Dealing with grief and changing as a person

In season two episode one of the Netflix series Black Mirror, the character Martha loses her husband due to an unforeseen traffic incident. In an attempt to cope with her loss she is enrolled in an experimental program that seeks to re-create a person using online information. She eventually develops attachment to this artificial intelligence model of her husband and is encouraged into purchasing a synthetic replica. After some time she decides that this replica is not an honest representation of the man that she loved and attempts to convince it to commit suicide.

Throughout this story we can see Martha struggling through the five stages of grief set out by the Kübler-Ross model. These stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. When first contacting the artificial intelligence imitating her late husband Ash, Martha refers to her husband in the past tense. Near the 20 minute mark she changes over into the present tense when referring to the synthetic Ash she is talking to.  

The addition of a synthetic version of Ash only blocks Martha moving into the acceptance stage of grief. For the majority of the episode Martha is stuck in the bargaining phase, seeking a way to change reality and reunite with her husband. The lack of acceptance begins to have a negative social impact on Martha. She begins to ignore her friends and family in favor of spending more time with “Ash”. Her physical isolation reinforces this social isolation, meaning that the remoteness of her home allows for minimal contact with any sort of support net that her family could provide. I'm not sure if the ending is truly a full acceptance of her husband's passing.

Changing the focus to “Ash”, there are several problems with the implementation of this android. Besides the obvious lack of some character traits, such as taste in music and a shared history, Ash is sourced from social media posts. This does not always give a true representation of an individual, filtering out many hardships and character flaws. This design also lacks the capacity to change and develop as an individual. From what we are shown of the future, the android has remained the same while Martha has been changed by events. The android seems to be able to learn new skills and interactions but lacks the capacity to fundamentally change itself. However, it is obvious that this is an early model of android, unable to faithfully reproduce simple interactions such as sleeping or eating. Perhaps as this theoretical technology develops, problems such as these will be dealt with in socially acceptable ways. Perhaps aiming for androids that act as individuals, rather than attempting to fill the role of a human, will allow for less problems going forward.

I believe it is a combination of these factors that led to the separation of the two characters. Martha was changed by the loss of her husband. However, the android Ash was unable to change his personality to better reflect what Martha needed going forward. Martha’s statement that the real Ash may have had punched her demonstrates that the android was unable to adapt to a new situation that had not existed before in the life of Ash.