In the Black Mirror, White Christmas Matt is a romantic services guru whose services uses “Z-eyes” to helps Harry who hired him to talk to girls.  This technology can focus in on certain people and do a picture scan to find out information on the person.  Simultaneously, Matt is streaming everything that is happening and has 8 or 9 other people watching to see what happens and providing feedback.  Matt tries to guide Harry through talking to Natalia, a girl who Harry is interested in.  He says that the key is building rapport and that people just want to be heard and have someone who listens to them.  Natalia turns out to be mentally ill and kills herself and Harry.  Matt’s wife finds out and blocks him because of what happened.  In this episode, blocking means that you can’t see the person anymore.  They are just a fuzzy outline, and you are unable to talk to the person or communicate with them.  So, Matt’s wife left him and took custody of their daughter.  He has spent the last five years at a polar station with his roommate, Joe. 

Aside from his career as a guru, he is involved with a company that uses Smartelligence, a copy of you that is extracted from your brain and placed within an egg-shaped device.  The copy is a full code simulation of the brain and does not have a body; it is a cookie.  The service takes a blank cookie and inserts it into the brain soaking up the hosts brain and gives it a simulated body.  It is essentially a personal assistant and completes everyday mundane tasks for the host.  When a cookie pleas with Matt to free her, he tortures her by turning time ahead.  Eventually she accepts what she is and begs for work and something to do.  I felt sorry for this “cookie” who seemed to be human-like and have feelings.

Joe, Matt’s roommate’s story is a tragic one.  His girlfriend, Beth blocks him when he finds out that she is pregnant and does not want the baby.  He pleas with her to talk to him but she blocked him and won’t speak with him.  He runs into her later and she is farther along in the pregnancy and still refuses to speak with Joe.  Eventually, he tries to see her at her father’s house that she goes to every Christmas, but he only sees her outline because he is blocked and the outline of a child.  He believes this to be his child and visits every year to watch them from afar.  Several years later, he sees on the news that Beth has been killed in a rail car accident and now that the block is gone, tries to go see his daughter.  He lets himself in Beth’s father’s place but when he sees the child, he realized that she looks like a former friend of his and that Beth had cheated on him.  He refuses to leave and ends up hitting Beth’s dad over the head with a snow globe killing him.  Afraid, he leaves and leaves the girl there.  The girl stayed in the house and refused to go because it was Christmas.  Eventually she wandered out into the cold, snowy blizzard to get help and is shown face down in the snow. 

We then see that Matt has been coercing Joe’s cookie the whole time into giving a confession and the last five years were just time manipulation.  In order to avoid going to prison for his role in Harry’s death he gets the confession but is now a registered sex offender and is blocked by everyone.  Joe is tortured by a police officer who sets his cookie to experience time with the song “I wish it could be Christmas Everyday” playing on repeat, which was playing in the background when he killed Beth’s father.

Question:  Would you use AI intelligence?  Did you think that the cookie experienced feelings like humans do?

Work Cited: Amazon Prime, Black Mirror, White Christmas