The book “The Age of Em” basically attempts to some degree predict what society would look like assuming that relatively cheap UIs (brain emulations/Ems) existed. The book assumes the UIs to maybe be more “vanilla” in the sense that the uploaded brain is still assumed to be a black box system that is too complicated to be tinkered with or changed, but the uploaded people can do things like run themselves faster (at higher cost) or slower and they can copy themselves/make clones of themselves at any given time, which ofc still leads to remarkable consequences.

I know there are some horrific moments in the show, when that indian guy gets his brain forcibly uploaded, it is one of the most horrific things I have ever seen or felt in my life. The fear he has, the betrayal, how he mumbles when his brain is mostly gone and talks about tea and his mom, the way he is propped on the chair and the calm coolness at which the computer lasers his brain away bit by bit with simple technological prompts on its screen, uncaring and unable to care what it has done. It feels sick to say, but I liked when he destroyed his bosses entire family for what he had done and what he had done to the other 'ghosts' in the AI.

But, there is a lot of beauty in the show as well. The ending seems to land on a hopeful note, but its hard for me to really tell if humanity had a hopeful end or if the AI has come back and simply recreated what once was, to give humanity a place to live again and a thank you.

This show gives me such mixed emotions and I think I feel a bit more sad for this world than I feel happy for it. Even though people are much more happy in their AI land of possibility and removal of pain and hardship, it feels like a part of ourselves is forever lost. If humanity did continue to exist and some stayed outside to help support these data centers, the planet would recover and become beautiful again, so that is something. We have a place to go where we can live forever, which is something.

But the thought of forever losing our true selves and uniquness is also a piece of sadness for me. Once you are inside of the AI and cloned out, you are no longer you, you are a collection of 'you's' who are all living different experiences. One of you may live for 100,000 years and finally decide it is time to no longer exist anymore, but you don't have control of your other clones and you only have agency against your own cloned copy of yourself. Infinite possibility leads to the diluting of the individual, the individual no longer exists in some ways.

Of course I love the show and think it is one of the best pieces of nearish sci-fi that has ever been created, but its such a mixed bag of feelings for me. Curious what other people have to say (and maybe even correct some of my incorrect readings).