‘Our mind isn’t a dataset’ — as if Black Mirror taught us nothing at all, 33% of millennials and 25% of Gen Zers want to preserve themselves using AI

Martha and the fake Ash meeting.

You may be familiar with the classic Black Mirror episode Be Right Back, in which a young woman whose boyfriend is killed in a car accident decides to communicate with an artificial intelligence imitating him, eventually uploading his AI ‘brain’ into an android body that looks just like him.

As you’d expect from Black Mirror, things do not go quite to plan and end up somewhat horrifying, but that doesn’t seem to have stopped public interest in AI immortality from surging. According to Google Trends, searches for “AI immortality” have surged 2,426% over the past year and jumped 91% in the past month alone.