10AM Contemporay Moral Issues

                                                        Moral Obligations to Ash

I wanted to discuss the show Black Mirrors. We watched episode two where the main characters were dating. The guy name was Ash and his girlfriend was Martha. We all see how in the beginning of the show Ash does not really pay his girlfriend too much attention. He is always distracted by his cellular device. Also we see how his sexual life with her is not all too great. The conflict in the show comes directly after Ash dies in an automobile accident. It was heavily hinted that he was more than likely texting while driving. After his funeral that’s when thing get strange. Martha is grieving unhealthily and is talking to this program in the cloud that is supposedly Ash. It mimics the way he talks analyzing everything he puts online. Martha seems very connected to this which affects her mentally. We are shown this when she is talking to A.I. Ash and she drop her phone, and she flips out. Then later she proceeds to buy this clone of her dead boyfriend. This is the controversial part of the show. He looks like Ash talks like him the whole nine yards, but it is not him. I am just going to call him ASH 2.0. Ash 2.0 is seemed to have better traits than Ash by wanting to please his administrator which is Martha. He is unable to feel emotions or pain. The latter is shown when he is cuts by a shard of glass and does not feel it or bleed. Knowing all of this background information there is a debate whether Martha or society should have a moral obligation to let Ash 2.0 “live”. I believe that humans having moral responsibility to objects such as Ash 2.0 is insane. I see them as merely tools for our benefits. This may seem as a radically viewpoint but it is the most logical. My viewpoint cannot be compared to slaves or bigotry because these things are literally created using technology, and having feelings for them is crazy. If I was Martha I would have pushed him over the cliff. It is 2017 and in the next couple of years these robots and Artificial Intelligence is going to get more advanced. I can already see people having relations with these things. I can feel it in my gut how some social just warriors will form groups to protect the rights of robots. Which is insane but bound to happen.