Would you? Get one? That’s a discussion that will have been going on in the country’s living rooms during and after the first episode of Humans (Channel 4, Sunday). One meaning your own synthetic, or “synth”: a green-eyed humanoid robot.
On the plus side it will clean and iron and then cook you a nice chicken chasseur for tea, freeing you up for all the good stuff you never find time for. It might even provide some kind of companionship. Plus there are potential upgrades, including adult ones, if you know what I’m saying.
On the downside, there is a danger synths might make you, me, everyone redundant. They are already doing all the jobs people don’t really want to do, not just in the house, but street cleaning, handing out free newspapers, sex work etc (they are basically a bit like immigrants, I’m afraid). But it won’t be long before they’re doing the jobs you might want to do yourself – doctor, lawyer, politician, TV critic, footballer perhaps. The Singularity – when artificial intelligence overtakes human intelligence – isn’t far off. Also, returning to the basic domestic model, it might be a bit creepy having a machine that looks just like a person living in your house. It’s not good for the children either, it’ll mess with their heads. Plus you might be unlucky – like the Hawkins family – and get one, like Anita, that … who can think, and feel. Then things start to get really complicated.
One of the beauties of Humans is that, like Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror, it really isn’t such a big leap, or ask. Only last week there was a story about Ocado creating an army of humanoids with artificial intelligence. The online supermarket robots might not be as pretty as Gemma Chan, who plays Anita (very convincing as a semi-humanoid), but this stuff is happening. Tellingly, Humans is set not some time in the future, but some time around now. It’s sci-fi for the non sci-fi fan, sci-fi that has more than a foot in sci-fact.
It’s also a clever, high-energy thriller. Written – actually adapted from a Swedish series – by Spooks writers Sam Vincent and Jonathan Brackley, it has some of that show’s breathless urgency and tachycardiac pace. There are more of these sentient synths about the place, in the woods, plus urban wastelands, hiding, running. They are seen as a threat, bad dudes are after them, darting them, bundling them into vans, taking them away to be wiped clean, rebooted, decommissioned, or abused. Actually, it’s too early, and too simplistic, to divide into good and bad. There’s a more complicated, more realistic, more interesting morality to Humans.
So you’re sitting on the edge of your seat, but maybe you’re also resting your chin in your hand, as you ponder technology, intelligence, consciousness, humanity, who we are and how we live now, and so on. And maybe that discussion you have should be not would you get a synth, but will you? Me? Are you kidding? Of course I bloody will. Mmm, chicken chasseur.
Can there really be 100 Lego bricks for every child, woman and man in the world, as revealed in The Secret World of Lego (Channel 4, Sunday)? Seven hundred billion bricks? By my calculations that would mean (for someone with average size feet) that approximately every other time you walked into a room bare-footed you’d step on a piece … yeah, so about right then.
Head office, in the Danish village of Billund, is a secretive place where strange child-adults stick coloured bricks together, for their job. Secretive, until now; “Reputation Manager” Roar Rude Trangbaek has opened the doors and is showing us round, except for the product development area; as the camera approaches, the building’s shutters do their thing (shut).
The cultishness of the company – or the fact that sugar isn’t allowed in the canteen – doesn’t put Justin off, a 23-year-old Afol (adult fan of Lego) from London from wanting to work there. Wanting to, and succeeding. The dream comes true! Of the thousands who apply, Justin is selected. And here he is, six months into the job. “It’s amazing, it’s this great family atmosphere, you feel like you’re part of something,” he says, smiling. There’s something slightly different about him, now he’s in, from before, when he was just a fan. I think Justin is lost, to Lego.
Another interesting stat: in a couple of years the population of Minifigures will overtake humans … Hang on, this is beginning to feel like the other show. How long before Lego Minifigures will be able to think?
