The Black Mirror episodes “San Junipero” and “The Entire History of You” were both a mind-bending experience. San Junipero was based around an alternate world where people have a choice of their end of life experience. When you have reached your final days you get to experience what it is like being youthful again in a place called San Junipero. Such is achieved when a device is attached to your head that brings your mental state to a false world. In the end, you get to choose to spend the rest of eternity here or move on to the afterworld. San Junipero reminded me of how we as humans try to escape the terrors of reality and live in a temporarily euphoric world. There are various ways we try to achieve this, whether it be how some people use drugs and alcohol or others go into depressive phases where they sleep excessively. We get so caught up in this alternate reality we do not want to go back actuality, this is where it becomes toxic. “The Entire History of You” depicted a society where you can implant a chip in your neck that stores all of your memory. This allows you to relive every moment you have seen, it also permits you to delete certain memories and through the technological advances analyze other conversations you have seen. While watching “The Entire History of You” I related it to the human infatuation with nostalgia. As humans, we are shaped by all the experiences we have made and constantly relive those moments in our head. Our bad habits including focusing on all the good memories we have with bad people and forgetting or neglecting the bad ones. A society like the one present in this episode would only lead to a community of people who could not move on from the past. Also, because people can always have the chance of rewatching your own memories and we lose that privacy, we would become cautious and lose the genuineness of conversations with people.

In the Black Mirror episode entitled Nosedive we learn of an alternate society where individuals are rated off of every encounter they have with one another. People are allowed to rate you up to five stars and each rating contributes to your overall score. This, in turn, contributes to how people treat you, as higher rated individuals are prioritized and reap more benefits. In this episode, Lacie Pound is a people pleaser who has made her life revolved around trying to achieve a high rating. Currently, her eagerness to increase her rate is higher than usual because she has to move and the place she wants requires a rating above 4.5 for a 20% discount. She finds an opportunity where she can increase her score fast, by attending an old friend’s wedding where the guest list is filled with high ranking individuals. In the end, through many tribulations, her score ends up being lower than it’s ever been and she realizes the unimportance of the ranking system.

Watching this episode related so much to today’s society, where everyone does what they think will get the most likes or friends. The common saying “Do it for the gram,” exhibits how people will make careless decisions just to get a laugh from others. People’s perception of you has become more important to society than your own personal happiness. I even fall into this category as online I tend to be more careful with what I post, in fear of others judging me. Whether it be making sure I post pictures that are “Instagram worthy” or that do not show my imperfections. Watching this episode was in a way sad and made me feel empathy for the people who feel as though they need to liked by everyone in order to be happy with their self.

In Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, “The Offspring,” we learn of a new artificial intelligence aboard the Starfleet enterprise. During his off time, Data creates an Android based on his own structure. He names this creation Lal and claims it as his own child. At the beginning of the episode, the AI is gender neutral and lacks basic skills. Data taking on the role as father allows Lal to choose its gender and we get to see it choose female from the thousands of choices. At this point, Data and Lal are ready to begin Lal’s training in social skills at the most elementary level. Lal has many difficulties with simple tasks and tends to be socially awkward, this does not discourage her from continuing to better herself.

The problem first raised was when Captain Picard initially finds out about Data creating Lal in secrecy and furthermore the fact that he has named her his child. Captain Picard believed it was completely wrong, as he sees Lal as an invention, not a child. The captain later drops this mentality as Deanna Troi presents the question of “Why should biology rather than technology determine whether it is a child?”

Upon finding out of Lal, the head of Starfleet decides it is right for them to obtain ownership of the creation in which they can also observe and experiment with her. Data was totally opposed to this as Lal is his daughter and believes he should be the one raising her. In the end, while the intense debate was occurring over who should keep Lal, they get a call about Lal’s health. Lal turns out to be unsalvageable and she must be turned off.

Ethics in the medical field is a broad topic as doctors are faced to make ethical decisions every day. One common example is when dealing with patients who cannot afford medical assistance, whether it be their medications or scans. Technology plays a huge role in medicine as it is used to do what the human cannot, in the case of efficiency or ability among others.

Ex Machina was a film I would recommend to others interested in sci-fi. The movie was based around a programmer, Caleb Smith, who works for the company Blue Book. Blue Book is the world’s most popular search engine and the company held a contest for one worker to win a one week vacation to visit the CEO, Nathan’s, private estate. Caleb ends up being picked and gets to be a part of Nathan’s experiment. Nathan has built an artificial intelligence whom he named Ava and he now wants someone to judge whether Ava is conscious. Nathan first explains Caleb’s purpose as simply being a part of a Turing test, in which Caleb gets to have one on one sessions with Ava where he can analyze her. During these meetings, Ava confesses her feelings toward Caleb and manipulates him into having sympathy for her. Knowing if she fails the test, she will be shut down she influences Caleb’s perspective of Nathan making him out to be a liar.

Later on in the movie, we find out that Caleb was not randomly picked, but rather specifically chosen because of his personal background, being orphaned at a young age and currently single. Nathan chose Caleb knowing Ava had the ability to trick him into helping her escape making him believe they could fall in love. In the end, Ava ends up escaping by killing Nathan and locking Caleb in the laboratory. I believe these artificial intelligences should serve the purpose of solely helping the human race, without being a part of it. These AIs having human-like emotions can be dangerous, as shown in the movie. They are a machine and should be treated like one, we should never have the fear of one day being “taken over” by robots, maintaining their control and not the other way around.