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FORTUNE.COM // JANUARY 2020
invented fire. So what does he do with it?
Protect it? Does he owe a debt of service to it?
Can he sell it? Is he responsible if something
bad is done with it?
Essentially what is the—to borrow your word
from this season—“tethical” fallout from his
technology?
Berg: We decided it wasn’t right for him to
monetize. It would do more good if he set it
free, so instead he’d open-source it. We played
with that for a few years.
Mike Judge: Then we heard about [A.I. so
powerful that it can break encryption]. Then
it was, “Oh, man, that’s the ending.”
So all of Richard’s work over the last six years is
essentially moot. What’s the takeaway for the
audience?
Berg: It’s about asking the question: Is the
point of technology to push, serve, or enslave
humanity? The idea that inventing things may
not always be good for us is the takeaway.
What’s the lesson for Richard? That being a
success is inherently incompatible with being a
good person?
Berg: He isn’t cut out to be a brutal taskmas-
ter or CEO. He’s an artist. That’s always been
the clash in the show. If he were as ruthless as
other CEOs, he’d be fine, but he always had a
sense of moral justice and propriety.
Judge: But he did get to save the world.
Did you ever worry about the density of the tech
content? That it was so accurate and insidery, it
might alienate viewers?
Berg: Yeah. But it’s like watching a medical
show. We don’t understand that stuff either.
But if you attach emotion to all that jibber-
jabber, it works.
Judge: We’ve also been lucky to have great tech
consultants, led by [digital-media and blockchain
entrepreneur] Jonathan Dotan. In the second-
to-last episode this season, there’s a scene where
Richard is unhinged about what he did with
Gilfoyle’s A.I. I had to cut a ton of it, but Jona-
than emailed and said, “You have to put ‘Fuck
gradient descent!’ back in.” I was like, “Okay!”
So generally your consultants would read the
scripts, and they’d come back with notes and edits?
Judge: Yes, and we’d show them rough cuts
and more finalized cuts.
Berg: But at the beginning, it was more open.
“So ... what would these guys actually do all
day?” [Laughs]
Judge: I visited some startups when I wrote
the pilot. And I used to program myself, but
it was so different back then. Alec and I were
like, “Great. Neither one of us knows what
these characters are actually doing.” [Laughs]
Berg: Each season we’d do research in Seattle
and the [San Francisco] Bay Area and ask,
“What’s the latest thing?” The cryptocurrency
thing last season, that was an instance where
every person we talked to had said: “Crypto,
crypto, crypto.” Then as we were doing it,
Bitcoin took off. I remember listening to the
radio one morning. “Here’s the traffic, the
weather, and Bitcoin is up to whatever.” I’m
like, “Whoa.”
Judge: When that episode came out, my
friend Willie D from the [rap group] Geto
Boys was like, “Yeah, I just made $16,000 off
cryptocurrency.” [Laughs]
Berg: We’ve put in a lot of real-world stuff
without having to change a thing. Like Gabe
and the wearable chair this season—we saw
that in an office once and said, “That’s so ob-
noxious, it has to be in the show.” And in the
pilot, Peter Gregory’s narrow car.
Judge: I think [production designer] Richard
Toyon suggested it. It was some crazy electric
car that really existed, but lots of people
thought we’d made it up.
Berg: And it got one of the biggest laughs. That’s
the great thing about writing a show about
this business. So much is fucking ridiculous.
“ The y were
their own
unique
versions of
underdogs.
Who knew
we could
find that
many
different
fl avors of
nerd?”
—Mike Judge
(above right,
in blue) on
the Silicon
Valley cast
ALI PAIGE GOLDSTEIN
—HBO
