Knight Rider Is Now Free to Stream

Subtlety was not a hallmark of 1980s television. This was the decade of private investigators in Ferraris, soldiers of fortune building tanks out of spare parts, wealthy families fighting over oil, and enough explosions to keep stuntmen employed for years. Television was big, colorful, and often ridiculous. It was also more forward-thinking than people realized.

Few shows embodied that contradiction better than Knight Rider. Long before he helped bring down the Berlin Wall, David Hasselhoff played a presumed-dead cop with a new face and identity who traveled the country fighting crime alongside an artificially intelligent Pontiac Trans Am. More than 40 years later, the series is streaming for free on Tubi, and revisiting it reveals something unexpected. KITT does not seem quite as farfetched as he once did.

We may not have indestructible cars launching themselves over obstacles with Turbo Boost, but talking conversationally with technology, asking it questions, and trusting it to perform tasks has become an ordinary part of life. Knight Rider did not predict exactly what the future would look like. The show did something more interesting because it predicted our relationship with technology surprisingly well.

KITT doesn’t seem so futuristic anymore

Plenty of science fiction stories imagined computers that could talk long before Knight Rider premiered. What is modern about KITT is not just that he can carry on a conversation. It is how completely Michael Knight relies on him.

Michael asks KITT questions and expects immediate answers. He uses the AI to find information, communicate with other people, and keep tabs on what is happening around him. KITT can analyze situations, offer advice, and take control when Michael needs help. Michael even talks to him remotely through his watch, which seemed impressive years before millions of people started walking around with tiny computers strapped to their wrists.

The most prescient part is how quickly all of this becomes routine. Michael does not marvel every time KITT answers a question or completes a task. He just asks. The technology may be extraordinary, but the way he uses it is casual.

That is how we interact with technology today. We ask digital assistants for directions, recommendations, and information. We talk to AI systems conversationally and hand over tasks that once required more effort. Self-driving cars have not reached KITT’s crime-fighting capabilities, but the idea of a vehicle navigating without someone touching the steering wheel no longer belongs exclusively to science fiction.

Knight Rider did not give us an accurate roadmap of what technology would look like in the 21st century. It understood that once technology became useful enough, we would stop being amazed by it and simply start depending on it.

KITT is still the AI dream

More than 40 years after Knight Rider premiered, we can finally talk to artificial intelligence in a normal conversation. What we still do not have is KITT.

That is because KITT was not simply a computer that could answer Michael’s questions. Thanks to William Daniels’ unmistakable voice performance, he had a distinct personality. KITT could be sarcastic, cautious, stubborn, and smug. He worried about Michael’s recklessness, questioned his decisions, and told him when an idea was stupid. Michael did not treat KITT like a tool, and KITT did not treat Michael like another user submitting a prompt.

That is much closer to what today’s AI companies are still trying to achieve. Modern assistants can answer complicated questions, understand natural language, and carry on human-sounding conversations. The harder challenge is making those interactions feel personal and consistent over time. An assistant that understands your preferences, remembers how you like to work, and develops a recognizable personality is closer to KITT than one that simply gives you the correct answer.

That is what Knight Rider imagined well. The ultimate version of artificial intelligence is not the computer that knows everything. It is the one you actually want to spend time talking to. KITT made that idea look easy in 1982. More than four decades later, we are still trying to catch up.

Yes, Knight Rider is still completely ridiculous

None of this means Knight Rider should be mentioned alongside Blade Runner just because both debuted in 1982 and had thoughts about artificial intelligence. Watching Knight Rider today is a reminder of how ridiculous the show could be and how over-the-top television was in the 1980s, when no idea was too big or weird for network TV.

Even the show’s iconic elements have strange origins. Composer Stu Phillips’ theme was loosely inspired by music from the 19th-century ballet Sylvia and later sampled by artists including Busta Rhymes, Timbaland & Magoo, and Panjabi MC. KITT’s pulsing red scanner was a direct lift from the Cylons from Battlestar Galactica, another Glen A. Larson creation.

The plots were over-the-top. KITT eventually battled KARR, an amoral prototype that gave viewers the spectacle of two nearly indestructible talking Trans Ams trying to destroy each other. Then there is the appearance of Michael’s evil look-alike Garthe Knight, which allowed David Hasselhoff to face his most formidable opponent: David Hasselhoff with a goatee. Garthe also had Goliath, an armored semi built to crush KITT.

That is why Knight Rider remains fun. It imagined a future where we would talk to artificial intelligence and form relationships with technology, then wrapped those ideas in Turbo Boosts, evil cars, and ’80s excess. Knight Rider predicted our relationship with technology better than anyone expected, and it got there in a ridiculous way.

Knight Rider is streaming for free on Tubi.

Source: Polygon