maggie, and she understood because she knew I was working, whether what was in front of me was paperwork or the takeout noodles from Genghis Cohen. I broke away from it only to listen to her report on the US Army Corps of Engineers’ plans for clearing the debris from the desolate fire fields in Altadena. The center of Maggie’s life had become the recovery and rebuild zone — the “L.A. Strong” of it. When she was not dressed for work, she wore alternating baseball hats, one that read REBUILD ALTADENA and another that read MAKE ALTADENA GREAT AGAIN. I had to pay attention to her pain or I risked her anger. She had become very reactive in the weeks after losing her home and belongings. Any disappointment, big or small, brought oversize upset, sometimes even tears. It was difficult to watch, but I understood it and knew that my role was to console her at every turn.
Jury selection is a lot like an NBA basketball game. The first three quarters of the contest don’t really matter other than to set up the drama and strategy of the final period. Many observers and commentators of the sport point to a 1988 playoff match as possibly the greatest game of all time. It is credited as such because Larry Bird of the Boston Celtics scored twenty fourth-quarter points in a two-point seventh-game victory. This came after a lackluster first three quarters for Bird. I wasn’t a Celtics fan, not by a mile. I was a homer — Lakers all the way. In fact, it was the Lakers who eventually won the championship the year of Bird’s greatest-of-all-time game. But I’d watched that game when I was a kid, and I always wanted to be Larry Bird when it came to my court and the last quarter of my game.
That came Friday after the lunch break. Judge Ruhlin had sternly told all three lawyers that the jury selection would be completed by the end of the day and that trial would start without fail promptly at nine a.m. Monday. It was do-or-die time. Time to finish filling the box. There were ten people already accepted at the moment, including the football coach, whom I still intended to oust. I was down to two peremptories, and the Masons had the same. Five women had been accepted to the panel, which was good. What wasn’t good was that my top pick, number fifty, had been taken out with a peremptory by the Masons. So, too, had the psychoanalyst.
The session started with juror seventeen, the television producer, being put into the next opening in the box. The judge started asking innocuous follow-up questions to those on the jury survey. On the questionnaire, the producer said he had been born in Stockholm, Sweden, but was a US citizen as well. Still, his accent came as a surprise to me. I was used to thick Spanish accents in potential jurors.
After her questioning, the judge asked if the lawyers had any additional queries for the producer. The Masons had none. I asked the judge to ask the candidate if he had ever explored the use of artificial intelligence in the production of a television show. She did, and the Swede answered without hesitation.
“Explored it but never used it,” he said. “Yet.”
That last word was all I needed. I asked the judge to excuse him for conflict of interest. This brought an objection from Marcus Mason.
“Your Honor,” he said, “this would be like excusing a juror in a personal-injury car-crash case for having driven a car. Because this man has checked out how artificial intelligence might improve his product does not constitute a conflict of interest. Are we now going to excuse anyone who has ever asked Siri a question?”
“I tend to agree, Mr. Haller,” the judge said. “I’m going to accept juror seventeen to the panel. Unless you want to use one of your remaining peremptory challenges.”
“Could I have a moment, Judge?” I asked.
“Don’t take too long,” Ruhlin said.
I looked over my shoulder to the gallery section reserved for the prospective jurors who had not yet been called forward and questioned. I confirmed that there were five left, three men and two women. There were eleven in the box, including the Swede for the time being. I could use my last challenges to shoot down the Swede and the football coach, but then I would be out of bullets. I checked what I called my jury scorecard. On a legal pad I had numbered the jurors one through fifty and ranked them in my order of preference. I had scratched out those who had been dismissed and circled those who were currently in the box. Of the five numbers left, two were among my favorites. Juror six was a man and juror twelve was a woman. Juror twelve I had ranked as my number three pick because she was a set builder for film and TV and could be one of the first to be made redundant by AI invading Hollywood production. I badly wanted her on the jury, especially since my first two picks had been knocked out by the Masons.