Why You Will Never Be Friends With an AI
Can endearing relationships between people and artificial intelligence ever be realized as seen in Netflix’s Lost in Space?
“Help…friend.”
Those two enigmatic words spoken by the Robot of Netflix’s Lost in Space encapsulate its second season’s theme. Season 1 revolves around exploring and protecting the new friendship that Will and the Robot forge after being mysteriously stranded on an alien planet. Released on Netflix right before the start of 2020, the season 2 shows the two friends finding one another after being separated at the end of the previous season.
Friendship, and teaching others the true nature of friendship itself, is at the heart of the series. A common line uttered by several characters as the newest season reaches its climax is, “That’s not what friends do.” Coworkers, parents and children, and married couples struggle with this issue in every single one of the twenty episodes thus far produced.
The show’s core, however, is the fascinating bond between teenage Will and his giant alien Robot, as Paul Tassi for Forbes points out:
The second season dives into the robot race which is mainly made up of murderous machines, rather than the “nice robot” that is friends with…
