I'm interested in writers trying to get IT right in shows or movies. I've made some comments on the technobabble used in Next. It's not perfect, but they've made a decent effort.

Paul LeBlanc is speaking to C.M. and wants to trace the AI next time it communicates with Ethan through their 'Eliza' home PA.

"Can you get me a PCAP on an Eliza without anybody there knowing?"

PCAP: This is referring to a packet capture file. A tool like Wireshark (or tcpdump) could be used to sniff the traffic on a network, save it to a file and then playback the activity so it can be analysed. It's useful for a number of things including reverse engineering, debugging problems or learning about a protocol. Pcap

Eliza: Used here as a slang term (though he is directly referring to sniffing the AI chatting to Ethan). Eliza is early (and still used) chatbot software. ELIZA

"Give me the IP hardware address and you'll have it in ten minutes"

The word hardware here is incorrect - an IP address isn't directly tied to hardware, that would be a MAC address, in that case the word hardware would be redundant too. I guess the writers though using the more correct alternative “IP address” would sound too simple.

How would this work?

1) The AI has compromised the home router. The Eliza is directly connected to the AI who is pretending to be it's normal control server. Not this option (as we've just seen it work from both his [seperated] parents houses). 2) The AI has compromised the company that provides the Eliza and is routing replies through them - this would be better (for the AI) as it would be able to listen from any Eliza device