After watching the short film "Be Right Back", I can safely say I do not want a humanoid robot. This film tells the story of a woman named Martha who lost her husband Ash in a car accident. To cope with her pain, Martha is signed up into a program that takes information from Ash's social media accounts and creates a digital replica of him. The replica mimics his speech, his mannerisms and, after she pays extra for the special model, his looks. This Ash2 enters her daily life in the most life-like way a robot possibly can but he is still not enough of Ash to bring comfort to Martha. Finally fed up with Ash2 not being Ash, she tries to destroy him but is unable to do it. He is just real enough to make it impossible.
"Be Right Back" gave me chills because of how creepy and plausible it felt. The number one creepy factor was how life-like but also alien Ash seemed. He had Ash's style but none of his flaws. Ash2 was too perfect to be Ash. With Ash2 there was never any fight back or true feelings, only what Ash ever posted, making him too fake to really be Ash. That creeped out feeling that comes from seeing robots that are extremely life-like but are just not, is called The Uncanny Valley. It is where our praise for the advanced robot turns into disgust at its unnaturalness. A question asked in class a lot was whether Ash2 was real enough to be considered a person. Even after all of the gathering of Ash data and his attempts to stay true to Ash, I still do not think Ash2 is a person. Ash2 didn't have the memories of Ash's past feelings before social media, he didn't have the freedom to make choices (like when he programmed to never be too far away from Martha), and he didn't have a soul like humans, making him not real enough to be Ash. Those three things along with a few others, make people people.
The film also struck me so much because it felt like it could really happen. Social media is such a dominant force in our daily lives that I can easily imagine a program existing that does this for grieving people. Like we said in class, social media is a form of immortality; therefore, this robot idea is just an extension of the immortality already given to all social media users. That's the scary part.
1 comment:
Hi Josey,
I'm with you! I do not want a humanoid robot. Especially not to replace someone whom I was very attached and connected to. "Be Right Back" also gave me chills. All I could think about was what if it was me? What if it was my life? What if I had a humanoid robot of someone I loved so dearly? I would be so creeped out. I probably would also feel guilty for thinking I can replace the person. The scary thing about it is that with the reality of today's technological advances, the accessible humanoid robot might not be so far away in time.
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