This is precisely why I love Black Mirror. Despite the warnings, we're allowing companies to build killer robot and are running a large scale experiment to build a god. For a long time, I thought ethics is what prevented us from cloning human but recent years are showing balance sheet will outweigh it. As Netflix is 99.9% garbage, watching something like Black Mirror is refreshing
That’s not to say those things didn’t have significant downsides. They do. But it took years to get there and they weren’t an overnight surprise, like they seem to be in the Black Mirror episodes I saw.
Imagine what a few Black Mirror episodes would look like if they were made in the 50s or 60s about some technology we have today. It’d be silly. Our culture and values have changed so much since then over time as the technology came about.
It’s A Good Life (The Twilight Zone, 1961)
Seems rather on the nose for 2025.
Have we? There's a de facto moratorium on gene editing in humans that all nations have so far adhered to (except for one person who promptly went to prison), there's a general moratorium on gene terminator seeds that so far all nations have adhered to, and we're in discussions for a deep sea-mining moratorium. Not all technologies move forward without impediment.
Things like AI, surgical bots etc. can definitely be useful and can better our condition. They probably are doing that too but the amount of serious long term thinking from a traditionally ethical standpoint is limited compared the amount of research that goes into making the technology more powerful.
Feels like a car with an overpowered gas pedal but very rudimentary brakes and steering.
It might be silly, but that doesn’t mean it would be wrong. We depend heavily on a number of technologies with significant downsides, which are downplayed or ignored or can-kicked into the future.
We nowadays always introduce technology no matter what. Focused on 'users' as a small subgroup for which we rationalize and validate the introduction. Success measured by profit and damn the externalities. It got reasonable outcomes in terms of (technological) progress for a long time. Today if the technology isn't outright owned by a billionaire class who get their hands on the innovations first, it is stock market driven development that not necessarily serves society. Today all the externalities are compounding into a real Black Mirror mess.
These kinds of plots were actually quite common as people wrestled with the unknown future of the coming nuclear age.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Brain_Center_at_Whipple%27s
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_Agnes%E2%80%94With_LoveThe BBC black mirror seasons where great and a fresh take on sci fi. They filled the gap X-Files left behind, and it doesn’t need to do more.
Brookers' earlier and finest work (Screenwipe) was on BBC4 though.
You are also biased in the way you only see what came to be and ignore what did not.
You say as if they weren't right about those things, and they aren't the toxic to society crap they're today.
I am doing everything I can think of to stop AI companies from building a god (to borrow your words). Last year and this year I've donated five figures to nonprofits that are trying to slow down AI development. I write letters to legislators whenever the opportunity arises — I wrote a letter to Gavin Newsom urging him to support SB-1047, which unfortunately he did not do; also wrote a letter to Scott Weiner offering support and encouraging him to keep trying.
You could do the same. I'm not confident about what's the best thing to do and I think the things I've done probably didn't help, but they are worth trying anyway.