“Like the Eternal Man of Babylonian legend, like Gilgamesh, one thousand plus two hundred years stretches before Trent. Without love. Without friendship. Alone; neither man nor machine, waiting. Waiting for the day he will be called to free the humans who gave him mobility. Movement, but not life.” — Harlan Ellison

On television in 1964, The Outer Limits aired an episode called “The Soldier,” written by Harlan Ellison, about a soldier from the future who is trained for one purpose: to kill the enemy. The soldier is transported 1,800 years into the past onto the streets of the United States in the 1960s and needs to learn a new language and not to kill people. Another episode, also written by Ellison, called “Demon With a Glass Hand,” is about a man with an advanced computerized hand covered in transparent material who is hunted by humanoid aliens who are missing hands. Both the man and an alien are transported into the past by a “time mirror” and the alien reveals that humans have released a plague that is killing the aliens, and so the aliens need the information in his hand computer to cure the plague. After killing the alien, the man learns he is actually a robot who has the entire human genome encoded in his body to resurrect the human race after all the aliens are killed.

Fast forward to “The Terminator” on the big screen, August 4, 1997: Cyberdyne Systems’ Skynet artificial intelligence (AI) system was the basis of all military computer systems and allowed stealth bombers to fly fully unmanned. Unknown to the defense industry, the software had leaked to the internet and spread to all networked machines worldwide. Like all AI programs, it learned over time and became fully self-aware. The United States tried to shut it down, but Skynet protected itself by launching a nuclear strike on Russia, and Russia retaliated against the United States, allowing robots to rule the earth. The human resistance led by John Connor eventually destroyed Skynet in 2029. To prevent this, Skynet sends a killing machine, made of metal endoskeleton with an external layer of human tissue, back to 1984 to kill John’s mother, Sarah. In an ironic twist, the mangled arm recovered by Cyberdyne in 1984 was the basis for Skynet’s programming language — Genisys. Moreover, because Skynet is not on one server, it is not really destroyed in 2029.

Even though we all survived judgement day in 1997, should retina specialists fear the many areas of retina that are becoming assimilated by technology and AI? I have heard some retina specialists say, “Give me an OCT/OCTA and an Optos ultrawidefield photo and I don’t have to see a patient.” In the COVID-19 pandemic, this claim has become more emphatic. As AI for retinal disease improves, as is discussed in this issue, will retina specialists be needed? Will the OCT and photo be better analyzed by software in a local drug store? Will this lead to lower reimbursement? There are many questions to ponder before 2029.

By the way, if the stories in first 2 paragraphs appear similar, they are. The screenplay for “The Terminator” was credited to James Cameron and Gale Hurd. In 1986, Orion settled with Ellison and included him in the closing credits of the version of the film that is now available. Cameron to this day says he did not plagiarize the idea. RP