The Next Black Mirror Movie
There’s an episode of the UK TV Show “Black Mirror” called Be Right Back, where a grieving widow uses an online service that builds an AI profile of her deceased husband. It texts to her, talks to her on the phone, and such, and eventually she orders this AI of her dead husband installed into a robot. The robot emulates her husband in every way, even sexually. But in typical Black Mirror style, it gets creepy and the episode focuses on the idea that we can have emotional attachments and interpersonal relationships with machines, and such. In some ways, it’s a bit like the article I wrote here, about my experiences monitoring and shutting down my wife’s social media accounts after she passed away:
This Black Mirror episode strikes me very deeply because I would have the same conundrum as the main character, and I don’t know what I would do in that conundrum. I don’t think I’d buy the AI now, but I probably would have then.
As I think more about the plot of that Black Mirror episode, and I look at the state of both the internet around me, the world at large, and the state of the modern human condition, I think…
