Don't Hide Me in the Attic

When a loved one passes, it is a hard feeling to come to terms with. It is "normal" and "natural" in today's world to keep ashes from the person, photos, voicemails and more; however, at which point will it become "natural" to have a robot mimic the passed on loved one? Mori came up with this "Uncanny Valley" that basically predicts that as robot continues to look more like a human, there will be a big drop toward our affection toward it because it will look like a zombie or corpse. There is an exception to it though. As technology continues to rocket like it has over the last couple of years, the likeness of humans for the robot will be indistinguishable. The more human it looks, the more us humans like it. Not only will it look like a human, but it will behave like a human and be able to mimic the personality of a loved one.

When first gazing upon Ash 2, I felt exactly like Martha. We do not exactly know if we can trust this type of thing because one reason a person is considered a human is if he or she is autonomous or self-governing, and that is something that Ash 2 lacks. He has to be given commands or he asks the girl for certain things and he has to get approval from her. There may be a set of “rules” that need to be placed if technology is going to advance like this. Another point I thought about is this: if people continue to “bring people back from the dead” then how are we going to be able to appreciate death. That may sound weird, but think about it. We appreciate death by saying that a person does not have to suffer anymore and can be liberated from this terrible place we call “the world”. We are not going to be able to know what it feels like to miss someone; therefore, bringing back a loved one is not going to be good because I always heard: “leave the dead dead”. It is extremely unhealthy to me because in the end Martha kept Ash 2 in the attic and visited him when she missed him. That may sound similar to going to visit someone’s grave, but at the grave site the person has already came to terms with the person dying. Is bringing a loved one back in the form of a robot healthy? I think not.