Fallout Producer Jonathan Nolan on AI: ‘We’re in Such a Frothy Moment’

Jonathan Nolan saw this coming. As a screenwriter, he’s worked on several of his brother Christopher Nolan’s films, from Interstellar to the Dark Knight movies. Partnered with his wife Lisa Joy, he created HBO’s Westworld and executive produced Amazon Prime’s Fallout. But before that, he cut his TV teeth creating Person of Interest, a CBS procedural about a solitary tech billionaire who creates a piece of surveillance software aimed at stopping crime before it happens. It was fiction, but it’s hard not to feel its prescience.

With Fallout, now in its second season, Nolan also has his sights on the future. Based on the video game series of the same name, it’s about a postapocalyptic America where everyone must survive in any way they can. It’s also wickedly funny and full of 1950s-era retrofuturism.

So, what does Nolan see happening in the coming ...