Black Mirror

In the Black Mirror episode, "Be Right Back" the main character, Martha loses her husband Ash in a car accident. She struggles through the loss when her friend Sarah, signs her up from this software program which takes all of Ash's online profile information and creates a profile which acts as him. At first Martha is hesitant because she wants to grieve him, but then she finds out she is pregnant and does not want to go through it alone. It first begins with emails and messaging acting as Ash would, then she tells him "I wish we could talk" the program then tells her that they can all she has to do is send in videos with Ash talking. Within moments the phone rings and Martha answers it, on the other side of the phone is a voice identical to Ash's, the scary part is that since she can't see him it's as if she's really talking to him. He talks about things they used to discuss, the only problem is the program doesn't know what his personality is like so Martha would have to teach it things about them that were private and not online. Martha soon becomes obsessed with the phone and her daily life has become revolved around it, forgetting that Ash is really dead, until she does to a doctor appointment to hear the babies heart beat and she drops the phone. Having a panic attack she rushes back to the house to charge it and hear his voice again through her tears she says "I thought I lost you" the irony is that's not really Ash, she lost the real Ash in a car crash, that is only technology impersonating him but because of her emotions she cannot see that. "Ash" then tells her theres a way she can really have him back. A package comes in that has pieces of a body, but its a robot. Martha follows the instructions and out walks an exact replica of Ash with his voice too. It is a robot that has flesh like a human and acts exactly as a robot. At first she is skeptical then she starts to accept the fact that she might have him back until one night she has the realization that he is not really Ash, it is just a statue of flesh with his voice and ideas of what Ash was like. This robot did not act or treat her like Ash used to until it came a point when she was so tired of it she wanted the robot to kill itself, jump off the cliff. Because it follows orders it was going to jump until she told it how the real Ash would have been crying and fighting not to. Because the robot is programmed to do as she says and acts as Ash would it begins to cry and ask for its life which is extremely difficult for Martha since its Ash's voice begging for his life. The screen cuts black and the next thing we see is a little girl running around (the baby grown up) she cuts a piece of cake and asks mom if she can bring it to Ash because it is her birthday. The little girl walks up and robot ash is up there he's been her prisoner. People are always talking about how they think AI are going to take over the world one day and we will be slaves to them, but the irony is this robot has become her prisoner or slave. I like the idea of AI being someday integrated into our daily lives because I think it will help with everyday tasks or improving society but one day it could come to a point when its more of abuse rather than helping out. I think people will use the robots more than necessary but because AI cannot feel emotion I don't like we need to worry about them feeling overworked and revolting. The only problem is because they cannot feel emotion they may not know when someone is being literal or not in our society. But the overall idea of AI is great because even if we do find problems we can always just take out their batteries or beat them till they break. But their contributions can help advance us to points that we cannot do on our own. I think where we need to draw the line is making them look and sound like humans (ash) because then people will get confused in the head and being in love with a robot is not okay. As long as they stay looking like normal robots and not real people we shouldn't worry because then there is a difference between us and them because physical is the first thing people recognize when dealing with the world.