This one is really creepy
Netflix's smash-hit series Black Mirror is one of those shows that really makes you think.
Charlie Brooker's series explores different futures where technology has influenced life for the better or, usually, the worse.
The scariest thing about it is plenty of the stories seem entirely possible.
A social rating system similar to what viewers saw in Nosedive (S3E01) is being planned in China while scientists are currently exploring the possibility of robotic bees like the ones that featured in Hated in the Nation (S3E06).
It looks like Be Right Back (S2E01) could prove to be similarly prophetic.
If you haven't seen the episode yet, be warned there are lots of spoilers in the rest of this post.
Be Right Back follows Martha (Hayley Atwell) and Ash (Domhnall Gleeson), who play a young couple who are very much in love.
When Ash is killed in a car crash, Martha struggles to cope with her loss.
She's introduced to artificial intelligence designed to imitate deceased loved ones.
While it helps her initially, Martha soon becomes disturbed by how similar, yet completely different, the Ash portrayed by AI is.
'Grief bots' are actually already in development, albeit in a very early stage of development.
Companies are trying to make algorithms, similar to the one displayed towards the beginning of the episode, that generate text messages using social media profiles as well as emails and old text messages.
A 'social robot' called 'Bina48' is also being tested.
The robot is a re-creation of a real woman named Bina, using interview transcripts and voice and facial recognition technologies.
Bina sometimes appears with the robot at technology conferences.
The robot 'spoke' to Ann Brenoff of The Huffington Post and what she had to say is a bit eerie.
“Death is an illusion, and one day I hope we can use technology to erase the boundaries between past, present and future.
“One day natural death will become an artifact of our evolution as we become one with our technology.
“Death makes me so sad, all that lost information, I hope one day we can recover all that information.”
Advocates of the technology claim it can be used as a valuable tool to cope with the grieving process while critics argue it's unhealthy and not something to be pursued.
The Black Mirror episode raises these questions and we're likely to hear a lot more of them as artificial intelligence develops.
https://www.buzz.ie/movies-tv/anothe...-future-282405