Let's Be Real...

This week our video was called, "Be Right Back." Let me begin by saying...woah... The film was primarily focused on a grieving woman who found comfort within the technological world of artificial intelligence, similarly to asking Siri to help you mourn your dead cat. It's weird... and downright creepy. Being a psychology major, I find a strong amount of empathy within my soul for this poor woman; I could not imagine losing my significant other so early on in life. Part of me understands her level of distress and can sympathize with her need to reconnect after such a sudden loss. But as most humans do, we take something seemingly "okay" and always seem to have to kick it up and notch and pump the whole system with steroids. This film baffled me the most because of her very apparent cognitive dissonance throughout. She constantly battled with Robot Ash being too much like her deceased loved one and not enough like him. The particular instance when she orders him to jump off the cliff then proceeds to yell at him because obviously Human Ash would never willing jump off a cliff for fun, bewildered my mind the most because she seemed completely ignorant to the fact that Robot Ash simply did whatever she, his administrator, told him to do. Again, I fully acknowledge that grief is a horrible, life-consuming emotion to wrestle with, but that does not change the facts of the story. She knew he was conforming, adapting, to whatever she asked of him; yet, she still refused to accept the hard truth that Robot Ash could never be Human Ash and she HAD to LET HIM GO. Which brings me back to the human steroid problem. We, as humans, never seem to be able to get enough. We always want more. More purpose, more love, more life, more time. Is it not why we strive to create AI and go beyond our limitations whether physical or mental or emotional? We seem so bent on pushing ourselves beyond our breaking point, beyond the glass ceiling, beyond the final frontier. For what? To become infatuated with another difficult, maybe impossible task. As a species too easily consumed, I find the most powerful lesson to be learned from this film is the ability to let go. To realize that the death and the very fact that life will eventually end is what gives our everyday, mundane tasks their beauty and purpose. To remember that there is more to this life than we realize because we spend too much time with our heads in the clouds.