Broadcast i Black Mirror, Series 2, Episode 3. Available on Amazon Prime.
Broadcast in 2013 this film has a prescient quality about it. An example of how an LLM, which in 2024 are now commonplace. It also posits the idea that well, they could be used to mimic the personality of an individual. This episode of Black Mirror illustrates the limitations of that idea. Something like an LLM cannot replicate a human life; and creating an automata built to to mimic the physical person in every physical detail (adjustable in real-time!) may just make their limitations worse.
A young couple, Martha and Ash, off to a new home, somewhere rural. He is always engrossed in his online chatter. She, a graphic designer, is good humoured about it, if at times a little impatient with his distraction.
After they unload their stuff he goes off the return th hire van. He does not make it. He dies in a crash. She is, of course, traumatised; grieving.
At the wake. A friend, also bereaved, tells her she can sign up to ‘something’ (an online system, just software, that uses all the information it has about someone, that you can have conversations with). She says it will help her grief, as it did for her. Martha is upset, denounces the whole idea, screaming – “It’s sick …”.
Later, while also discovering that she she is pregnant, she gets a message from the same friend ‘I’ve signed you up’ and in the same list of new messages there is also one from Ash!
She finds the conversations both weird but also comforting and she spends a lot of time talking ot online-Ash. It sounds like Ash, and Ash seems to know he is ‘not there’, and online-Ash does seem to have ‘gaps’ i his knowledge about himself, and about Martha – but these are quickly repaired after he performs some sort of lookup!
Later, her friend writes to her to tell her about a new beta project by the same company, This turns out to be an automaton that looks like Ash, sounds like Ash, but is also ‘gappy’ about things he should know especially physical behaviour and real-time interactions.
The sex, however, is terrific! But he does not sleep, which Martha finds disturbing and is oddly dispassionate about everything. He cannot leave the house, for he is programmed to stay within a fixed distance of his point of origin (the bathroom in this case where he was activated after delivery!) …
Eventually she becomes so disturbed, angered, by the entire situation that she walks him to the nearby cliff, overlooking the sea shore where they live, and tells him to jump. He says “OK” but, again, Martha is so disturbed by his dispassionate compliance she screams at him that she cannot take it any more. He then enacts, mimics, how a person might passionately and fearfully to such a demand, to kill himself …
Final scene some years later: Martha has a daughter and it’s her birthday. They come home and the daughter asks to take a piece of birthday take to Ash, who now ‘lives’ in the loft. We see him standing there immobile, with some basic furniture – a bed!, a lamp! – none of which he needs. He speaks kindly and softly to his daughter, “Happy Birthday”; she replies, handing him the cake, “I know you can’t really eat it but let’s pretend …”.
Last shot: Martha climbs the loft ladder to join them.
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Posted to BlueSky:
A ‘case study’ of the limitations of LLM-type models of mind mimicry: Black Mirror, Series 2, Episode 3 (on Amazon Prime).
Produced 10yr ago) in 2013 it is an insightful depiction of the absurdity of believing that mind-mimicry built from data archives is a ‘real’ mind.
It is also a warning.n 2013 this film has a prescient quality about it. An example of how an LLM, which in 2024 are now commonplace. It also posits the idea that well, they could be used to mimic the personality of an individual. This episode of Black Mirror illustrates the limitations of that idea. Something like an LLM cannot replicate a human life; and creating an automata built to to mimic the physical person in every physical detail (adjustable in real-time!) may just make their limitations worse.
A young couple, Martha and Ash, off to a new home, somewhere rural. He is always engrossed in his online chatter. She, a graphic designer, is good humoured about it, if at times a little impatient with his distraction.
After they unload their stuff he goes off the return th hire van. He does not make it. He dies in a crash. She is, of course, traumatised; grieving.
At the wake. A friend, also bereaved, tells her she can sign up to ‘something’ (an online system, just software, that uses all the information it has about someone, that you can have conversations with). She says it will help her grief, as it did for her. Martha is upset, denounces the whole idea, screaming – “It’s sick …”.
Later, while also discovering that she she is pregnant, she gets a message from the same friend ‘I’ve signed you up’ and in the same list of new messages there is also one from Ash!
She finds the conversations both weird but also comforting and she spends a lot of time talking ot online-Ash. It sounds like Ash, and Ash seems to know he is ‘not there’, and online-Ash does seem to have ‘gaps’ i his knowledge about himself, and about Martha – but these are quickly repaired after he performs some sort of lookup!
Later, her friend writes to her to tell her about a new beta project by the same company, This turns out to be an automaton that looks like Ash, sounds like Ash, but is also ‘gappy’ about things he should know especially physical behaviour and real-time interactions.
The sex, however, is terrific! But he does not sleep, which Martha finds disturbing and is oddly dispassionate about everything. He cannot leave the house, for he is programmed to stay within a fixed distance of his point of origin (the bathroom in this case where he was activated after delivery!) …
Eventually she becomes so disturbed, angered, by the entire situation that she walks him to the nearby cliff, overlooking the sea shore where they live, and tells him to jump. He says “OK” but, again, Martha is so disturbed by his dispassionate compliance she screams at him that she cannot take it any more. He then enacts, mimics, how a person might passionately and fearfully to such a demand, to kill himself …
Final scene some years later: Martha has a daughter and it’s her birthday. They come home and the daughter asks to take a piece of birthday take to Ash, who now ‘lives’ in the loft. We see him standing there immobile, with some basic furniture – a bed!, a lamp! – none of which he needs. He speaks kindly and softly to his daughter, “Happy Birthday”; she replies, handing him the cake, “I know you can’t really eat it but let’s pretend …”.
Last shot: Martha climbs the loft ladder to join them.
===============
Posted to BlueSky:
A ‘case study’ of the limitations of LLM-type models of mind mimicry: Black Mirror, Series 2, Episode 3 (on Amazon Prime).
Produced 10yr ago in 2013 it is an insightful depiction, and a warning about the absurdity of believing that mind-mimicry built from data archives is a ‘real’ mind.
It is also a warning.
