Jonathan Nolan's 5-Part Sci-Fi Thriller Deserves Credit For Predicting The Future

Image via MovieStillsDB Published Sep 9, 2026, 4:30 PM EDT Sean is a senior writer for ScreenRant and has been writing about new TV releases since December 2023. He has received multiple advance screenings of popular shows and ideated his own coverage read by hundreds of thousands of readers. Sean is a self-published author of a Western novel. Sean has also written award-winning opinion pieces related to local politics while getting his Bachelor's degree in journalism. Sign in to your ScreenRant account Jonathan Nolan's five-season science fiction masterpiece is great on its own, but it also deserves praise for predicting the future with uncanny precision. Science fiction, as a genre, is all about predicting the future. Some of the greatest sci-fi movies and shows of all time predicted things years or decades in advance, from Star Trek predicting cell phones to 2001: A Space Odyssey predicting artificial intelligence. Even in a genre as future-focused as science fiction, however, there are very few stories that manage to predict the future with much accuracy. A show or movie may get lucky with certain things while getting others wildly wrong. Neuromancer, for example, predicted online cyberspaces and augmented reality nearly perfectly, yet Case still uses payphones in 2035. Almost no sci-fi story ever gets the future exactly right. Jonathan Nolan's Person of Interest, however, comes very close to being right on the money in the vast majority of its predictions. Person of Interest follows Harold Finch, a tech billionaire who created an artificial intelligence known as the Machine. The Machine monitors security footage, internet messaging, and more to predict terrorist activity and crimes before they happen, and Finch enlists a team to prevent said murders when the government deems them unimportant. More importantly, Person of Interest is a singularly prescient series that is easily one of the best sci-fi shows ever written. Person Of Interest Predicted AI-Powered Mass Surveillance Back In 2011 The central conceit of Person of Interest, advanced artificial intelligence powering a massive surveillance state, was completely speculative in 2011. In 2026, it's just an accurate description of reality in America. There are now over 130,000 Flock Safety cameras in use by law enforcement across the country (via The New Yorker), ranging from license plate readers to security cameras. Police officers can also use Flock Safety, powered by artificial intelligence, to search for anyone matching a physical description via the company's massive nationwide database (via Wired & BBC). Flock Safety and its AI-powered law enforcement tools are essentially the same thing as Person of Interest's Machine. While Flock can't predict crime ahead of time, it does use a vast network of cameras to track and monitor everyone and everything it can record, just as the Machine does. Person of Interest asked viewers to consider the ethics of artificial intelligence running a surveillance state back in 2011, and Flock Safety gave us the real deal a decade later. Person of Interest even predicted backlash to its idea of AI-powered mass surveillance. Season 3 introduced Vigilance, a political organization that attacks the Machine in the name of personal privacy. In the real world, countless U.S. civilians have been destroying and vandalizing Flock cameras across at least 36 states (via NPR). The so-called DeFlock movement isn't nearly as violent as Vigilance, but Person of Interest still predicted its motivations. The only part of Person of Interest that didn't predict the future is Michael Emerson's character, Finch. A philanthropic tech billionaire who would recognize the moral failings of their own creation and work to undo the damage they themselves created sadly isn't grounded in reality, as evidenced by the likes of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and company. Hopefully, Person Of Interest's Later Seasons Won't Be As Prescient While Person of Interest did predict the future with startling accuracy, the show may not be capable of perfect prescience. In Person of Interest season 3 and beyond, the show leaves its police procedural roots for some much higher-concept science fiction. Instead of Finch and company acting like a smaller version of Minority Report, the Machine goes up against another advanced AI named Samaritan. Person of Interest, in its later seasons, leans much more heavily into the cyberpunk sub-genre of sci-fi, which hopefully won't be as predictive. Samaritan starts taking the law into its own hands, often violently, whereas the Machine would simply assist law enforcement. Person of Interest also dives further into the ideas of AI threatening free will, the lingering effects of a surveillance state, and the cost of opposition to said surveillance state. With any luck, Person of Interest has put its days of predicting the future behind it. Release Date 2011 - 2016-00-00 Network CBS Showrunner Greg Plageman Directors Chris Fisher, Richard J. Lewis, Fred Toye, Jeffrey G. Hunt, Stephen Surjik, Kenneth Fink, Stephen Williams, Helen Shaver, Alrick Riley, Charles Beeson, Kate Woods, Kevin Bray, Stephen Semel, Jeff T. Thomas, Sylvain White, Alex Zakrzewski, Brad Anderson, Clark Johnson, Colin Bucksey, David Semel, Dennis Smith, Félix Enríquez Alcalá, James Whitmore Jr., Jeffrey Lee Gibson Writers Jonathan Nolan, Denise Thé, Greg Plageman, Amanda Segel, David Slack, Melissa Scrivner-Love, Dan Dietz, Sean Hennen, Lucas O'Connor, Patrick Harbinson, Michael Sopczynski, Nic Van Zeebroeck, Tony Camerino, Andy Callahan, Ray Utarnachitt, Sabir Pirzada, Ashley Gable, Amy Berg, Jacey Heldrich Creator(s) Jonathan Nolan