Humans being

Thanksgiving's this weekend, and it's a great time to catch up and binge on some TV.  I watched the entire first season of this show in just one day, but you can feel free to spread out the eight episodes however you like.  The show is called Humans, and like any good show, it makes you think about life and humanity but is also just enjoyable to watch.

Humans is a drama centered around what society would be like if very human-like artificial intelligence were common place, something that is very possible in our lifetime.  These AI, or "synths" (short for synthetics) as they're called in the show, are everywhere.  They sweep the streets, work in factories, and regular families even have them as housekeepers/nannies.

As you'd expect, some people think they're a great advancement for the world and others are opposed to how they affect human lives.  One family gets a synth out of desperation to bring order to the house, but their synth starts behaving strangely.  It turns out there's a handful of them that are more than the mindless, order-taking automatons the world believes them to be.

It's an intriguing plot and a glimpse into what our world may be facing soon.  The show does a good job of capturing the different possible human behaviors and reactions - possibly drawing on how we've behaved to new technology, changing demographics, and economic shifts throughout history.  But if you don't want to be bothered by that, it's also a gripping story about two families trying to figure out what's going on and survive.

On a related note . . . here are some videos of the robots I saw in Japan.  If this is what's displayed to the public in a museum, imagine what's already been created that we haven't seen.