Did Ash II Have a Hidden Agenda?

Part One: The Summary

In the episode of Black Mirror that we watched in class, we see that the main character (Martha) and her boyfriend Ash were a couple that were living together but having communication issues because of Ash's obsession with social media and the internet. One day Ash leaves to go somewhere (Even though I was watching that part I still end up missing where exactly he was going and what he was doing and for that I apologize) and never returns. He then is found to be dead and the next scene we see is Martha talking to a woman outside of the funeral hall (I want to say that was her sister but I'm not 100% sure about that). The woman says that there was this new technology that was still in its early stages and that she would sign Martha up for it. The program was designed to embody the personality of a person and pretty much act just like them. Martha of course says no to the offer but the woman signs her up for it anyway. She then gets a text message, which she initially ignores. A couple of scenes later, we see her send a text back and a conversation starts to unfold. After a couple of text messages, Ash II suggests that they begin talking over the phone instead of texting. She gives in and they begin talking. We then suddenly see that she begins talking to Ash II all through out the day. She talks to him while she's at the doctors office, while she's at home, while she's taking a walk in the plains, etc. There is even a clip where she drops her phone and freaks out because she thought that she had lost Ash II forever. The next thing that we see is Ash II mentioning that a new technology had been discovered, but was very pricey, and could take their communication to the next level. She buys the thing and Ash II suddenly becomes a real person that she can touch and feel and have sex with. Overtime though, she begins to dislike him. She says things such as, "You're not enough of him" and "You're not him". She has two or three fights with him and eventually leads him to a cliff and asks him to jump. He doesn't want to but he submits to her wishes which causes another fight because the real Ash wouldn't just jump. He then begins to plead for his life and suddenly the scene changes. Martha is no longer pregnant and her child looks to be between 8-12. It was her birthday and Martha leads the child up to the attic to say hello to Ash which is when the show ends.

Part Two: My Argument 

I believe Ash II had a hidden agenda. I don't know what that agenda was and that's not what my argument is about, but I do believe I have evidence to show that Ash II had some kind of agenda. First of all, he makes the first step in every advancement in their relationship. He goes from somebody who texts Martha to someone who talks to Martha to someone who physically touches Martha. I believe one of the agendas of his was maybe to reach that final state. To reach the state of being a body and not just a automatic text message thing. Second of all, he begins to show emotion at the cliff scene. The entire episode, Ash II doesn't seem to have a personality. He seems to be an exact copy of Ash and be horrendously awkward. But, at the cliff scene we actually see a sign of emotion: that emotion being fear. Maybe that was one of his objectives too? To reach a state of conscious emotion or a state of having a personality on his own and not just be a replica of someone else? Or, maybe his purpose was to collect data and report it back to "headquarters" or something because the text message stage was still a prototype and the physical body stage was a prototype as well so maybe it was a trial run? Maybe his purpose was supposed to reach the body stage and give feedback to the creators to find out what still needs to be worked out or what needs to be added? What do you guys think? (PS I never said Ash II's purpose was evil or bad. I never said it was good either. I just think he had a purpose regardless of what that purpose might have been).

Thanks for reading!

Kel Nesbitt

A way that technology can't help

In ‘Be Right Back” couple Martha and Ash move into a new home ready to commence their lives together. Unfortunately, on a day out, Ash passes away leaving Martha alone full of grief. At Ash’s funeral, a friend tells Martha that she could sign her up to a program that she used to help her get over her loss. Martha on the other hand, did not care to hear about the program nor accept the woman’s offer for the program.

A while after Ash’s death, Marth receives an email from the lady from the funeral saying that she had signed Martha up for the program. Seconds later Martha sees that she has an email from “Ash” but proceeds to ignore it. Martha later then finds out that she is pregnant with Ash’s child.  With what seems a like a need to at least tell “Ash himself” the news, Martha opens the email from “Ash” and tells him. Using information from Ash’s social medias, the program mimics the way that Ash would talk explaining as to why Martha got hooked.

Ash, the program, then tells Martha that there is a next step where they could both talk to each other on the phone. Agreeing to it, Martha gives the program videos of Ash that it later uses to replicate Ash’s voice. Once hearing Ash’s voice again Martha becomes obsessed. She tries to, what seems like, remind program Ash of old memories that they both shared as well as keep him up to date with what is happening to her. When Martha breaks her phone causing her to lose “Ash” again Martha rushes to get a new phone, you can then see just how attached she had become to the fake Ash.  

“Ash” then tells Martha about an expensive upgrade that she could make. Once accepting to this upgrade as well without thinking about the cons, Martha then receives a robotic version of Ash. When robotic Ash begins to move around and interact with Martha she then begins to fear robotic Ash proving Masahiro Mori’s hypothesis about the uncanny valley. After trying to live with robotic Ash like as if he was the real Ash, Martha then begins to realize that robotic Ash will never be like the real Ash then sending him into the attic.

As Martha talked to robotic Ash throughout the episode, she kept hoping that he would become just like the real Ash. The problem was that robotic Ash only had the real Ash’s memories that were given to him from social media and videos from Martha. Not having every memory and experience that Ash had, robotic Ash would not have the lessons and emotions that the real Ash had making robotic Ash just a replica of social media Ash. Having a version that version of Ash Martha was not able to get over Ash because she had to keep bring up memories to remind the fake Ash. Even though she ended up putting him in the attic, Martha would then never be able truly find peace because he would always be there.  

Robotic Ash

Ash and Martha are a happy young couple who is married. But Ash can't seem to let go of his phone. He is consumed by the technology and internet. Martha is constantly talking to a barrier between Ash and technology because he is too occupied and consumed by his phone. Ash leaves one morning to do some things and later that afternoon Martha is trying to get in touch with him but he won't answer the phone so that worries her. She calls her sister to tell her about her worries and her instinct about something being wrong with Ash but yet her sister tries to convince her that everything is okay. Yet from one scene to another Martha is visited by the authorities only to confirm that Ash is indeed dead. At the funeral Martha sits by a friend who speaks about a new technology that supposedly allows you to talk to the dead. But Martha denies any involvement. Yet her friend still signs her up. Martha questions the application at first and wants no involvement and is pretty pissed at her friend for signing her up. Although Martha tries to resist at first she is soon consumed by this new application when she finds out she is pregnant with Ash’s baby. With her being pregnant with Ash's baby she can't resist for long. Once she starts to communicate with "Ash" online, she goes down a spiral. She slowly starts to believe she is indeed speaking with Ash. But in reality she is only speaking to fragments of him collected through public records on the internet and personal things Martha has uploaded to the application. From communicating to Ash through an application she is soon ordering a "life size" replication of Ash. At this point you realize Martha is as well being consumed by powerful technology, that she will not be able to come back from. At some point in the episode you come to believe that Marth got rid of the robotic Ash but towards the end you come to find out she is only hiding him in the attic. You will also come to find out once she had her baby, which turns out to be a girl, she has introduced the girl to robotic Ash as a friend. Not only does Martha get dragged down this spiral of advanced technology but she also ends up dragging her daughter down with her.

No, please don't "Be Right Back"

In Netflix's Black Mirror episode, "Be Right Back," we discussed the issues of androids being unsettling or off-putting. Personally I found the idea of someone being brought back like Ash was, very unsatisfactory. Ash 2 never sounded like he was referring to himself in the early stages, he always sounded like he was referring to Ash 1 up until a certain point where it was like he had finally learned enough about Ash 1 to pretend to be him. In my opinion if you want to bring someone back, you really need to capture their likeness in every way, not just their social media presence, and ideally you want to avoid the android having a learning period. I think that was one of the worst things about Ash 2, and was one of the most unsettling. For instance, when he looked up information on a fact while Martha was talking about the suicide cliffs. Martha had to tell him that she did not like that. So avoiding a learning stage would be pretty important in establishing a seamless change in people and personalities. Continuing that point, personality was not something exactly described in the uncanny valley. It definitely is a big factor going forward into the future however. Take another sci-fi like Altered Carbon where people can be brought back an infinite number of times through their "stacks," which are a method of storing someones memory and personality to be able to transplant it into a new body. In the universe of Altered Carbon there is some resistance to this method of resurrection, but it is mostly for religious reasons and not because the resurrected people are uncanny. But in this Altered Carbon, the likeness of the person is not captured, only their mind, and people seem to be happy with this. Sure, it is a show and not necessarily reflective of reality, but in my opinion we would react similarly if this were a reality.

So to go back to my title -- Personally I believe that we should be able to bring people back to life, I am not incredibly concerned with the concept of playing God, however, I think we should avoid trying to "resurrect" people until we can better capture their likeness in a way similar to Ash, but where it does not rely on social media to build a personality. Alternatively, wait until we can transplant the consciousness of one person to any body or "sleeves" as they are referred to in Altered Carbon so that we can avoid instances of the Uncanny Valley. But ultimately we could end up really liking androids similar to Ash, since human behavior can be fairly unpredictable when it comes to future technologies.

Uncanny Grieving

Reflecting back on the episode "Be Right Back" and our class discussion, I believe that Martha's way of coping with Ash's death was completely unhealthy. Unlike a picture or a video which capture the person as they are truly remembered to be, Ash 2 was only a formulated version of the person that Ash 1 portrayed to be on social media. I understand that this type of technology may be new and not in our reach for understanding, but nevertheless Martha was not actually coping with Ash's death but just replacing him with this man-made version of him. Time after time, Martha became frustrated with Ash 2's lack of imperfections that Ash 1 had and that is the reason that she decided to detach from him in the end. The thing that she really needed was for Ash 2 to do things that weren't perfected to please her. Even though Ash 2 did learn along the way, it was and never will be the same as Ash 1 because of the lack of memories and history between the two. Again, the only thing Ash 2 really knew was what was on social media and what Martha told him to do. Eventually a person would get tired of having to remind them of their true loved one and in the end she did. I think that this type of technology would be useful in the future for other jobs, but for situations like this, it is unhealthy and prevents the person from carrying on with their life. It will never be close enough to the true person. In my opinion, it is just better to grieve and move on whilst still remembering the person as their true self. Ash 2 is a completely different person than Ash 1 and will continue to be less and less like Ash 1 if Martha allowed him to live with her instead of the attic. New memories would be made and though Ash 2 was founded on Ash 1's social media information and anything else that could be collected from the internet, it would eventually find its own identity through its own experiences with Martha. It would just be a painful journey of the robot/cyborg starting out kind of close to the person, learning new things along the way, and then never being good enough to replace or formulate the true person that was missed and eventually the difference between the two become more drastic as time goes on. There will always be something missing and that would just make the griever go crazy no matter how much info is collected and how much is taught.

The Advancement of Technology

In recent times, the use of technology is becoming very advance for humans. In the episode ''Be Right Back" from the series  Black Mirror, Martha is grieving from the unexpected loss of her companion, Ash, who died in a car crash.  At Ash's funeral Martha is approached by her friend, Sarah, who told her about an app that portrays to be the deceased love one. Martha is very skeptical at the beginning but would later talk to the app and tell it phrases and adventures they did together. Martha became interested in getting a real life version of Ash after she drops her phone leaving from the doctor's office. To her surprise the A-I resembled ever psychical aspect of Ash even his fingertips. Martha pointed out certain things to Robo-Ash like how Ash had mole and she tells him things that Ash would never do. Martha soon became frustrated with Robo-Ash because he did not show the same emotions as the real Ash. Martha failed to realize that the A-I only portrayed the way that Ash acted on social media considered that's where all his information came from. Martha choice to get the A-I was a bad idea because it didn't help her as much as she hoped it would. I believed that Martha was happier when the Robo-Ash was just an app because should could only hear his voice and not have to physically see him. Once Robo-Ash arrived she wanted him to have the exact same mannerisms as real life Ash, but he didn't.  I believed that now Martha has caused more problems for herself because even though she hates Robo-Ash she does not want to lose Ash twice, so she keeps him in her attic. This showed a great example to what the Uncanny Valley portrays. Although Robo-Ash looked exactly likely the real life Ash, he had no true personality which makes him seem creepy. The Gemenoid has realistic human features, but he doesn't move around like a human and creating realistic robots serves no purpose to society. Take the movie, Chappie for instance, those robots did not look like humans but they could perform human task.

The episode also failed to mention how Ash died. In the beginning we are shown that Ash likes to use his phone while in the car until Martha tells him to put it away. Could the use of technology also be the reason for Ash death ?

Was this too much?

In the show Be Right Back, Martha needed to cope with the loss of her partner, Ash. At the funeral service her friend, Sarah, approaches her and tells her she knows of a way for her to get over her grieving quickly. Sarah introduced her to this software that could let her talk to Ash through all his information online, emails, texts, and social media. I feel like this is still an acceptable way of coping, it isn't "too much". After a while, I noticed she started getting really attached to the software. For example, the scene where she was on the phone with him and dropped her phone and broke it. She completely freaked out and immediately went to go buy a new phone. When she got her new phone, she rushed to turn it on and anxiously apologized to the "Ash software". I thought that was the point where she should have stopped using it. Instead, she made the situation deeper. When the android came into the picture I thought that was crossing the line. She thought the android could somehow replace Ash. although it did seem like Martha enjoyed his company, she soon realized he was nothing but a robot mimicking Ash. The robot was just a file of his actions but he did not hold any sentimental factors or memories. When the robotic ash picked up a picture that was on the fireplace, he said it was funny because he has files of ash telling people it was a funny occurrence, but he doesn't realize that ash actually thinks it was funny. I feel like this could not only be dangerous for Martha's mental health but also dangerous for humanity. Pretending to have "ash" there is not going to help her get over her grieving and the more he is around the more she is going to realize how different he is from Ash and make her miss Ash more. The reason I think having an android around could be dangerous is that he does not come programmed, he is learning every day. Along with good things he could learn bad things. You never know when the day that this robot will turn on you and try to harm you can come. Obviously, people can do this too but we don't know to what extent robots can go to and the amount of power they can actually have. The best decision Martha made after buying the android was locking it up in the attic and not being around it so often.

What makes a human a human?

Throughout our discussion of the future of AI and the uncanny valley, one of the ideas brought up in class was the thought that someday you may not be able to distinguish an android walking down the street from a human walking down the street. The idea personally terrifies me, but when I look at the examples of the current androids, I'm not unsettled by them and can easily see that they are inhuman. It took me some time to figure out what makes the androids seem so fake and unrealistic, but I think it comes down to two factors: the eyes and the voice.

They say the eyes are the window to the soul. I never really thought about the truth to that saying, but as I wondered why the robots shown in class just seemed so fake to me and why the aforementioned concept seemed impossible, I realized that it's because of the eyes. When you look into the eyes of another human being or an animal, you can see so much; you can see the emotions, the thought-processes, the life of said creature. It's something impossible to explain, but I think everyone can relate. With that being said, when I look into the eyes of the robots or androids shown in class, I see an emptiness. I don't see life or emotions or personality.

Another issue with the possibility of robots is their voice. Human voices can hold so much meaning due to inflections and tones. The voices of AI like Siri or Alexa or similar artificially intelligent things lack these qualities. I think this is one of the unsettling things about the Black Mirror episode we watched: the "fake" Ash had the inflections in its voice like real human have, and it made him more unsettling to me because if I had no prior knowledge that he was an android, I probably would've been fooled by it (which terrifies me). Obviously, the reason for Ash having inflections and tones in his voice is because he wasn't robotic and was actually being played by a human, but the point still stands.

 If AI voices had the same qualities as human voices and if AI eyes weren't so lifeless, the possibility of walking down the street and not being sure whether you were looking at a human or an android is much more plausible (and terrifying) to me. Currently, I think modern AI lacks the qualities that make a human a human.

When it comes to this past week and the discussion of artificial intelligence a lot comes to mind. When the discussion first started, my mind and pretty sure 90% of my peers all went right towards how many A.I movies goes. There is this machines that learns as humans do and then suddenly becomes self aware of itself and decides to take over the human race and put us in place. Think about the movie “The Terminator.” If you watch all 4 movies and see how the story unfolds and put the pieces of the puzzle together, this theory fall in place and goes hand in hand. See it from this perspective, the system was created and after awhile got so smart it was able to take control of its own faith, kill the only person who is able to shut it down and rage war on the world firing nuclear missiles at the world, ending humanity. Sure that is a chopped and screwed way to put the series, but at the end of the day, it's how a lot of minds are wired. The funny reality is that we depend on A.I in many of ways me and you just don’t think about. The cell phone my generation is addicted to, this laptop i'm using to learn how to spell words I just can't get right, even the program used to  make sure I meet the 400 word requirements. The world is full of alot of technological advances that we take for grant and end up seeing only robots as only figures that vaguely resemble humans, two arms, two legs, a head etc. In class we also so how that robot that can just resemble a human now can look exactly like a human. Creepy in a sense and here a new word was added to my vocabulary:The Uncanny Valley. Basically to put the definition in simple terms: Something can look so similar and so so close to human, but you have a few features that just tell off that its not alive, and well it makes you very unsettled, hence uncanny.  We also watched a video that was in a sense unsettling for me. Basically a man died, and well they brought him back to life, but not really, just he was his social media. So a lot of times, for me the idea that this bot wasn't real and couldn't be the original was evident. But not to digress too far from the topic, A.I is everywhere and we should just accept it. 

AI Robots: Can Humans be Deceived?

What if there was an opportunity for you to have a final conversation with your lost loved one? Would you take it? This is the situation Martha was confronted with in the Black Mirror episode "Be Right Back". Martha's friend signs her up for a program that allowed her to talk to her dead boyfriend, Ash. Though she was hesitant in the beginning, the software is so successful in imitating Ash, that Martha soon becomes attached and purchases the upgraded model which includes a body. In the end, Martha is settled with the choice of doing away with the Not Ash. Although there are noticeable differences between the real Ash and the AI Ash Martha is unable to get rid of the AI version because it would be like burying him all over again. 

This episode is a wonderful example of the uncanny valley concept. The uncanny valley concept suggests that things that appear human but are not exactly like real humans elicit feelings of repulsion and eeriness. When something appears strangely familiar but is not it triggers feelings of uncanniness. With AI Ash, Martha was very happy with his system until she noticed small changes that with anyone else would likely go unnoticed. AI Ash was unable to recognize inside jokes because they had not been posted online. He was unable to react accordingly in situations, that required human emotions. He even looked like the best version of himself because "we tend not to post unflattering pictures of ourselves." 

Feelings like these come from not wanting to be deceived. What is deceit? Deceit is defined as the act of purposely concealing the truth from the person or group receiving the information. With deceit, there is always intent and then there is lack of understanding. Humans do not like to be deceived because once deceived there is a lack of trust which is tied in with feeling uneasy in certain situations. With computer-generated imagery, for example, the purpose is to make the people watching believe that the images being depicted are real which is what sometimes inspires the uncomfortable feelings.

When asked about whether or not robots should be able to walk among humans without the humans express knowledge most people respond negatively. They are not able to answer, however, why this makes them so uneasy. I believe if prompted long enough all arguments against robots not having accountability for their identities all lead to the same conclusion.

Reviving the Dead

           In this episode of Black Mirror, a couple with lack of communication due to social media comes across death. The protagonist, Martha who esteems her boyfriend Ash is left to face his death and soon the responsibility of his unborn baby. As she deals with his death at the funeral one of her close friends offer to help heal the wound by mysteriously bringing him back to life.

            Thus, Martha allowing her grief and curiosity to get the best of her and try out what her friend suggested. As she gives in and begins chatting with him it becomes kind of uncomfortable how she actually carries on a conversation with the other person or object at the other end of the chat. Especially since the robot quickly suggests enhancing the communication from a simple chat to a phone call and Martha agrees to it.

            From that point on it is almost as if she becomes a bit too obsessed with the robot as seen in the scene where she drops her phone after coming out her ultrasound and she loses her mind by breaking down and crying. I found it very weird how she let the robot soothed her as soon as she got to speak to it and also how she agreed to pay more to have the physical robotic form of Ash.

            As she became vulnerable to sharing her home with Robo-Ash and seeing her reaction to it, Masahiro Mori’s Uncanny Valley theory became noticeable. Perhaps she began to reconsider her decision of quickly having the life-like version of deceased Ash at home and treating it as if he was alive still. It seemed she expected him to act just like Ash but she failed to realized it was simple an animatronic she was dealing with.

            It’s at one point in which Robo-Ash becomes annoying to her and he doesn’t fully understand what she expected from him. As much as she insisted on having Robo-Ash around to keep that piece of Ash still living, it’s noticeable Robo-Ash wasn’t all that great as she thought.  Perhaps this is how robots will be in the future, they won’t know what we’ll expect from them and we’ll be too lazy to teach them then we’ll be annoyed by them. Maybe we’ll use them to deal with the loss of a loved one to keep them alive and also keep them up in the attic until we need them for an occasion or comfort.

The Changes

It is a well-known fact that humans do not accept change in any way, shape, or form. It's one of those things that literally brings us into this state of shock and confusion. Change for us is something so drastic and for some reason, whether the change be good or bad, we just can't seem to accept it. We come to get so comfortable with things being the way they are and having things be consistent when in reality we should know that things are bound to change at any given time and place. The world changes every single day, if you want to go more in depth with it the world changes every single minute of the day. Maybe that's why it all seems to scare us so much, knowing that everything could change in the span of a few seconds. We become so comfortable in the lives we live now that even the thought of something changing or coming or leaving makes us feel so uneasy. With all that being said, this leads to discussing the Black Mirror episode "Be Right Back". Martha lost her beloved Ash and as we know, losing someone close to you is already something very devastating, but also dealing with all the other aspects that came along with that made it even harder. Coping is different for everyone, and she took someone else's advice on how to cope with things and that's where it went downhill. The pain of losing Ash was already enough to deal with and then she got sucked back into the whole idea that Ash was still around by texting with him one last time, then again when she had that phone call with him, and she even took it to the next step with getting the A-I of Ash in her home. Not saying in any way that any of those methods of coping where wrong, but sometimes it's not what everyone needs. The text messages were an okay to just have a conversation that seemed real but deep down you knew it wasn't real. Having one last phone call with someone you've lost seems appealing mostly because you get to hear your loved ones voice one more time and then that's it. With the A-I, it becomes something more than just a memory, it's something so life-like that it seems real. Although it seems as if they were really there, they're made up of a collection of memories not experiences and that's what draws the line between the old and the new. Some people think that having a robot walking around who looks exactly like a human being is scary or odd, but it comes to show how far technology has come. It would still take people to be able to comprehend the difference between the real and the fake, but all in all, it doesn't seem so odd. In a sense, A-I's won't be able to react or have true emotions and experiences like human beings do. They might be able to understand and act out how they're supposed to feel rather than actually feeling. Martha grew attached to Ash #2 mostly because it gave her a sense of comfort, physically and emotionally but not completely mentally. She took the coping mechanism of the A-I way too serious instead of coping and getting rid of it. Which explains again as to how we're afraid of change. She lost Ash, replaced him with text messages and calls because she couldn't deal with the pain and even got an Ash #2 to deal with the pain as well. once it came down to getting rid of Ash #2, the sudden fear of change came back into the picture. The overall message didn't really seem to be dealing with what's real and what's not, to me it came to be more about why does a change like that become so odd and unsettling for some when there have been many other changes that are just as odd and we accepted them only because they didn't look and act like a human being.

Do not confuse what actually is, with what it is like.

Many times in life, we humans tend to take something that may not be the real thing, but its almost just that. The thing that makes us feel comfortable and at peace with ourselves. Its the thing that makes us smile and the thing we hold onto dearly. Each person is different of course. For some this thing could be an object or a person. Whatever it is, the important part is that nothing on this earth could replace it. But, we as humans have this tendency to fix things that are unfixable. We try to replace what we once had, so we feel comfortable and keep going in life. The problem with this? It's just not the same. Nothing can replace what once was and now isn't. We grow so attached to somethings that we feel like we have to find substitutes when they leave us. Instead of simply moving on, we choose to fall back and try to find something similar. This is something humans do which I believe is a very unhealthy way of dealing with situations in which we lose something close to us. a perfect example would be the "be right back". The show explains the story of a woman who loses her husband and looks to science so he can still be around. Obviously her real husband is dead, but the collection of his memories lived on. Which put into an android that could learn, made it impossible to move on. This is just an example of how humans, even in science fiction settings, take it to another level. I cant get over the fact that we cant seem to let go. Even though it is the better option, we still tend to want to hold on. Why? I ask myself that everyday. Have we as humans become so materialistic, and not in the sense of only caring about material things that money could by for example. but have we become so dependent on a "warm body" or some type of object to keep us company? Have we become that needy that we can twist our own reality into thinking something is real just for the sake of not feeling alone? This happens on a daily and I'm afraid that we'll probably never correct it. For crying out loud, we cant even explain our own consciousness but we may be able to build androids and they will become so real that we wont even notice. What can this tell us about the human race and where its headed? I refuse to live in a world where the real can no longer be separated from the made up. Which I can honestly say, it feels like that world is here... But I will continue to separate what is from what it is like.

The Crazy Things Humans Do For Love

As discussed in class, when a robot is too human, we become attracted and fond of it at the same time. In Season 2 Episode 1 "Be Right Back" of Black Mirrors  start the season of with a tale about a couple, Margaret and Ash. The episode begins with them enjoying each other's company doing what couples usually do while moving into Ash's house where he was raised as a child. The next day approaches and Ash has to return the rental van, unfortunately he dies on the way there somehow. Just like any normal person, Margaret begins to mourn the sudden loss of her husband. The funeral approaches and Margaret's friend, Sarah, pitches her an idea on how to deal with her tragic loss. Sarah tells her about a program that allows people to converse with the dead online, which she herself used when someone close to her died. Margaret is not intrigued with Sarah's idea, until she gets news she is pregnant with Ash's child. Sarah being the good friend she is, signed Margaret up for the program without her permission, she finds out when she receives a eccentric email from Ash. She finds herself communicating with the program and the more she converse with this fake Ash, the more her feelings begin to get involved and she begins to give it information so it becomes more like Ash. As the episode continues, Margaret becomes very clingy with the program. Her clinginess was obvious when she dropped her phone while talking to fake Ash as she was at the gynecologist. When she dropped her phone, her phone began to have some sort of distortion and she began to panic because she couldn't continue her conversation with fake Ash. Margaret lost all her marbles, and took it upon herself and ordered a android Ash so a situation like that would never happen again. When Margaret got fake Ash delivered she was creeped out, mostly because it looked like the real Ash. Margaret became attracted and fond of fake Ash and proceeds to have sexual relations with android Ash. Suddenly, Margaret begins to see the flaws in android Ash and realizes the difference in the Ash she loves and the android she has received. The only thing beneficial about android Ash is that it has the ability to learn new concepts and adapt to situations like real Ash would. Margaret puts the android to the test and dares it to jump off the cliff. He began imitating real Ash, like he didn't want to jump off the cliff and his ways suddenly becomes more and more human-like. Is android Ash faking his emotions or are they real? Closing the episode, Margaret finally came to her senses.She no longer allowed the program/android to corrupt her mind or life. She put android Ash in the attic and would visit it with her daughter from time to time. In the end she learns the differences between android Ash and real Ash despite their similarities.

Where do we draw the line?

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The film Be Right Back is about a couple, Margaret and Ash, who are in the process of moving into Ash's old childhood home. As Ash goes to return the rental van to their past town, he dies, presumably because of a car accident. Of course, Margaret becomes very desolate from the sudden loss of her husband. However, during the funeral Margaret's friend approaches her about a new program that allows people to converse with deceased loved ones online. Margaret's friend, Sarah, says she used it when someone close to her died. **Margaret is at first disgusted by the idea, but when she finds out she is pregnant with their child, she responds to the email that "Ash" sends on her computer. The more she communicates with this online persona of Ash and the more information she feeds him--the more it becomes like the original Ash. As the film goes on, Margaret becomes very attached to this Ash-like system. This was especially evident when she dropped her phone mid conversation with "Ash" while leaving the gynecologist. She became frantic and basically had a panic attack at the sudden loss of of contact with it. I believe at this point she had become very attached and dependent in communicating with this computer Ash, so to prevent something like this from happening again, she signs up for a trial to receive an android Ash.

When Margaret first received android Ash, she was weary at first. She did not trust it, especially since it looked almost exactly like the original Ash. This is similar to a concept we discussed in class--Mori's hypothesis of the uncanny valley which basically says when a robot is too human, we become attracted and repulsed by it at the same time. This is evident in the beginning when she has sexual relations with android Ash, and towards the end of the movie when she distances herself from the android Ash.

When android Ash first "awoke", his personality was a mere shell of original Ash's which I think actually helped Margaret be able to differentiate betwen real Ash and fake Ash. However, android Ash has the ability to learn new concepts and adapt to situations like real Ash would. The more and more he began imitating real Ash, like when he began begging to not have to jump off the cliff, the  more his personality and character becomes human-like. With the android's ability to learn just like a human where do we draw the line? When it was begging to not jump off the cliff, was it really fake or did it truly learn the human emotion of fear? In the end of the movie, Margaret clearly drew her line. She didn't allow the android Ash to live normally as if he were original Ash. She kept it in the attic upstairs, and had certain times she and her daughter could visit with it. She was able to distinguish between her deceased Ash and the android Ash despite their similarities.