Sympathy for Janet on ‘The Good Place’

Rather, the present urgency, according to pop culture, is around this: Will advanced AI deserve human rights? Should we cut back on cursing out Siri as she gets savvier, or outlaw kicking the next generation’s Furby?

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It’s especially easy to empathize with Black Mirror’s digital ghosts because they are derived from real people. Yet in the show’s universe, too few people do empathize. Which raises the dark question of how much worse people would treat entities that don’t so blatantly resemble their friends but still do have a rich, lively consciousness.