Black Mirror in the Rear-View Mirror: An Interview with the Authors

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The Neuroethics Blog hosted a special series on Black Mirror over the past year, originally coinciding with the release of its third season on Netflix. Black Mirror is noted for its telling of profoundly human stories in worlds shaped by current or future technologies. Somnath Das, now a medical student at Thomas Jefferson University, founded the Blog’s series on Black Mirror. Previous posts covered "Be Right Back", "The Entire History of You",  "Playtest", "San Junipero", "Men Against Fire", "White Bear", and "White Christmas". With Season 4 released at the end of December 2017, Somnath reconvened with contributing authors Nathan Ahlgrim, Sunidhi Ramesh, Hale Soloff, and Yunmiao Wang to review the new episodes and discuss the common neuroethical threads that pervade Black Mirror.

The discussion has been edited for clarity and conciseness. 

*SPOILER
ALERT* - The following contains plot spoilers for the Netflix television series Black Mirror.

 

Somnath: My first question is: if and when we to collect neural data on people, who really owns it? In the case of "Arkangel", the parents can access and even filter it. The government stepped in to regulate it, but it was owned by a private company. Who really owns that brain data? Who can control it? Do the people own that neural data or do the companies? 

 

Sunidhi: An interesting way to think about this is to think about your current medical records. Who owns your blood test results? Neural data is physical data. It's the same thing, just extending it to the brain. Companies owning that is a serious problem because there are always private interests that can manifest themselves in dangerous ways. The data should be owned by the person whose data it is. 

 

Yunmiao: I feel that, if that’s the case, we should not upload neural data at all. It can easily be misused by others. For example, Apple announced that it is going to transfer the Chinese iCloud operation to a state-owned company on February 28th, 2018. People might worry about who will access to their personal data. Either a government or a private agency could potentially misuse the information for their own interests. Russell Poldrack and Krzysztof J Gorgolewski have suggested the advantages of sharing neuroimaging data. For example, it could maximize the scientific contribution, improve reproducibility, and promote new questions. “Big data” is a trendy phrase, and its broad application have shown promising future for various fields. However, should the potential benefits of data sharing, whether it is neural data or general personal data, outweigh the importance of ownership? Despite the ethical consideration of privacy issues, there are also pros about data sharing, especially in a scientific setting.

 

Nathan: Let’s consider the more fantastical technology. Even if you willingly give up or sell your neural data through a very thorough informed consent procedure, if there is some sort of neuro-emulation, you have a digital self. There is no control after you make that transfer of ownership. The lack of control is why it is hard for even the most libertarian of thinkers to endorse voluntary slavery. We balk at that transfer of personal ownership. And I think for something as detailed as neural data, it would make sense for it to follow the same norm.

Somnath: My next question with respect to brain data and privacy is more about public opinion and how ethicists respond to public opinion. With Google Glass, we saw that many people were really uncomfortable with brain-computer-interfaces (BCI’s) being integrated into their lives. There were two issues here. One issue was that people didn't want to have random people wearing this glass and taking photos or videos of them, which is a pretty obvious argument. And the second argument was that people were uncomfortable with what the data could be used for. But as we've seen with a lot of technologies, like with cars, people [used to be] scared of the internal combustion engine exploding. And nowadays we accept them. We walk around them very easily. We're very familiar with them. I was wondering, in the vein of the episode “The Entire History of You” where everybody has a brain computer interface that can record and store memories, do you think people would eventually be able to accept these BCI’s as normal? 

Hale: People are absolutely comfortable with these things. We saw this as cars replaced carriages, and more recently as different generations have engaged with technology as ‘simple’ as social media. Our standards of privacy have changed in only a generation or two. Many people don’t view privacy as a necessary or engrained part in everyone’s lives to the degree it used to be. But even if you engage with something like Facebook or Instagram in a restrained way and you’re not showing everything, your life can get very wrapped up in the way people are interacting in an online environment. I think newer generations, and some individuals in the older generations will engage with a neural data-based social environment, even if some people dissent to the idea. One of the most effective counterbalances to people's interest in adopting these technologies is lawful regulations. Those would have a significant effect on slowing down or stopping the misuse of these things, for the purposes of avoiding the less than desirable scenarios. Regulations can’t prevent negative consequences 100% effectively, of course. What will be important is whether we have reactive/responsive laws or preventative laws, which will probably be controlled by the speed at which these two things happen. 

Yunmiao: For example, in “Crocodile,” people do have access to neural data. One could go to the extreme. Mia (the central protagonist) essentially killed everyone who could potentially have a memory of her murder(s). On one hand, such technology might stop people from committing any crime, knowing someone might be watching. On the other hand, it might also be a threat to the society because people will feel the threat of that information getting out. 

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

Nathan: I think an unintended consequence of something like Black Mirror is an automatic increase in acceptance in these technologies. Even though a supermajority of the episodes, like “Crocodile,” “Shut Up and Dance,” and “Men Against Fire” end in death – or worse, like the perpetual agony in “Black Museum” – it gets the story out there. Just like science fiction always has. Even if it's a morbid fascination it puts fascination into the public eye. I always see fascination inevitably garnering interest for technology to actually happen even if the first presentation of it was terrifying.

Sunidhi: I think it's just a matter of time. People watching this normalizes it. There are numerous examples of technology that people kind of rejected initially and then slowly took in as more and more people accepted it. 

Somnath: My next question is about “The Emulated Self” and focuses on storing people's consciousness against their will. In “Hang the DJ,” however, were introduced to a dating app that simulates hundreds of versions of ourselves and other people with a near perfect emulation of our thoughts feelings and personalities. It basically takes the mystery out of dating. The app then mysteriously kills off the simulations, or deletes their code, when it determines that two people could be matched. But for me that begs the question: would emulating those perfect copies of people, taking their memories away, putting them in an unknown place, and then deleting their code be unethical? Is that considered imprisonment? And does that even matter? 

Hale: You're not deleting an individual artificial intelligence within that universe, you’re deleting the entire thing at once. So you're not causing any sort of relational harm. You're not killing an individual that other individuals know and will grieve over. Everyone disappears at once within that universe. But of course, a lot of it comes down to an unanswerable question: how can we possibly know whether a simulated person actually experiences the emotions that they appear to experience? 

Nathan: Yes, “Hang the DJ” has a good outcome in the end. But I think it's unfair of us to judge that technology and the consequences of it based on a dating app when the exact same technology could be used differently, like in the finale “Black Museum.” With pretty much the same technology as the dating app, a man, whether deservedly or not, was put into a perpetual torture. Or, at least the emulation of his consciousness is. 

Image courtesy of Flickr user Many Wonderful Artists.

Sunidhi: Also, how much of it is actually deleted? Is it fully deleted, or does it continue to exist somewhere? 

Somnath: “San Junipero” showed us a positive way a similar technology was used, as a way of ensuring a good death. Or rather, a life beyond death. The episode concluded with one of the most remembered love stories in pop-culture. When the person died in the real world, a new version of that person was created in the simulation. My question is: does the company then own your life? You'd be at the whims of that company. Is that necessarily a bad thing? The people inside are living a good life even though they're dependent on this company owning them. Is it a good thing to live in a simulation or is it not? 

Nathan: It can never be a good thing as long as there is a distinction between the simulation and the real world. There was no perceptual difference between the simulation and the real world in “San Junipero.” Even so, the real world seemed to treat the simulation as something quantitatively different. The people in the simulation had different legal rights. We instinctively think of a person undergoing a change like Alzheimer’s Disease as retaining their identity. Their personality is different, their memories change, but you know it’s the same person much more than a simulation in “San Junipero,” where their personality is identical. As long as we think of a simulated world as something demonstrably different, what if you don't renew your contract with the company who built San Junipero? Then they’re entitled to terminate you. You’d die. Again. 

Sunidhi: What’s interesting in “San Junipero” is that the simulated copies still retain the same memories. Then it’s an iffy line as to how you can be different people but still retain the same memories, life experiences, etc. 

Yunmiao: I think the question is whether the simulated self is continuous with the original person, or whether it’s another life or person. What if they both exist at the same time, like in many other Black Mirror episodes? I don't think the copy, or simulated person, is an extension of the original person. I think they have their own mind, and they are their own person. Thus, the original person should not have any ownership of that emulated self. 

Somnath: My final question is about emulation. We’re pretty far away from emulating human bodies. The research is still in its infancy. When I wrote about it on the blog, the research basically said that neuroscientists are still trying to figure out how to emulate ion channels. Never mind complex neural activity or entire human beings. So why do you think the show keeps coming back to the emulated self if we’re so far away from it? Do you think it just makes for a good story, or do you think there is something more important about how the American consciousness reacts to this technology when it is portrayed in the show? 

Image courtesy of Pixabay.

Yunmiao: This is more a philosophical question. What is the self? That question has been going on for centuries, and I think this is just another perspective to view or evaluate what the self is. Do you view yourself the same as you were 10 years ago, 5 years ago, or 5 minutes later? The philosophical question sits on top of the potential technology and ethical issues.

Sunidhi: I think the whole ‘true self’ debate manifests itself in current technology. Think about Deep Brain Stimulation for depression, and how that patient changes. Are they being restored to who they were before? Is this a new person that was made by the treatment? Those questions are still present, so this might just be another interpretation of how those questions will present themselves in the future. 

Hale: I agree, and I think that people can’t help but ask themselves when they’re seeing it on the show: how will this affect me and my life? If a technology feels completely distant because you won’t see it for hundreds of years, you will only be casually interested. But these technologies are presenting a pseudo-immortality. Even now, we might be close to a point to saving our brains or brain data, if only cryogenically. One day in the future, when we have the technology to do something with that, we could digitally pop into existence again. People see this and feel it’s not within arm’s reach, but it is just beyond their fingertips. 

Nathan: I’m more of a skeptic when it comes to this technology possibly ever bearing fruit. But I still think that, even if it is completely fantastical, it’s important to get into the public consciousness. Science fiction as much as fantasy can serve as an allegory for the questions we are really asking. Like Yunmiao said, questions from immortality to identity and personhood. It’s a lot easier to enter the conversation if you’re asking, ‘What if I upload myself to Star Trek?’ (as in “USS Callister”) instead of, ‘what if I misrepresent myself on Facebook and my boss thinks I’m someone completely different?’ 

Image courtesy of Flickr user

FrenchKheldar.

Somnath: People with backgrounds in ethics have had a visceral reaction to Black Mirror.Black Mirror is made more intriguing and more constructive when we have real discussions about the cross-pollination of fiction and the real world.

Proponents of these technologies, like those who are trying to make emulation happen, often contend that our hesitancy is driven by fear. They contend that progress is impeded by hand-wringing ethicists. We can’t ignore that the show brings a fascination to all these technologies, regardless of the grim consequences. That's why ethicists do need to respond to the show. Ethicists do better when they get out of their ivory tower. At the same time, pop-culture phenomena like

Before we close, I have to ask: favorite episodes? For me, “White Bear” was the most fascinating for the neuroethical implications. But as a consumer, “The Waldo Moment” is my favorite. 

Yunmiao: “White Christmas” 

Hale: “USS Callister” 

Sunidhi: “Men Against Fire” 

Nathan: “Hated in the Nation”

Want to cite this post?

Ahlgrim, N. (2018). The Neuroethics Blog Series on Black Mirror: Black Mirror in the Rear-view Mirror - an Interview with the Authors. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2018/03/black-mirror-in-rear-view-mirror.html

The Neuroethics Blog Series on Black Mirror: San Junipero

By Nathan Ahlgrim

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Humans in the 21st century have an intimate relationship with technology. Much of our lives are spent being informed and entertained by screens. Technological advancements in science and medicine have helped and healed in ways we previously couldn’t dream of. But what unanticipated consequences may be lurking behind our rapid expansion into new technological territory? This question is continually being explored in the British sci-fi TV series Black Mirror, which provides a glimpse into the not-so-distant future and warns us to be mindful of how we treat our technology and how it can affect us in return. This piece is part of a series of posts that will discuss ethical issues surrounding neuro-technologies featured in the show and will compare how similar technologies are impacting us in the real world.

*SPOILER ALERT* - The following contains plot spoilers for the episode “San Junipero” of the Netflix television series Black Mirror.

Your body, in many ways, is an extension of your identity. The coupling of the physical to the psychological can be represented by straightforward demographic details like sex, ethnicity, and age. Your body can also restrict your identity by illness, injury, and disability. The unavoidable link between body and identity only exists as long as you are stuck with what you’re born with. Science fiction, and some science fact, is working to decouple the mind and body using virtual worlds and virtual minds, casting a lure of limitless possibilities. Location, money, age, ability; all are at the user’s command. Advances in computer technology and neuroscience are making that lure more lifelike, more attractive, and (possibly) more attainable.

Image courtesy of the U.S. Department of Defense.

Technology has moved virtual worlds far beyond the days of The Sims or Second Life. The Emmy Award-Winning Black Mirror Episode “San Junipero” is hardly the first example of pop-culture waxing poetic over the narratives of downloaded minds. Movies like Tron and Avatar describe worlds beyond reality, with such advanced computing that the "virtual reality" became a second reality. Therein, of course, lies the question: how should virtual minds be treated in a virtual world? “San Junipero” describes a world in which the entirety of human consciousness can be transferred and even downloaded via Whole Brain Emulation (WBE). In a world with fantastical technology, the treatment of the disembodied minds is taken as a given. However, real-world scientists and entrepreneurs are setting their sights on their own San Junipero, and we cannot assume the ethics of WBE and the treatment of digital people will fall into place by itself. The rights of computer code are not as straightforward as they seem when the code is Grandma.

 Plot Summary and Technology Used

“San Junipero” opens with a 1980’s party town. The painfully dweebish Yorkie shuffles into a nightclub full of arcade games (and resident arcade geeks) where she meets her polar opposite in Kelly, for all accounts a carefree partier. During the couple’s first night together in San Junipero, Kelly discloses her previous and lengthy marriage. Both are young 20-somethings, and this is the first overt clue (although many subtler ones had appeared before) that the timeline is not quite normal.

The two reunite after Yorkie enters a time-bending search for Kelly through the 80’s, 90’s, and 00’s. Their ensuing conversation reveals that Yorkie is getting married and that Kelly is dying. Kelly insists on meeting up in the real world. She says “the real world” because the city of San Junipero is an elaborate simulation in which living people can visit or take up permanent residence by downloading their brain as their body expires.

San Junipero sharply contrasts with the real world.

Images courtesy of Pexels and Pixabay.

In the real world, both women are elderly: Yorkie a quadriplegic since adolescence and Kelly dying from an illness. Kelly visits Yorkie in the hospital, where she meets Greg, to whom Yorkie will be married later that month. Greg is a caregiver and agreed to marry Yorkie so that his Power of Attorney would allow her to “pass over”— to be euthanized and become a permanent digital resident of San Junipero.



Here we learn the totality of San Junipero’s technology: living people are allowed five hours of virtual life per week to have a “trial run” before making the decision to have their brains completely scanned and uploaded before they die. This, of course, requires WBE: the complete digital representation of a person’s brain.

Kelly successfully cajoles Greg into giving her and Yorkie a covert five minutes in San Junipero. She proposes in the digital world, and Yorkie accepts. The following scene shows Kelly asserting her Power of Attorney back in the real world, authorizing Yorkie’s euthanasia and permanent upload to San Junipero.

The couple reunite in the virtual world, and Kelly repeats her wish to die without becoming a “local” – no brain scan and no eternal life. She is thrown back into the real world at midnight by the state-imposed limits on time in San Junipero, leaving Yorkie to think she may not return.

In a stark tonal change from the majority of Black Mirror endings, Kelly reappears at her San Junipero beach house, and the two literally drive off into the sunset; the final scene shows the two – now two placidly blinking discs of light, robotically being archived and immediately lost amongst a wall of identical lights.

Current State of Technology

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.

San Junipero is a world enabled by completely comprehensive WBE. The residents have their entire consciousness scanned and transferred in digital form to an ostensibly immortal computer bank. Everyone from Cristof Koch of the Allen Brain Institute to Michio Kaku recognizes the human brain as the most complicated object in the universe, so it should come as no surprise that such technology is more of a fantasy than the city of San Junipero itself. The human brain is estimated to have a petabyte (1 quadrillion bytes) memory capacity, and researchers from the Salk Institute say that a computer simulation with similar memory and processing power would need the energy from “basically a whole nuclear power station” for just one person. For all of our supercomputers, deep neural networks, and artificial intelligence, real-life brain modelling has currently peaked at a ‘crumb’ of rat cortex (0.29 ± 0.01 mm3 containing ~31,000 neurons [1]). Even this state-of-the-art model disregards any and all glial cells, blood vessels, and capacity for plasticity. All this to say that many computer scientists and neuroscientists doubt WBE will ever be possible.

Complete WBE seems stuck in sci-fi territory, but scientists and philanthropists love a good moonshot, and all the better if success means immortality. Many projects, from the government-funded Human Brain Project and BRAIN Initiative to the startup Carboncopies, have been fueled by the dream of a San Junipero-esque human simulator. Fields from across the sciences, including engineering, quantum computing, neuroscience, and cryonics are converging on this goal; but they have yet to even find where to stake the finish line. Even Anders Sandberg, one of the most vocal WBE evangelicals, labels it a “theoretical technology” [2]. On the bright side, if we have the technology to upload human brains to a digital form, simulating a California town will be a humble afterthought.

Remembering the good old days often

has positive psychological effects.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

In contrast to the potentially unreachable technology, the therapeutic purpose of San Junipero has been modelled outside of the Black Mirror universe, albeit in a decidedly analog fashion. Kelly, in describing the sales pitch for San Junipero, calls it “Immersive Nostalgia Therapy.” Nostalgia is known to encourage positive coping and psychological states, which can be brought on by old songs, familiar smells, or just by reminiscing about the good old days. Constantine Sedikides and colleagues have induced nostalgic feelings in hundreds of research participants easily and reliably, doing nothing more than letting their participants revel in those past experiences. The resulting feelings of reminiscence and bittersweet longing were sufficient to increase coping, closeness, and optimism while decreasing defensiveness [3]. Sadly, none of that research has induced feelings of nostalgia by transporting their subjects’ consciousness to an 80’s dance club.

Ethical Considerations: What Black Mirror gets right and what it misses

The narrative of “San Junipero” operates among people who all have access to the immortalizing technology, so the fair distribution of WBE technology will not be discussed here. Rather, the ethics of these incorporeal minds and the transition between the analog California and the digital San Junipero merit more consideration than was offered in the episode.

Does a computer code have rights? That question sounds flippant, but the premise is not so outlandish when you consider that corporations now have rights according to the U.S. legal system. If code deserves the same protection, will it ever be intelligent enough to deserve the same rights as flesh-and-blood humans? The debate is already swirling over artificial intelligence; the World Economic Forum now lists the rights of intelligent programs as one of the nine ethical challenges for the field. San Junipero locals, who are embodied by a single disc of information, are treated wholly differently than the visitors, with some troubling implications.

San Junipero is a paradise. It is easy to imagine people choosing paradise over real-world pain brought on by loss, illness, disability, or simply the daily grind. Realizing this, the laws of this world put up barriers to entry, as Greg described to Kelly:

“[The] state's got a triple-lock on euthanasia cases. You gotta have sign off from the doc, the patient, and a family member. Stops people passing over just 'cause they prefer San Junipero flat out.”

Compare that to the locals. When Kelly balks at the idea of "forever", Yorkie throws back:

“you can remove yourself like that”

This distinction is taken as a given. Why, though, should physical euthanasia be more controlled than a digital death? In being selectively protective, the government is treating the digital copies as less-than-human. Ironically, this distinction flies in the face of San Junipero’s purpose: to extend life after death. The distinction between biological and digital, once a person’s entire consciousness is downloaded, is seen by some to be more artificial than San Junipero itself.

The biological/digital distinction was the focal point of a convincing (but later debunked) fan theory that Kelly never actually changed her mind, and that she really, truly, permanently died. The theory posits that the simulation then made a copy of Kelly to accompany Yorkie, since its purpose is to make its residents happy. There again is the same question: if Kelly is simulated to have all the same behaviors and thoughts, how is that different than the ‘normal’ downloading of consciousness? Michael Hendricks of McGill University points out that there is no distinction between transferring and replicating consciousness, since the computer code of a person did not exist before the transfer. Therefore, even if the fan theory was true, neither Yorkie nor Kelly could tell the difference between a simulation or a “real” copy.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The conversation about digital people is, of course, theoretical. Even WBE proponents acknowledge that “brain emulation is … vulnerable to speculation, ‘handwaving’ and untestable claims.” [2]. But, science is on the brink of inflicting digital pain. Scientists, animal rights activists, and others are pushing for digital animal models, also known as in silico experiments. American and European governments are funding the development of non-animal models, especially for toxicology studies [4,5]. These experiments present precise simulations of biological systems to model new treatments and probe new questions. Currently, in silico experiments are largely performed on digital organs and not whole organisms, but the latter is in the works, which again presents that artificial distinction. If the model is complex enough to simulate the organism, then it stands to reason that it feels the same pain, and suffers just like its skin-and-bones counterpart. The goal of replacing animal models with simulations is self-limiting: the better the simulation, the more digital suffering is inflicted.

It is for this reason that some ethicists follow the “principle of assuming the most.” Doing so assumes that simulations possess the most sentience as is reasonable to believe even in the absence of empirical data. Under this principle, any virtual mouse should be given the same protections as a real mouse would, down to its virtual pain killers. In the words of Anders Sandberg, “it is better to treat a simulacrum as the real thing than to mistreat a sentient being” [6].

Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

If it ever becomes sufficiently sophisticated, WBE will represent a new, practical dualism (the belief that the mind and body are distinct entities) that is completely independent from philosophical beliefs. After successfully recreating consciousness in a digital form, the physical form of the body and brain become artefactual and unnecessary to maintain thought. The question of whether the body is needed to maintain identity and personhood, though, will always remain a philosophical one. In fact, identity and personhood may need entirely new definitions in the face of WBE technology before philosophers can meaningfully debate the issue. Digital lab rats, digital family members, and digital worlds are immune from physical harm, but their complexity gives them the capacity to suffer regardless of “who” they are. As such, consistent ethical standards require the treatment of digital and physical life to be determined by that life’s complexity, not its relation to the physical world.

Conclusions

Digital versions of Grandma may never happen. Even so, the ethics of artificial intelligence and virtual worlds are pertinent to existing technologies. Virtual worlds and virtual personalities on platforms like Second Life have already spawned marriages, divorce, and even semi-official government embassies. These digital actions have real consequences even when those spaces are not populated by fully conscious computer programs. Should these avatars be held to the same moral standards and governed by the same laws that apply to flesh and blood people? “San Junipero” thinks not. It was constructed as an escape that offered wish-fulfillment and freedom from consequences. That kind of marketing pitch makes it obvious why the government put in so many controls to prevent anyone and everyone from ‘passing over’ when in perfect health, with heaven just a zap away.

Sadly, Black Mirror never addresses the most important question of them all: what happens to this heaven when the power goes out?

References

[1] Markram H et al. (2015) Reconstruction and simulation of neocortical microcircuitry. Cell 163:456-492.

[2] Sandberg A, Bostrom N (2008) Whole brain emulation: A roadmap.

[3] Sedikides C, Wildschut T (2016) Past forward: Nostalgia as a motivational force. Trends in cognitive sciences 20:319-321.

[4] Raunio H (2011) In silico toxicology – non-testing methods. Frontiers in Pharmacology 2:33.

[5] Leist M, Hasiwa N, Rovida C, Daneshian M, Basketter D, Kimber I, Clewell H, Gocht T, Goldberg A, Busquet F, Rossi A-M, Schwarz M, Stephens M, Taalman R, Knudsen TB, McKim J, Harris G, Pamies D, Hartung T (2014) Consensus report on the future of animal-free systemic toxicity testing. ALTEX 31:341-356.

[6] Sandberg A (2014) Ethics of brain emulations. Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence 26:439-457.

Want to cite this post?

Ahlgrim, N.S. (2017). The Neuroethics Blog Series on Black Mirror: San Junipero. The Neuroethics Blog. Retrieved on , from  http://www.theneuroethicsblog.com/2017/10/the-neuroethics-blog-series-on-black.html.