Grief and AI

In the show of Black Mirror's episode 1, "Be Right Back", I thought that it was very interesting and insightful on how advanced technology could be used in the future. Martha was in the process of grieving her husbands death not realizing that eventually that grief will soon evolve into depression. Looking back at the scene where a lady was recommending her to sign up for a program that would give her some type of connection with her husband again, she soon became desperate longing for his presence. As humans when we lose a family member or someone we hold dear to our hearts its hard to let them go so we tend to hold things in memory of that person. Martha started communicating with Ashs' AI. Right then and there she felt a little closer to him. Eventually she would talk to him every minute and every second of the day ignoring the outside world and people such as her sister, who was worried about Martha. She grew so emotionally attached to Ash 2 that she took it a step further. With the AI's help she bought a robotic version of Ash that looked exactly like her deceased husband. In my opinion I think Martha expected too much of Ash 2 that she had forgotten or was even unaware he was a robot and not the actual Ash 1. The physical appearance and the sexual pleasure somewhat pleased Martha but her feelings and emotions toward Ash 2 was only frustration, disappointment, and too much expectation. Even though we ignore the fact that grief is an human emotion. Although technology is amazing and still advancing in the world there is only so much it can do. You can only go so far in technology but it will never be able to replace or bring our loved ones back. If we tend to put so much faith in the scientific knowledge of robotics we will never be able to embrace the actuality of human life. Death is apart of life and only the God who created us all can heal all our hurt, pain, heartbreaks, and loss, not technology. Elisabeth Kubler- Ross once said "The five stages - denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance - are a part of the framework that makes up our learning to live with the one we lost. They are tools to help us frame and identify what we may be feeling. But they are not stops on some linear timeline in grief."