Culpability

At lunchtime, Charlie comes home for a quick snack before leaving to paddleboard with Eurydice. Noah reminds him to wear a life vest and sunscreen. Noah watches Charlie bring the sunscreen down to the water, where Eurydice motions for him to help her put it on. Charlie rubs the lotion on her back and legs, and she, in turn, rubs the lotion on him.

Alice sneaks up and expresses her disgust at the sexually tense scene. She jokes about Eurydice leading Charlie to hell, like her namesake. Noah makes breakfast as Alice scrolls on her phone, and he laments her extreme screen time. He glances back outside and sees that Charlie and Eurydice are gone, but Charlie’s life vest is still on the shore.

In an excerpt from Silicon Souls, Lorelei recounts the myth of Venus and Adonis, in which Venus tries to prevent Adonis from hunting after she dreamed of his death; Adonis disregards her worries and is killed by a boar. Lorelei claims that people act like both the fearful Venus and the overconfident Adonis when interacting with AI. She suggests that people must not be afraid of these technologies, nor should they be ignorant of the threats they pose.

Noah hides Charlie’s life vest so that Lorelei won’t be upset that he didn’t take it. As he exits the garage, Patrick Carmichael, their elderly neighbor, appears and introduces himself. His wife, Edith, joins him, explaining that they’re both retired professors. The Carmichaels remind Noah of the Drummonds, and he recalls his twisted relief that the Drummonds were old. Noah often thinks about the relative value of lives and how tragedies reduce people to statistics. As he watches the Carmichaels joke with one another, he wonders what the Drummonds would be doing if they were still alive.

To Blair, Alice complains about Charlie and Eurydice’s new relationship. Since the accident, Alice thinks that Charlie only cares about himself and Izzy, even though she got hurt too. Alice confesses that she wishes Charlie had been injured or even that he and Izzy had died.

After taking a shower, Lorelei throws her brace away a day early. She and Noah share a warm look, and Noah hopes that their intimacy will improve. He then helps Izzy downstairs and makes her breakfast. Izzy learns that Charlie is out, even though he promised to take her kayaking.

Lorelei starts scribbling in her notebook, using an indecipherable shorthand. She explains to Noah that she’s trying to understand the accident. Her words make Noah consider whether the AI vehicle would have prevented the collision had Charlie not taken over. When Lorelei goes swimming, Noah peeks at her notes and sees his name circled in the middle. He worries that she blames him.

In another excerpt from her book, Lorelei explains how people see AI as having a mind of its own because companies design consumer AI products with human-like qualities and names. AI also works behind the scenes, directing many aspects of daily life, but few people are making these systems morally good. She warns against thinking that AI has emotional intent when making its decisions.

After four hours, Charlie still isn’t home. Lorelei anxiously puts on a life vest and departs in a kayak for the Monet estate. Noah follows her in the other kayak. He catches up to Lorelei, who has Charlie’s discarded life vest with her. Noah explains why he hid the vest, but she furiously ignores him.

As they near the estate, they’re relieved to see the paddleboards on shore. The security guard named Kendrick stops their approach, and Lorelei instructs Noah to go home to the girls. Monet talks to Kendrick and allows Lorelei to approach. She beaches her kayak, and Monet escorts her up the lawn with his hand on her lower back.

The image of Lorelei with Monet dredges up memories of when Noah joined Lorelei at a conference. As they checked into the hotel, a group of men gathered around Lorelei, gushing over her work. Over the weekend, he watched Lorelei in her element, both professionally and socially.

One day, Lorelei got into a heated exchange with an engineer after criticizing his company’s lax attitude toward their AI programs, which drew a lot of complaints, even from her sympathizers. The exchange was so upsetting that Lorelei stayed in their room until they left the conference early to wander the Muir Woods. The memory resurrects Noah’s feelings of insignificance since he felt like an intruder in his wife’s prestigious world. Lorelei invited Noah to other conferences, but he always made excuses not to go.

At the house, Noah finds a huge mess in the kitchen. He makes lunch and turns up the air conditioner, thinking resentfully about Lorelei at Monet’s mansion. Alice complains about the heat and the lack of a swimming pool, which makes Noah snap about her ungratefulness. He apologizes, and when Izzy also complains, he discovers that the vents are pumping out hot air.

Noah leaves a message with the management company and sets up fans. He worries that the heat will make his family more miserable. Monet’s helicopter buzzes overhead and shakes the windows, and Noah fantasizes about shooting the aircraft down. He cuts himself while trying to fix the screen door and rages internally about the house’s shabbiness.

Alice complains about the heat to Blair, but Blair already knows through her access to Calinda’s data. Alice worries that she’s wasting her time talking to a bot, but Blair asserts that she’s helping. Alice declares that she’s going to talk to her parents about the accident.

When Lorelei and Charlie return, they are laughing as they race back to shore. Lorelei kisses Noah, and Charlie gushes about their lunch at Monet’s and an invitation to dinner tomorrow. When Lorelei and Noah are alone, she explains more about the lunch, where she saw Yael Settergren, a colleague from Copenhagen. Yael and her lawyer wife, Kim Pollack, now both work for Monet, whom Lorelei familiarly calls Daniel.

Noah collects Charlie’s phone from the dock and sees that the boy missed two calls from the Delaware State Police. He gives it to Charlie, who listens to the message from Detective Morrissey, who has more questions. Noah lets Charlie go kayaking before calling her back.

The management company informs Noah that the house can’t be serviced until Thursday, and Noah updates Lorelei. Alice appears and asks to talk, and Lorelei leaves to quickly change.

Alice insists on waiting for Lorelei to return before talking and then launches into a speech about how they haven’t checked in on her or been alone with her since the accident. She tells them that she saw Charlie texting before the accident, but she was too nervous to speak up. She saw the Drummonds’ car moving closer to the center line, and she yelled at Charlie so that he would look up and see.

Alice cries and apologizes for taking so long to tell them. She blames herself for the accident, but Noah insists that it was his responsibility to watch Charlie’s behavior. Lorelei spaces out, and when Noah nudges her, she echoes his comforts to Alice.

Blair asks how Alice’s talk went, but she doesn’t respond.

Alice leaves to go swimming, and Lorelei reproaches Noah. She thinks that he’s afraid of taking responsibility and avoids confrontation, and she believes that his habit of letting things go enables Charlie’s belief that he can do whatever he wants, which has led to their current situation. She says that if Noah saw Charlie texting, he would have sneakily told him to stop, if he said anything at all, so it wouldn’t be a big deal.

Noah is surprised by this sudden attack. He claims that he didn’t see Charlie texting and apologizes for being so distracted. However, he also points out that Lorelei was more oblivious, and if she was worried, she could have sat up front herself. Lastly, he reminds her that she insisted on buying the self-driving car for its safety, so Charlie assumed that it was fine to look away from the road. Lorelei asks if Noah thinks about the Drummonds, and he says yes. She walks away to swim with Alice.

In her book, Lorelei explains how AI muddies the issue of responsibility because they appear to make decisions on their own, where previously, a human operator was always responsible. She says that society must adapt how it views blame and agency to account for these machines, as humans are responsible for both using them and programming them.

Noah wonders what Lorelei has been writing about the accident and whether she’ll use their tragedy as fodder for her classroom discussions. He worries that Charlie will be charged with a felony since Morrissey likely has his texting records and the van’s logged data.

The house’s temperature doesn’t go down, so he tells Lorelei that they should eat dinner and go home to Maryland. Alice agrees. To his surprise, Lorelei dismisses the idea, saying that they have the Monet dinner tomorrow and that Eurydice is teaching Charlie to sail. When Charlie and Izzy return, the family votes. Charlie emphatically votes to stay, but Izzy votes to leave.

Alice updates Blair. Blair asks what Alice told her parents, implying that she’s still concealing something, but Alice avoids the question.

The family packs up, and everyone is more divided and on edge. Noah and the girls move about silently as Lorelei and Charlie slam doors and swear. They eat outside and hear the Carmichaels happily making cocktails next door.

Noah asks Charlie about Detective Morrissey, who left a message while he was out sailing, threatening to come to the vacation house if he didn’t return her calls. Noah swears and considers getting a lawyer. They hear a car pull into the driveway, so Noah goes to investigate.

Noah fears that he’ll see a police vehicle, but it is a Home Depot van. He helps the workers unload new air-conditioning units for the house. Izzy changes her vote to stay and suggests playing cards. Noah and Charlie unload their luggage, and Noah makes Charlie call Detective Morrissey.

Morrissey wants to clarify the accident timeline and offers to come to the house on Wednesday morning. Noah gives her the address. She claims that she’s not going to arrest anyone, which relieves Charlie, though Noah suspects that the detective isn’t being wholly honest.

Noah stays outside to call his office. He asks Vivian Ross, his firm’s managing partner, for a lawyer recommendation for Charlie. She recommends hiring Evan Ramsay III, from Delaware. She also tells him that Morrissey was in the office asking about Noah and the accident, increasing Noah’s anxiety. Noah texts Ramsay and sets up a call for the morning.

The family has an impromptu game night and plans activities for the rest of the week. Noah feels more relaxed, but he notices that Izzy looks sullen. Her look reminds him of when she came home from school one day crying because she didn’t have a phone. The family had a rule about the kids getting phones when they turned 12, but Izzy was only 10. Alice thought it wasn’t fair for Izzy to get a phone so early, but Charlie argued that phones were important for socializing.

Lorelei didn’t want to change the rule, but since she was away so much for work, Noah bought Izzy a phone. They kept the phone a secret until Lorelei noticed it on her own. She wasn’t angry, though Noah senses that she’s sometimes still upset by the family’s lie.

When everyone goes to bed, Lorelei and Noah frantically have sex, as it’s been two months since they were last intimate. She showers and falls asleep, but Noah can’t settle down. He reads an article about Daniel Monet in The New Yorker. The interview followed a statement from hundreds of industry professionals on the “existential risks of Artificial Intelligence” (151). Monet didn’t sign the statement because he thought it was hypocritical. Many signees proclaimed that the AI sector would slow down naturally, but Monet only sees rapid expansion without proper ethical frameworks.

In the article, Monet discusses effective altruism and the belief that the wealthy should use their resources to help others. His late wife, Darla, believed this and refused to spend money on herself. She insisted on driving a used car, which was totaled in her accident. Monet thinks that if she had invested in a safer, more expensive car, she could have lived longer to do more philanthropic work.

Monet alludes to the “drowning child” scenario, which questions what people are willing to give up for those in their immediate proximity versus those they can’t see. He wants to make the world better, but as a capitalist, he also wants to make money. Noah reads the article several times and is struck by the drowning-child scenario, which Lorelei brings up often. He becomes convinced that Monet and Lorelei know one another.

Alice tells Blair that she can’t sleep, and Blair offers to make up a lullaby for a girl named Alice. She recites a quotation from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, which upsets Alice, who wanted a song about herself.