But Is It Really A Person?

"That wasn't you?" I stared at my sister in complete confusion. "Nope, my friend was messing with you." I tilted my head with interest. "There’s no way! She sounded just like you!" Extremely shocked with my eyes wide, I just sort of lost myself for a moment there looking at the ceiling. I had spoken with my sister on the phone earlier in the day—or so I thought. My sister’s friend had answered the phone for my sister because she was busy. They hung out often with each other, so she knew my sister’s quirks and speech patterns. I just needed to know when she’d be done. Her friend could answer that, so she answered me imitating my sister jokingly. Apparently, my sister had been nearby and laughed silently. After receiving my answer, I hung up still unaware that it was a ruse. When she got home she asked me if I knew. I was dumbfounded. Through the phone, I couldn’t tell that I wasn’t talking to my sister. How confused would I be in a future where androids could look, act, and, speak just like a person?

Personally, I’m not looking forward to that sort of future. One of my biggest concerns of characteristics in a person is honesty. How easily would I be able to discern that a person is actually an android? Like in the first episode of the second season of Black Mirror titled “Be Right Back”, would people be able to create robotic copies of themselves? I personally don’t support the idea. No matter how much a robot may seem like the person it is portraying, it will never be able to be a replacement for that person. It is not that person. Even if it became its own identity, I would not be able to classify it as a person. The same argument can be said for an impression. If a person performs a perfect impression of another person constantly, that person will still never be the person they are imitating.

I also think that Martha’s use of the android to cope wasn’t healthy either. She didn’t want to believe that Ash was gone, so she continued to pretend that he was still there. I believe the use of artificially sentient androids may help people, just not in the way that Martha used Ash 2. It is still extremely unsafe to blur the lines between a person and a robot. I feel that trust may go completely out the window if the line blurred too much, but who knows? Maybe, I’m looking at this the wrong way. Maybe, the world intends to go a different direction than the episode. Either way, I’m just hoping humanity goes in the right direction.